International studio (22.1904)

THE STUOiO

'KELVINGROVE PARK"
XXII. No. 85.—MARCH, 1904.

BY GEORGE HENRY, R.S.A.

f WORK OF GEORGE HENRY,
j R.S.A. : A REVIEW AND AN
APPRECIATION. BY PERCY
BATE.
THERE are many painters—perhaps one may
even say that they are in the majority—who,
having discovered that work of a certain style
attains a great success with the public, and there-
fore possesses a distinct commercial value, continue
consistently to produce that one thing, and that
one thing only. There is, of course, more than
one cause for a painter's production of one special
class of picture. It may be that the artist has no
capacity for painting of another kind; the aqua-
rellist often fails when he turns to oils, and the
portrait painter achieves but scant success when he
attempts a landscape. It may be that the applause

that has greeted a popular work condemns the
unfortunate artist to a succession of attempts, more
or less successful, to repeat his triumph. Or yet
another cause of this narrowness of achievement
may be found in the fact that a painter has hit upon
a novel convention, a personal method of treatment,
that is easy to him, and soon becomes habitual. An
artist may develop a method that suits one particu-
lar class of subject, while being quite inapplicable
to another ; or he may attain the doubtful success
of a style so individual that it absolutely hall-marks
his pictures. This latter is often a questionable
gain, for such a method is apt to degenerate from
manner into mannerism, is apt to induce a habit
of artistic indolence, preventing a painter from
advancing, while it cannot preserve him from
retrogression. No one can rightly claim that the
expression in a painter's work of his individuality,

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