International studio (30.1906/1907(1907))

Mr. Brcingwyris Royal Exchange Panel

public until that time when future generations shall
visit the Royal Exchange, and view the whole series
of panels and their painters in that perspective of
time which any noteworlhy artist and his work must
have before a just and final judgment can be passed
upon them. Perhaps ere this time shall have
come the art of mural painting will have found its
place—as distinct from that of the painter of easel
pictures as the art of the painter is separated from
that of the sculptor. Mr. Brangwyn’s panel is
a decoration pure and simple, fitted only for the
place for which it was painted, and that most
admirably. In his appreciation of architectural
lines and proportions, it may be safely affirmed that
Mr. Brangwyn has few equals among living painters,
and none there are whose judgment lies more
nearly parallel to that of the able architect. By
this means he is enabled to meet the architect
more than half-way. The function
of his work as a decorator is, he
believes, but to embellish the
builder’s art, a furtherance of the
scheme which the architect had
in mind, avoiding always the an-
tagonising effect which a realistic
rendering must have. “Primarily,”
he says, “ a decoration must be a
fine arrangement of masses, and
into this must be infused an
equally fine and harmonious pat-
tern of colour. These two factors
can only be produced by infinite
planning, just as the architect’s
fine proportions can only be the
result of much experiment. The
subject-matter must ever be sub-
servient to decorative qualities
expressed in a conventional man-
ner, every line, every mass of
light and shadow and colour, and
every object, only lending itself to
the decoration of the space—bring-
ing out the spirit, not the reality
of the subject.”
In his approach to a subject
which is in itself of such tremen-
dous scope as that of Modern
Commerce, he has simplified in a
manner which tells forcibly of his
power of selection and elimination.
The result cannot be regarded as
a scene taken from any time or
place. It has no story to tell, but,
bigger and broader than that,
240

secondary to its decorative function, it is the sym-
bolising of a vast field of modern human activity.
A broad mass of cool shadow falls across the
foreground, in which are found a few telling inci-
dents pertaining to the subject. Rich, strong notes
of colour he has used in the fruit and the principal
figures, with accidental spots of sunlight bringing
the golden light of the middle distance into sharp
accent in the foreground. Generally speaking, ihe
scheme is of blue and gold, interspersed with
multitudinous notes of rich, harmonious colour
neutralised by the use of greys. There is nothing
to be found in conflict with the realism of such a
subject. On the contrary, it is full of the evidence
of a power greater than the realistic painter would
disclose. It is the subject reduced to its lowest
terms, so to speak, which can come only from the
man who knows more than truth, from the man


STUDY OF FIGURE FOR ROYAL EXCHANGE PANEL : “MODERN COMMERCE
BY FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A.