International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Anton Mauve


is impeccable and impossible to improve upon :—
“ His draughtsmanship is sound, his brushwork
full of gusto and expression, his colour quite his
own : to a right sense of nature and a mastery of
certain atmospheric effects he unites a genuine
strain of poetry. . . . His treatment of animals
is at once judicious and affectionate. He is
careful to render them in relation to their aerial
surroundings ; but he has recognised that they too
are creatures of character and sentiment, and he
loves to paint them in their relations to each other
and to man. The sentiment is never forced, the
characterisation is never strained, the drama is
never exorbitant; the proportions in which they
are introduced are so nicely adjusted that the
pictorial, the purely artistic quality of the work is
undiminished. ToTroyon animals were objects in
a landscape; to Mauve they were that
and something more. His old horses
are their old masters’ friends; his
cows are used to the girls who tend
them; his sheep feed as though they
liked it. In a word, his use of the
dramatic element is primarily artistic;
and it is with something of a blush
that one compares his savoir faire
with the bad manners of some
animal painters nearer home.”
I wish Henley had ended here;
but since he goes onoccultly to remark
that Mauve “painted water-colours
with so ready a brush that, as often
as not, he has no time to do himself
justice,” I have no option but to
sling a pebble at the Scottish giant.
Does he mean that Mauve’s water-
colours are inferior to his oil paint-
ings ? The position is wholly unten-
able. Is it that some water-colours
are better than others ? Why, so
are some oils; the remark is irrele-
vant. No, the insinuation is of care-
less speed—“ no time to do himself
justice.” But surely if there is one
thing which “if’t were done, ’t were
well done quickly,” it is a water-
colour. It is essentially a sketching
medium, and its highest charm
is inevitably troubled by much
labour. A water-colour cannot but
gain by speed if it be done aright;
and if the first touches are wrong it
is better to make a fresh start, for no
overlaying will make the old faults
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right. It is more likely to add to their number. We
may be sure that Mauve’s best water-colours were
done with consummate swiftness ; his worst those on
which he spent most time, endeavouring to retrieve
with Chinese white the virgin paper he had soiled
by error. But his use of white is sparing, and the
reproductions of the lovely works given in these
pages amply testify to the purity of his practice.
The unerring touches show, not careless haste, but
esay, well-ordered speed. And it is this very speed
which makes them, as Muther says, “ so vivid and
spontaneousand it is because he had more
“ time to do himself justice ” in his oils, that even the
best of them cannot escape looking a little more
laboured and so leading many excellent judges to
see in his water-colours Mauve’s highest achieve-
ments. Frank Rutter.

BY ANTON MAUVE

THREE COWS ” (WATER-COLOUR)
(By permission of Messrs. M. Knoedler & Co.)