International studio (16.1902)

Studio- Talk

STUDIO-TALK
(From our own Correspondents.)
LONDON.—Mr. A. W. Rich is a water-
colourist of great merit, and yet his ,
drawings are not appreciated as they
ought to be. Some persons, indeed, miss
their significance altogether, and say that their art
is nothing but “a conscious return” to old
traditions, and especially to those which are
associated with the great name of Dewint. In this
criticism, if criticism it can be called, there are two
misunderstandings. In the first place, “a return”
to old traditions cannot itself be either “conscious”
or “unconscious,” for it is not a living and breathing
thing subject to a mental condition that makes it
either conscious of its character or the reverse.
®ut students of art, old as well as young, are
rather inclined to put themselves at their ease in a
had habit of thinking without real thought,
applying to mere qualities such adjectives and
Phrases as belong to the painters by whom the
finalities were produced. Thus, then, the criticism
°n the work of Mr. Rich must be expressed in a
different way. Let it run thus: that Mr. Rich
proves in his landscapes that he is conscious of a
mturn to earlier methods, fi'he writer who had

this thought in mind wished to imply that Mr.
Rich, owing to his sympathy for earlier methods,
had lost touch with the present-day tendencies of
English water-colour.

Space does not suffice here to disprove this
charge, but it will be easy and convenient to
return to the matter at a later date, in a review of
the exhibition which Mr. Rich will hold early in
March at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. Mean-
time, let it be noted that the art of English water-
colour is not a thing which can be criticised at
random ; it needs some recognition of the fact that,
since the end of the eighteenth century, its progress
has been along two lines, either in direct lineal
descent from the founders of the art in England,
or else in such collateral branches of the parent
stock as have been greatly affected by the influences
of a sister art, the art of oil painting. Now, Mr.
Rich continues the lineal succession, and anyone
who studies his work carefully, with unbiassed
judgment, will perceive clearly that, within his
sympathy for Dewint and Cotman, he not only
shows his own individuality, but displays at the
same time not a little of the knowledge won from
Nature by impressionists of a later age than Dewint’s.


“ gReenwich

FROM A WATER-COLOUR BY A. W. RICH