International studio (22.1904)

77^ 77^ zj/, 77S'.^7.

and the two, finding they had much in sympathy,
painted a couple of pictures together, Z%g ZVzzM'y and
ZXg 272 2l& ^rzy?. But even before both were
completed, the artists were going different ways,
were developing on diverse lines, and so the
artistic partnership was short-lived. The large
canvas—it is some six feet square—called ZXg
Z?7*2222&, is a curiously interesting.
It was in 1893 that Henry stayed in Japan, a
stay that was to have momentous results on his
art both as a decorator and a portrait painter. He
found himself a visitor to a highly cultured race;
a race of artists who had evolved in their isola-
tion an art alien from, but as complete as,
that of the West. He was quick to observe the
Japanese sense of colour; he saw that their finest
things were almost monochromes, subtly and
infinitely varied schemes of tertiaries and sub-
tertiaries, with notes of pure colour used as
sparingly and as effectively as jewels. And this

artistic convention—the result ot centuries of
elimination of the vulgar and the meretricious—
appealed at once to Henry as delightful, beautiful,
and true. There is no doubt that the use of pure
colour, thus sparsely employed amid a delicate
environment, results in an effect of preciousness ;
and, carrying this idea a step farther, Henry
applied it to portraiture. What should be the
most precious thing in a portrait? Undoubtedly
the face of the sitter. There the interest of the
picture is focussed, there the artist- has most to
express, there he succeeds or he fails; and no dis-
traction of extraneous details, or emphasis of
colour elsewhere on the canvas, should be per-
mitted to interfere with the aspect of beauty or of
character in the countenance depicted. Henry
does not for a moment claim to have been the first
to feel this. Whistler, Rembrandt, and Velasquez,
to name no others, have worked along similar lines,
treating the face as the jewel of the composition,
the rest being but set-
ting ; but it was the art of
Japan that helped him
to observe the analogy, to
formulate the idea, and to
put it into practice.
But before passing to
Henry's portraits, allusion
must be made to one of
the most interesting and
most characteristic phases
of his art, which is
exemplified in such pic-
tures as These
canvases are frankly and
beautifully decorative; they
are works in which the
artist seeks to express the
sentiment of his subject,
not by inventing a story
to depict, but by the
arrangement of colour and
line; they are pictures
which exist simply as lovely
things. For a short time
the art of Rossetti appealed
to George Henry, at any
rate so far as his richness
of colour and power of
sumptuously decorative
treatment are concerned.
But this was modified
by what he learnt in
Japan; and while in the


PORTRAtT OF PROFESSOR A. C. BRADLEY BY GEORGE HENRY, R.S.A.