International studio (23.1904)

Joseph Craw hall

storing up in his wonderful memory facts, de-
tails and impressions afterwards to be reproduced
by his wonderful hands. He mentally notes and
memorises all those particulars of animal structure
and movement that are so essential a part of his
art, so obvious a feature of those marvellous
drawings of birds and beasts of his; and then—it
may be days or weeks later—some of his observa-
tions will be crystallised into some unique sketch,
a drawing done without a model, entirely from
memory, and often by gaslight. However slight
such a croquis of Crawhall’s may be, it is a com-
plete and sufficient work of art, and these little
masterpieces of his, spontaneous, absolutely vera-
cious in their facts, and set down with a directness
and manual dexterity little short of miraculous, will
never be better described than by the critic who
coined for them the illuminative phrase, “ epigrams
in paint.” The style—expressive, reticent, and
vital—can be traced to no predecessor (the time
Crawhall spent in the studio of Aime Morot seems
to have had but little effect on him); and a review
of his work over a series of years compels one to

admit that he has always been, not a follower, but
an originator; not a pupil, but a master; the
inventor of a style so simple and true as to be
quite alone in British art.
Crawhall sometimes paints his water-colours on
a ground of very fine brown holland, specially
prepared, and this may possibly contribute to the
beautiful rendering of textures, of feathers and
fur, that is so marked a feature of his drawings.
In the drawing of The Spangled Cock (here illus-
trated) which was exhibited at the last International
Exhibition, we find to the full this remarkable power
of depicting feathers, allied to a beautiful sense of
pattern, a perfectly exquisite power of modelling,
and a liveliness of pose and contour that are quite
unique; while there is one detail that helps to make
this drawing as remarkable as all Crawhall’s render-
ings of birds—the sparkle and vitality of the eyes.
Another typical piece of Crawhall’s work in the
same mediums (water-colour on brown holland)
is The Piebald, a drawing which it is worth
while to consider in some detail for a moment,
evincing, as it does, so many of the artist’s remark-
able qualities. A dog-
cart in itself is scarcely
an object of beauty;
and a piebald horse, with
its distracting arrange-
ment of white and black,
is not the subject that
one would fancy an artist
would choose to make
a picture. And yet, from
these simple and difficult
elements, what a master-
piece Crawhall produces !
Supremely confident in
his own knowledge and
power, he sets down with
absolute directness the
effect of the walking horse,
with his hind-legs partly
obscured by the cloud of
dust he himself raises;
and such is the painter’s
facility, his absolute control
over his method and his
medium, that -with one
touch of the brush he gives
us colour, contour, model-
ling, movement, structure,
and texture. The pigment
iscleanly and thinlyapplied
with unerring directness;


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