Studio: international art (79.1920)

THE GRAPHIC ART OF JAN POORTENAAR

"THE TOWER.” WOODCUT
BY JAN POORTENAAR

pathy with all new movements, and one
thing is certain about his work—there is
no searching after popular insincerities.
Nor could one find any trace of such
amongst any of the exhibits in the group's
first exhibition, in which some one hundred
and twenty-five works were shown. 0
Though unillustrated in the present
article, I must not omit to mention the
portrait and refined landscape work of
Mr. D. M. Sutherland, the cheerful out-
look on nature expressed in the landscapes
of Mr. J. G. Spence Smith, and the work of
the one applied art member of the group
—Miss Mary Newbery (Mrs. A. R. Stur-
rock). Though attached to the Edinburgh
Group, Miss Newbery's art education be-
longs principally to the Glasgow School of
Art, which was made famous under the
energetic organization of her father, Mr.
F. H. Newbery, and one may hope that
the already enthusiastic nine will further
add to their number a few more who
will realize the artistic influence of the
room and its fitments, combined with the
picture as a decorative unit in it. 0 0

The National Portrait Gallery, after
being wholly closed to the public since
November 1915, has now been partially
reopened, and as soon as the work of re-
decoration and rehanging is completed the
remainder will be restored to its proper use.

98

THE GRAPHIC ART OF JAN
POORTENAAR. 00a

THE first thing that strikes you in looking
at the work of Mr. Poortenaar is his
versatility ; the second, the technical sym-
pathy with which he uses the particular
medium concerned. On the whole the
second virtue is rarer than the first ;
and it is one of the things that remind
you that Mr. Poortenaar, though he has
practised art in England for a good few
years, is not an Englishman. We have
many virtues in art but, speaking generally,
we are apt to regard the medium as merely
a means to an end instead of as a technical
process with peculiarities of its own. As
is not uncommon with energetic and
practical people, expressing themselves
mainly in action, we show in our artistic
and intellectual pursuits some lack of the
very virtue that we display so eminently
in life; in our government of “ native
races," for example. The English artist
who practises several forms of art—paint-
ing, etching, and lithography, for example—
is often “ artistic ” in all of them as regards
the subject and the expression of his ideas
and feelings about it; and he is often in
all of them a good craftsman in the general
sense of the word. Where he generally

"THE FIRMAMENT”
WOODCUT BY
JAN POORTENAAR