DOI issue:
No. 54 (August, 1901)
DOI article:Hiatt, Charles T. J.: Some drawings by James Pryde
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22775#0151
Janies Pryde s Drawings
passed over without comment either by the pro-
fessional critic or the habitual visitor to the picture
galleries.
Mr. Pryde has studied in Paris, but his vigorous
artistic personality has prevented his brush and
pencil from acquiring that “ French accent ”
which Sir John Millais so energetically deplored.
It may well be that he left the French metropolis
with new ideas, with increased technical resources,
but he returned to England innocent of imitation
of the work of any artist however distinguished.
He discovered no easy road to popular fame and
fortune, and if he had found one he would inevit-
ably have despised it. He is a free-lance in that
he will not tread a well-worn path, at the end of
which there is the certainty of the applause of
many voices and the material advantages which
are the result thereof. The average person who
sees Mr. Pryde’s work is satisfied to brand it as
eccentric and to dismiss it. There is not much
to be said for an artist who strenuously makes a
virtue of eccentricity, who attempts to hide his
weaknesses by the startling presentment of the
commonplace But it is the lot of nearly every
English painter who sees things from a new point
of view, and who sets down what he sees without
compromise, to be dealt with in summary fashion.
A short time passes, and the eccentrics of yesterday
are duly respected as the classics of to-day. So it
was with the pre-Raphaelites; so it was with Mr.
Whistler. Whether it will be so with Mr. Pryde
I shall not venture to say, for prophecy, in the
phrase of George Eliot, is the most gratuitous form
of error.
from a drawing
BY JAMES PRYDE
I05
passed over without comment either by the pro-
fessional critic or the habitual visitor to the picture
galleries.
Mr. Pryde has studied in Paris, but his vigorous
artistic personality has prevented his brush and
pencil from acquiring that “ French accent ”
which Sir John Millais so energetically deplored.
It may well be that he left the French metropolis
with new ideas, with increased technical resources,
but he returned to England innocent of imitation
of the work of any artist however distinguished.
He discovered no easy road to popular fame and
fortune, and if he had found one he would inevit-
ably have despised it. He is a free-lance in that
he will not tread a well-worn path, at the end of
which there is the certainty of the applause of
many voices and the material advantages which
are the result thereof. The average person who
sees Mr. Pryde’s work is satisfied to brand it as
eccentric and to dismiss it. There is not much
to be said for an artist who strenuously makes a
virtue of eccentricity, who attempts to hide his
weaknesses by the startling presentment of the
commonplace But it is the lot of nearly every
English painter who sees things from a new point
of view, and who sets down what he sees without
compromise, to be dealt with in summary fashion.
A short time passes, and the eccentrics of yesterday
are duly respected as the classics of to-day. So it
was with the pre-Raphaelites; so it was with Mr.
Whistler. Whether it will be so with Mr. Pryde
I shall not venture to say, for prophecy, in the
phrase of George Eliot, is the most gratuitous form
of error.
from a drawing
BY JAMES PRYDE
I05