International studio (19.1903)

/W772/& 7^/^//^*Wy//'^ 7L//////sYY/^GS' <Y///Z ,SY/7/- A//7

mere boy, laid them on, was to show a power
many full-grown artists would have envied; and the
point is that in Mr. Brangwyn this abiiity was by
way of nature, for of direct teaching and assiduous
training he had then practicaliy nothing at all. At
any rate, it was this abnormal gift in him that hrst
attracted me personahy to his work. It seerned to
me at the time so unique that I could not doubt
it would carry him through to great things by-
and-by. He would settie down graduaHy to severer
study. He would not let this facility of the
brush content him and run away with him.
His strong accompanying sense of designing in
broad masses would more and more assert itself,
and demand from him an austerer insistence upon
form. As the design and the form grew, the
colour too would grow purer and more brilliant.
And so, beyond all question, it has come to pass.
Of course one is always pleased, a little Hattered
too and established, to hnd time on one's side

realising one's anticipations. This must be my
excuse—I hop: my readers will allow it—for here
setting down my reminiscence of Mr. Brangwyn's
boyhood, and how he then appealed to me.
On a former occasion, I understand, an article
has appeared in THE STUDio dealing with Mr.
Brangwyn's work and artistic position generally.
The present article is concerned directly only with
his landscape and stiH-Iife pieces. By these he is
not most widely known to the public. Perhaps it
is not too much to say that the artist himself hardly
regards this side of his work as seriously as he
regards his figure subjects. In sorne sense these
landscapes and still-Iife studies are, to him, rather
of the nature of by-play, of personai amusement in
his more leisured moments, " parerga," as the
Greeks would have called them—things beside the
main stress of a man's efforts in life, thrown off by
the way as some particular occasion entices him.
It is, however, but a commonpiace to remark