DOI Heft:
No. 60 (February, 1902)
DOI Artikel:Sickert, Oswald: The twenty-seventh exhibition of the New English Art Club
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22772#0331
The New English Art Club
fr
K«v.
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“ THE GREEN SHUTTER
BY MARY HOGARTH
them), and with variations ranging from the tactful
looseness of Mr. W. W. Russell’s A Scene on the
Wye to the relentlessness of Mr. Bate’s The Chess-
Player, this seriousness is characteristically present
in the exhibition, giving the visitor, apart from the
pleasure he may derive from any particular con-
tribution, a general feeling of gratefulness to
painters who, in their various ways, are busy with
a world they find interesting.
We have grown accustomed to see this serious-
ness signally successful among the water colours,
and the wall devoted to the art is remarkable on
this occasion for the tinted drawings by Mr. D. S.
MacColl and Miss Hogarth. With a most un-
assuming pencil Mr. MacColl has traced out to the
end The Belfry and Watchtower of Calais; Miss
Hogarth, with her heavier line, multiplies the
windows and piles up the mass of the Ponte
Vecchio and the buildings behind it. Mr. Hugh
Carter understands, what hardly one of the
exhibitors at the last exhibition of the Pastel
Society understood, that pastel is for drawing.
His little Thames, near Greenwich, is a drawing
in charcoal, touched with colour—the drawing of
a hand that casts about, as it were, with a charming
instinct. Against each of the three drawings
Mr. R. E. Fry’s The Mill, also a tinted drawing—
or, rather, a water-colour with lines put into it —
sounds a little note of protest. Indeed, the artist
here stands midway between two other water-
colours from his own hand, casting doubtful looks
on this side at his realistic Boxhill, which is rather
wanting in structure, and on the other at his Titans,
which is entirely a design.
The contention which The Mill seems to uphold
—namely that there should be choice of lines in a
drawing—is irrefutable. One may even accept
without demur the further proposition it suggests,
and agree that when Titian drew the trunk of a
beech tree or Rembrandt the uplifted hand of the
master expostulating with the unmerciful servant,
there was more choice of line than in Mr. MacColl’s
Calais. Yet The Mill, with its choice, is further
from fine drawing; is, indeed, not on the road.
All drawing from Nature is a convention, and
includes a certain degree of choice, since the
draughtsman puts lines where there are none in
nature. The great draughtsman is he that, in
following and searching nature with his keen
point, has found the line which reveals the most,
laying open with a sensitive hand the appearances
of things. The hand in The Mill has given up
all sensibility, recognising no need to follow or
search, nor any desire to find the expressive con-
vention. The artist begins at the other end, and,
having proclaimed the necessity of a convention,
267
fr
K«v.
x ) o .&a/.
“ THE GREEN SHUTTER
BY MARY HOGARTH
them), and with variations ranging from the tactful
looseness of Mr. W. W. Russell’s A Scene on the
Wye to the relentlessness of Mr. Bate’s The Chess-
Player, this seriousness is characteristically present
in the exhibition, giving the visitor, apart from the
pleasure he may derive from any particular con-
tribution, a general feeling of gratefulness to
painters who, in their various ways, are busy with
a world they find interesting.
We have grown accustomed to see this serious-
ness signally successful among the water colours,
and the wall devoted to the art is remarkable on
this occasion for the tinted drawings by Mr. D. S.
MacColl and Miss Hogarth. With a most un-
assuming pencil Mr. MacColl has traced out to the
end The Belfry and Watchtower of Calais; Miss
Hogarth, with her heavier line, multiplies the
windows and piles up the mass of the Ponte
Vecchio and the buildings behind it. Mr. Hugh
Carter understands, what hardly one of the
exhibitors at the last exhibition of the Pastel
Society understood, that pastel is for drawing.
His little Thames, near Greenwich, is a drawing
in charcoal, touched with colour—the drawing of
a hand that casts about, as it were, with a charming
instinct. Against each of the three drawings
Mr. R. E. Fry’s The Mill, also a tinted drawing—
or, rather, a water-colour with lines put into it —
sounds a little note of protest. Indeed, the artist
here stands midway between two other water-
colours from his own hand, casting doubtful looks
on this side at his realistic Boxhill, which is rather
wanting in structure, and on the other at his Titans,
which is entirely a design.
The contention which The Mill seems to uphold
—namely that there should be choice of lines in a
drawing—is irrefutable. One may even accept
without demur the further proposition it suggests,
and agree that when Titian drew the trunk of a
beech tree or Rembrandt the uplifted hand of the
master expostulating with the unmerciful servant,
there was more choice of line than in Mr. MacColl’s
Calais. Yet The Mill, with its choice, is further
from fine drawing; is, indeed, not on the road.
All drawing from Nature is a convention, and
includes a certain degree of choice, since the
draughtsman puts lines where there are none in
nature. The great draughtsman is he that, in
following and searching nature with his keen
point, has found the line which reveals the most,
laying open with a sensitive hand the appearances
of things. The hand in The Mill has given up
all sensibility, recognising no need to follow or
search, nor any desire to find the expressive con-
vention. The artist begins at the other end, and,
having proclaimed the necessity of a convention,
267