International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

strength. Thus it was that he gave so rare a
sense of delicate feeling to everything he did, and
that hispictures possess apoetic qualityquite
individualised and apart; poetic in subject, in
Sentiment, and in handiing, to such a degree that
perhaps to this attribute, more than to any other,
his real distinction responds.
Wilson's boyhood was spent on a large farm near
the royal borough of Cullen, on the Banffshire coast.
An early evidence of talent for painting caused
him to come, at the age of eighteen, to London,
where he began his art studies at the Heatherly
School. Subsequently he spent a few months at
the Royal Academy classes, which he left for the
Slade School, under Poynter. From this time on
he made London his home, though every year he
took sketching trips to Scotland or the South of
England, and several times to Italy, the country he,
perhaps, loved best of all, and once he visited
Algiers.
Seldom were his pictures sent to an exhibition ;
occasionally one was to be seen in the Dudley
Gallery and sometimes at the Institute, and once
he was hung at the Academy. He
seemed to care nothing whatever for the
world's attention, and what pictures he
sold were to personal friends. Although
he was always poor he was never in
actual want, and considering the tem-
perament of the man and the joy imbued
in his pictures, one feels sure he must
have known a very happy life.
Rarely does one come upon work
which shows such an essentially emo-
tional conception of nature's best
thoughts as one sees in Wilson's land-
scapes—so tender in their instinctive
idealism, so exquisitely reßned in their
masterly colouring. It is said that he
dearly loved trees, and one can readily
see this in his work, for it would be
difHcult to find more perfect examples
of the drawing of stems and branches.
He loved, too, the play of sunlight on
the leaves of autumn hillsides, the
lengthening shadows of closing day,
the tender mystery of fading light,
the restful melody of rippling waves,
and he transposed them to his canvas
without losing any of their idyllic quality
and charm. He painted poems because
he lived in them, and could not do other-
wise. His pictures may not be truly
great, but they are certainly exquisite.

Some of his figure studies show stränge faults of
drawing, especially those in which too great attention
to detail called for an apparent over-working, when
the artist seems to have lost control over his draw-
ing in his effort to make the sentiment embodied
in the picture altogether clear, through the gesture
or attitude as expressed by the figure. This is not
often a noticeable defect, however, and most of his
figure studies are altogether admirable and satis-
fying. Wilson's best picture is a large oil
painting from Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound," a
veiy strong piece of work, and one which grasped
one's attention immediately on entering the gallery.
The figure is powerfully drawn, the expression
rapt and sorrowful. yi/ai/w, the only picture
of Wilson's hung at the Royal Academy, re-
presents the poet of Shelley's poem as he comes
to the lonely spot in the wood where he is to die at
moonrise. Wild-eyed with terror and apprehension,
he draws aside the branches of the thicket and
peers out on the fast-dying sunlight, the glow
of which is breaking in rieh splendour above
his head, touching into mellow beauty the bright-


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