DOI issue:
No. 135 (May, 1908)
DOI article:W., T. M.: The "fair women" exhibition of the International Society
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28254#0248
The International Society’s
more easily, for all his works were hung together.
His brush is now quite rhetorical, so pleased is
it with its own fluency; meanwhile his sitters,
as the centres of all this brilliancy, do not now
come out so triumphantly as heretofore. He
has exchanged his extraordinary power for un-
canny facility. In the old days all his powers were
dedicated to his sitter; in these new days it is the
sitters who are often sacrificed to his powers.
Whistler was one of the few instances among
modern masters of portraiture who painted with
the same tentative touch, the same humility, at the
end of his life and in the midst of praise, as at the
beginning. One felt the incompleteness of the
walls in not finding a Whistler painting there, and
in not finding a Manet; for the rest it was certainly
a very comprehensive exhibition, the most com-
prehensive since their famous first exhibition. This
event in the history of the International Society is
one of which they may well be proud, and it proved
more than a compensa-
tion for the weaknesses
in the first half of this
year’s programme. They
have again placed English
people in their debt for
further opportunities of
studying work of the
French masters, works of
such distinction as the
two pictures by Renoir,
the two by G. Ricard, and
the portrait by Monticelli,
which showed the last-
named painter in a quite
new light.
The English work of
the exhibition shows the
tradition has not left us
which the eighteenth cen-
tury transmitted to English
art—that of interpreting
purity and grace in women
in a way which it had not
been interpreted before in
the history of painting;
and so we have the Por-
trait of Mrs. Frederick W.
H. Myers of Sir John
Millais and the portrait
called Miss Auras : The
Red Book, by John
Lavery, representing this
tradition as it was with
226
“ Fair Women ” Exhibition
us yesterday and to-day. Around Mr. Lavery’s
pictures there were paintings showing deeper
genius, far more complete and certain art and
greater intensity than his own — paintings in
which the great personality of their creators speaks
through the people they have created, such as the
pictures by Renoir, Monticelli, and by G. F. Watts,
for upon this wall the genius of modern art was
shown at the flood. But is not the destiny of
all achievement reached by this incomplete but
gracious presentment of girlhood—which in its in-
completeness and in its singular charm resembles
Romney’s Parson's Daughter ? Mr. Lavery is
very unequal; sometimes it is with an effort
that we remember him as one of our finest
painters. But The Red Book portrait and the
portrait of The Lady Norah Brassey represent
moments of his success in painting women,
and gave as distinct a character to the wall
on which they hung as did the painting by
BY JOHN LAVERY
more easily, for all his works were hung together.
His brush is now quite rhetorical, so pleased is
it with its own fluency; meanwhile his sitters,
as the centres of all this brilliancy, do not now
come out so triumphantly as heretofore. He
has exchanged his extraordinary power for un-
canny facility. In the old days all his powers were
dedicated to his sitter; in these new days it is the
sitters who are often sacrificed to his powers.
Whistler was one of the few instances among
modern masters of portraiture who painted with
the same tentative touch, the same humility, at the
end of his life and in the midst of praise, as at the
beginning. One felt the incompleteness of the
walls in not finding a Whistler painting there, and
in not finding a Manet; for the rest it was certainly
a very comprehensive exhibition, the most com-
prehensive since their famous first exhibition. This
event in the history of the International Society is
one of which they may well be proud, and it proved
more than a compensa-
tion for the weaknesses
in the first half of this
year’s programme. They
have again placed English
people in their debt for
further opportunities of
studying work of the
French masters, works of
such distinction as the
two pictures by Renoir,
the two by G. Ricard, and
the portrait by Monticelli,
which showed the last-
named painter in a quite
new light.
The English work of
the exhibition shows the
tradition has not left us
which the eighteenth cen-
tury transmitted to English
art—that of interpreting
purity and grace in women
in a way which it had not
been interpreted before in
the history of painting;
and so we have the Por-
trait of Mrs. Frederick W.
H. Myers of Sir John
Millais and the portrait
called Miss Auras : The
Red Book, by John
Lavery, representing this
tradition as it was with
226
“ Fair Women ” Exhibition
us yesterday and to-day. Around Mr. Lavery’s
pictures there were paintings showing deeper
genius, far more complete and certain art and
greater intensity than his own — paintings in
which the great personality of their creators speaks
through the people they have created, such as the
pictures by Renoir, Monticelli, and by G. F. Watts,
for upon this wall the genius of modern art was
shown at the flood. But is not the destiny of
all achievement reached by this incomplete but
gracious presentment of girlhood—which in its in-
completeness and in its singular charm resembles
Romney’s Parson's Daughter ? Mr. Lavery is
very unequal; sometimes it is with an effort
that we remember him as one of our finest
painters. But The Red Book portrait and the
portrait of The Lady Norah Brassey represent
moments of his success in painting women,
and gave as distinct a character to the wall
on which they hung as did the painting by
BY JOHN LAVERY