DOI Heft:
No. 125 (July 1907)
DOI Artikel:Covey, Arthur Sinclair: The Venice Exhibition: Mr. Brangwyn's decorative panels in the British section
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28252#0034
Mr. Brangwyn's Decorative Panels at Venice
object in perfect harmony with the fantastic
spirit of such a subject, and one cannot but feel
as he looks at this composition the fine musical
quality of the whole. If Whistler has in his
“symphonies” shown to the world how great is the
musical quality possessed by harmonious colour,
then Brangwyn has in his turn shown clearly how
much actual music may be expressed by the juxta-
position of line and mass as well as by colour.
The Venetian Serenaders has been painted in an
unusually short range of actual pigments, yet the
picture possesses no less variety of colour than
would a mediaeval group of Spanish troubadours.
In the low violet-blue tone of evening the artist
has made the figures exist with the same degree of
reality as though seen in bright sunlight. The
lanterns, twice the natural size, are indeed real, and
have been most cleverly used as telling spots in the
long composition. This panel measures eighteen
feet long by five feet high, and the difficulties in
keeping such a composition in “ one piece of tone ”
will be appreciated by the decorative painter, but
here in this large canvas occurs the same tuneful
quality as one might find in his small painted
sketch. As a decoration it possesses, perhaps, less
actual support to surrounding architecture than do
the remaining three, but it is an excellent rendering,
in a decorative manner, of the subject in hand.
The panel corresponding to the one just men-
tioned, Ventiian Commerce, treats of a more serious
work a-day side of these poetic people. So much
is there in Venice of the past to fascinate one,
that to the casual observer nothing modern
suggests itself. But when one pauses to reflect
that it is still a great city, that it must be fed and
clothed, and that it has all the commonplace pro-
blems of every other city, he then begins to see the
serious incidents pertaining to modern Venetian life.
The heavy barques take the place of wagons in
other cities—and just as the sleepy carman comes
through London’s West End with his absurdly
enormous loads, so does the gondolier glide noise-
lessly over Venice’s dark lagoons. Within his
heavily laden “ barco ” his movement is slow and
ponderous, like the heavy pulling of a beast of
burden. This work-a-day life forms the subject of
“ STEEL WORKERS ”
18
EY FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A.
object in perfect harmony with the fantastic
spirit of such a subject, and one cannot but feel
as he looks at this composition the fine musical
quality of the whole. If Whistler has in his
“symphonies” shown to the world how great is the
musical quality possessed by harmonious colour,
then Brangwyn has in his turn shown clearly how
much actual music may be expressed by the juxta-
position of line and mass as well as by colour.
The Venetian Serenaders has been painted in an
unusually short range of actual pigments, yet the
picture possesses no less variety of colour than
would a mediaeval group of Spanish troubadours.
In the low violet-blue tone of evening the artist
has made the figures exist with the same degree of
reality as though seen in bright sunlight. The
lanterns, twice the natural size, are indeed real, and
have been most cleverly used as telling spots in the
long composition. This panel measures eighteen
feet long by five feet high, and the difficulties in
keeping such a composition in “ one piece of tone ”
will be appreciated by the decorative painter, but
here in this large canvas occurs the same tuneful
quality as one might find in his small painted
sketch. As a decoration it possesses, perhaps, less
actual support to surrounding architecture than do
the remaining three, but it is an excellent rendering,
in a decorative manner, of the subject in hand.
The panel corresponding to the one just men-
tioned, Ventiian Commerce, treats of a more serious
work a-day side of these poetic people. So much
is there in Venice of the past to fascinate one,
that to the casual observer nothing modern
suggests itself. But when one pauses to reflect
that it is still a great city, that it must be fed and
clothed, and that it has all the commonplace pro-
blems of every other city, he then begins to see the
serious incidents pertaining to modern Venetian life.
The heavy barques take the place of wagons in
other cities—and just as the sleepy carman comes
through London’s West End with his absurdly
enormous loads, so does the gondolier glide noise-
lessly over Venice’s dark lagoons. Within his
heavily laden “ barco ” his movement is slow and
ponderous, like the heavy pulling of a beast of
burden. This work-a-day life forms the subject of
“ STEEL WORKERS ”
18
EY FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A.