International studio (32.1907)

The Royal Academy, 1907

We remember commending a picture by Mr.
Campbell Taylor in the last academy, the subject
of which was not dissimilar to that taken up here
in The Rehearsal, one of this year's Chantrey
purchases. Mr. Taylor has come from a very
small canvas to a very large one. On the larger
scale his touch loses somewhat in feeling, but in
all other respects this work commends itself as one
of the most successful pieces of genre painting
in this year’s exhibition. There is life and sun-
shine in Miss A. L. Swynnerton’s portrait group,
Margaret and Christian, daughters of D. C.
Guthrie, Esq., but the colour does not advance
its merits. An interesting portrait is that of Mrs.
Bowles by Mr. Mouat Loudan ; here many pleasant
passages of colour have been contrived, though
the face seems too deliberate in the character
of the painting for the rest of the picture. Mr.
Lee Hankey’s Many the Wonders I have seen
might, we think, have been hung lower down.

Mr. Byam Shaw’s Such is Life is one of his
most interesting canvases. The scene depicted,
with its theatrical light, suits better than a scene
in the light of nature the particular colours with
which Mr. Shaw sets his palette. In a picture
named the Morning Room Mr. Walter Russell has
painted two figures seated in a room into which
the full daylight comes. The room is furnished
with a tendency to things early Victorian, and a
famous wit may be recognised in one of the
figures. The luminous painting of the window
frames, the couch partly bathed in bright light
—in fact, all the painting—is masterly, except in
the lady’s figure, where the essential note of grace
in the fall of the skirt is missing. Whilst he does
not vary his style in any degree, Mr. E. A. Hornel
ever seems to acquire more accomplishment, and
his picture The Music of the Woods must certainly
rank with his best canvases. Mr. Harold Speed’s
Portrait of a Lady and his Love leaving Psyche
are good examples of his
scholarly painting. In
following lines of older
Academic tradition worth-
ily, Mr. Herbert Draper
succeeds far better than
anyone else in the exhibi-
tion.

Of the many pictures
which press themselves
upon our memory, claim-
ing to be mentioned, space
provides us with room for
the following only : —
Segovia, Spain, by M.
Hughes - Stanton ; The
Avenue, by W. G. von
Glehn, and works by the
following : — T. F. M.
Sheard, Louis Grier, B.
Haughton, A. E. Bottom-
ley, S. P. Kendrick, F. G.
Swaish, Anna 'Airy, V. M.
Hamilton, M. Cameron,
and Dorothea Sharpe.

The sculpture is marked
generally by a high level
of performance. Members
and associates are well re-
presented, Mr. Frampton
in particular, by his large
statue of the late Marquis
of Salisbury, and Mr.
Drury by his pair of bronze

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