International studio (35.1908)

The Royal Academy Exhibition, igo8

senting in each case quite different problems to
be dealt with. A New Neighbourhood, a tract of
suburban land under snow with partly-built houses,
is quite different in feeling and treatment to his
two other paintings of the Cotswolds, which present
him in a more familiar mood, or the bright sunlit
picture of The Entrance to the Bull Ring, Algeciras.
Mr. David Murray, R.A., does not make such an
attractive appeal as last year. The Canal, West
Drayton, Datchet, has all his qualities of resource-
ful and interesting composition, though the dull
surface of the painting mitigates the charm derived
from this. Among other landscapes by members,
Mr. H. W. B. Davis’s In Full Bloom is notable,
and the same is to be said of Evening, Sussex
Downs, by Sir E. A. Waterlow. Mr. J. W. North,
A.R.A., is best represented by his picture in
Gallery No. II., Summer
in a Western Wood, a
characteristically poetic
work.
It is upon the land-
scapes that the interest
of this year to some
large extent depends,
though the portraits are
notable, and the figure-
subject pictures are of
an unusually high order.
His Majesty the King
has been painted this
year by Mr. Tennyson-
Cole, who has conceived
and arranged his com-
position with dignity
but has failed to give it
the high quality of exe-
cution which his con-
ception demands. Mr.
Arthur Hacker sends a
portrait of Miss Elsa
Close, the lady to whom
the reward was given by
the artists who acted as
judges in the Beauty
competition inaugurated
by the “Daily Mirror.”
His other portraits too
were to be remarked,
especially The Fan Col-
lector with its successful
colour arrangement.
Sir W. Q. Orchardson,
“reverie” by Gertrude des clayes R.A., is lepresented by
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garden if it is not built up by the artist under the
influence of a mood worth expressing. Mr. Sims’
Fountain is a case in point. This is a purely
imaginative work and amongst the best of all the
paintings in the Academy, but it is the quality of
the painting, the successful artistry at every point,
the invention and resource, and above all the
extreme reality of effect which appeal to us. As an
imaginative work it leaves us cold. It is without
meaning, and, lacking an anecdote borrowed from
literature, it has not the music of a message of its
own. We find the artist’s methods perhaps more
congenially employed in The Faun.
In A Midsummer Morning Mr. H. S. Tuke
repeats former successes in painting nude figures
in sunlight. Mr. Alfred East, R.A., has this year
divided his energy over a variety of subjects, pre-