DOI Heft:
Nr. 153 (November 1909)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: A picture collector's experiment
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19868#0074
A Picture Collector s Experiment
"THE GARLAND" ]1Y CHARLES SHANNON
come to them disguised; the austerities even of
their own thoughts they tempered with a memory
of roses.
The fragrant beauty in Stanhope's The Birth oj
Venus usurps a Grecian title, while opposing in the
extreme all that we have known of beauty as con-
ceived in Greece. We can see—as in the statuette
Dia?ia by A. Carriere-Belleuse—that something of
Hellenic grace survived in the pseudo-classic con-
ventions even in the nineteenth century, which
perhaps knew less than any other century of the
Hellenic spirit.
In the accepted forms of any convention there
is frozen something of the spirit that, searching for
beauty, accepted these forms; their acceptance
too implying some agreement as to what beauty
was, though beauty still goes undefined.
The pre-Raphaelite chart, as to the direction in
20
which to look for beauty, came into Mr. Charles
Shannon's hands, but lie has taken guidance from
a thousand other sources, giving himself the
freedom of everything to which his imagination
responded. His art is limited only from within,
and not by rules imposed from without, as with
all the pre-Raphaelites but the first ones no less
than with the conventional artists they despised.
But after all to speak of convention is to speak
of a science of beauty which fails before new
experiences; and in these modern times, concerned
with new artistic experiences, this science must
renew itself. Naturalism is a modern ambition in
art as well as life; perhaps only in these days does
art attempt to stand for a moment altogether
unfettered by tradition. After this realisation of
freedom, and as a part of it, traditions have been
resumed or not at will. Some of them seem
"THE HIRTH 01' VENUS." 11Y R. SPENCER STANHOPE
"THE GARLAND" ]1Y CHARLES SHANNON
come to them disguised; the austerities even of
their own thoughts they tempered with a memory
of roses.
The fragrant beauty in Stanhope's The Birth oj
Venus usurps a Grecian title, while opposing in the
extreme all that we have known of beauty as con-
ceived in Greece. We can see—as in the statuette
Dia?ia by A. Carriere-Belleuse—that something of
Hellenic grace survived in the pseudo-classic con-
ventions even in the nineteenth century, which
perhaps knew less than any other century of the
Hellenic spirit.
In the accepted forms of any convention there
is frozen something of the spirit that, searching for
beauty, accepted these forms; their acceptance
too implying some agreement as to what beauty
was, though beauty still goes undefined.
The pre-Raphaelite chart, as to the direction in
20
which to look for beauty, came into Mr. Charles
Shannon's hands, but lie has taken guidance from
a thousand other sources, giving himself the
freedom of everything to which his imagination
responded. His art is limited only from within,
and not by rules imposed from without, as with
all the pre-Raphaelites but the first ones no less
than with the conventional artists they despised.
But after all to speak of convention is to speak
of a science of beauty which fails before new
experiences; and in these modern times, concerned
with new artistic experiences, this science must
renew itself. Naturalism is a modern ambition in
art as well as life; perhaps only in these days does
art attempt to stand for a moment altogether
unfettered by tradition. After this realisation of
freedom, and as a part of it, traditions have been
resumed or not at will. Some of them seem
"THE HIRTH 01' VENUS." 11Y R. SPENCER STANHOPE