DOI Heft:
No. 118 (December, 1906)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: English drawing: the landscape and figure sketches of the older masters
DOI Artikel:The water-colours and oil-paintings of W. Dacres Adams
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28250#0141
IV. Dacres A dams
action in his sitters was of a piece with his
brilliance as a sketcher. His quick grasp of what
was characteristic and essential was the secret.
It is the secret quality discoverable alike in the
landscape and figure subjects by these masters
of drawing which we illustrate. That other
quality, the nervous, responsive touch to which
we referred, is apparent at its best also in Gains-
borough’s drawings. It was the common possession
of the group of portrait painters who represent the
other great phase in the history of English art.
Next to Gainsborough, perhaps, Hoppner was
gifted with it, as regards his drawing, in the greatest
measure. The refinement of feeling from which
this quality springs is always perceptible in both
masters. Their appreciation of the grace of life
brings their drawings, as well as their paintings,
under the heading of one school, and in the
absence of a tradition of perfect classical drawing,
such as exists in the history of French art, we have
always in the finest English drawings this extreme
sensitiveness of line as a characteristic and beautiful
trait. T. Martin Wood.
The WATER-COLOURS AND
OIL-PAINTINGS OF W. DACRES
ADAMS.
The sentiment of pre-Raphaelitism survives in
a great deal of modern art, the methods of which
are contradictory in spirit to all its practical tenets.
For pre-Raphaelitism was almost as much a school
of sentiment as a method in painting. Among those
painters trained in the modern schools in whom
the sentiment of pre-Raphaelitism survives, finding
expression through a technique ultra-modern in
feeling, is Mr. Dacres Adams. His work, whilst
showing his appreciation of a certain class of
subject as suiting the romantic and literary
tendency which his work has in common with the
first pre-Raphaelite art, shows also that he is seek-
ing first of all to be faithful to his own sentiment
of beauty, and that he is self-reliant as regards the
character of his methods, methods which seem to
arise from an extremely naturalistic vision in
contradistinction to the decorative tendency which
for the rest determines the character of his art. In
BY JOHN CONSTABLE, K.A.
127
PENCIL SKETCH
(By permission of the Directors of the Carfax Gallery)
action in his sitters was of a piece with his
brilliance as a sketcher. His quick grasp of what
was characteristic and essential was the secret.
It is the secret quality discoverable alike in the
landscape and figure subjects by these masters
of drawing which we illustrate. That other
quality, the nervous, responsive touch to which
we referred, is apparent at its best also in Gains-
borough’s drawings. It was the common possession
of the group of portrait painters who represent the
other great phase in the history of English art.
Next to Gainsborough, perhaps, Hoppner was
gifted with it, as regards his drawing, in the greatest
measure. The refinement of feeling from which
this quality springs is always perceptible in both
masters. Their appreciation of the grace of life
brings their drawings, as well as their paintings,
under the heading of one school, and in the
absence of a tradition of perfect classical drawing,
such as exists in the history of French art, we have
always in the finest English drawings this extreme
sensitiveness of line as a characteristic and beautiful
trait. T. Martin Wood.
The WATER-COLOURS AND
OIL-PAINTINGS OF W. DACRES
ADAMS.
The sentiment of pre-Raphaelitism survives in
a great deal of modern art, the methods of which
are contradictory in spirit to all its practical tenets.
For pre-Raphaelitism was almost as much a school
of sentiment as a method in painting. Among those
painters trained in the modern schools in whom
the sentiment of pre-Raphaelitism survives, finding
expression through a technique ultra-modern in
feeling, is Mr. Dacres Adams. His work, whilst
showing his appreciation of a certain class of
subject as suiting the romantic and literary
tendency which his work has in common with the
first pre-Raphaelite art, shows also that he is seek-
ing first of all to be faithful to his own sentiment
of beauty, and that he is self-reliant as regards the
character of his methods, methods which seem to
arise from an extremely naturalistic vision in
contradistinction to the decorative tendency which
for the rest determines the character of his art. In
BY JOHN CONSTABLE, K.A.
127
PENCIL SKETCH
(By permission of the Directors of the Carfax Gallery)