DOI issue:
No. 91 (Septemner, 1904)
DOI article:Hind, Charles Lewis: Mr. Moffat P. Lindner's water-colours of Venice
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26962#0259
Moffat P. Lindner
freely offers itself. To Venice Mr. Lindner went
in a happy hour, bringing back with him some
thirty water-colours, the first instalment of the series
which is to be exhibited at Mr. Dunthorne’s gallery.
A few of them are reproduced in this number.
They are Venice—no further description is needed.
The curious may care to identify the fairy buildings,
and to recall the names of the waterways where the
boats sail or ride at anchor. For me they are
Venice—that is enough.
These water-colours of Venice can be described in
four words—they express beauty beautifully. I
am not comparing Mr. Lindner with other artists.
I am not saying that his method of using water-
colour is the only method. I am not saying that
other forms of art are less desirable. I merely
say that, in my opinion, in these water-colours
Mr. Lindner has found himself—has communi-
cated to us, in his own way, his impressions of
beauty. Other men have other manners. This
is his manner. And if the end of art is the
expression of emotion and sensation, as some
insist; if the purpose of a work of art is to pass
on to the spectator the emotion and sensation felt
by the artist, then when Mr. Lindner, in a white
room by the Cornish sea, removed one by one
these Venetian water-colours from their tissue paper,
and arranged them leisurely on chairs, on couches,
on tables, then to me, speaking for myself, he
came into his own, and accomplished, in his
measure, the aim of the artist. There was Venice
sunlighted, impalpable, a fairy city in a fairy sea.
Time was when landscape painters studied each
other’s pictures. Now the majority of them study
nature. Yet as late as 1824, before the coming of
the Barbizon men, Constable could write—“ The
French landscape painters study much, but only
pictures ; and they know no more of nature than
cab-horses do of meadows.” That was before
Constable had exhibited the Hay-wain at the
Salon; that was long before the great and ever-
growing influence of Turner had turned the eyes
of artists to the sun, the air, the light, and the
pomp and splendour of the world. From the well
of Turner’s colossal achievement have issued many
of the springs that have irrigated the art of France
and England.
Mr. Lindner, I am sure, would be the first
to acknowledge the inspiration that the Turner
of the later water-colours has been to him. He,
refill- '
- --
11 p-
.... ", "~i ** ipsll
BY MOFFAT P. LINDNER
187
“DAWN: VENICE
freely offers itself. To Venice Mr. Lindner went
in a happy hour, bringing back with him some
thirty water-colours, the first instalment of the series
which is to be exhibited at Mr. Dunthorne’s gallery.
A few of them are reproduced in this number.
They are Venice—no further description is needed.
The curious may care to identify the fairy buildings,
and to recall the names of the waterways where the
boats sail or ride at anchor. For me they are
Venice—that is enough.
These water-colours of Venice can be described in
four words—they express beauty beautifully. I
am not comparing Mr. Lindner with other artists.
I am not saying that his method of using water-
colour is the only method. I am not saying that
other forms of art are less desirable. I merely
say that, in my opinion, in these water-colours
Mr. Lindner has found himself—has communi-
cated to us, in his own way, his impressions of
beauty. Other men have other manners. This
is his manner. And if the end of art is the
expression of emotion and sensation, as some
insist; if the purpose of a work of art is to pass
on to the spectator the emotion and sensation felt
by the artist, then when Mr. Lindner, in a white
room by the Cornish sea, removed one by one
these Venetian water-colours from their tissue paper,
and arranged them leisurely on chairs, on couches,
on tables, then to me, speaking for myself, he
came into his own, and accomplished, in his
measure, the aim of the artist. There was Venice
sunlighted, impalpable, a fairy city in a fairy sea.
Time was when landscape painters studied each
other’s pictures. Now the majority of them study
nature. Yet as late as 1824, before the coming of
the Barbizon men, Constable could write—“ The
French landscape painters study much, but only
pictures ; and they know no more of nature than
cab-horses do of meadows.” That was before
Constable had exhibited the Hay-wain at the
Salon; that was long before the great and ever-
growing influence of Turner had turned the eyes
of artists to the sun, the air, the light, and the
pomp and splendour of the world. From the well
of Turner’s colossal achievement have issued many
of the springs that have irrigated the art of France
and England.
Mr. Lindner, I am sure, would be the first
to acknowledge the inspiration that the Turner
of the later water-colours has been to him. He,
refill- '
- --
11 p-
.... ", "~i ** ipsll
BY MOFFAT P. LINDNER
187
“DAWN: VENICE