International studio (41.1910)

Mr. IVilliam Rothensteiris Paintings

people, and he is enabled to give to his work room. Then he migrated to Paris in 1890, and
that feeling of inexhaustibleness which is of Nature entered the atelier of Lefebvre, Benjamin Constant
itself. and Doucet; but it was not from these that he

It must be obvious that to express this com- received any practical influence or training, but
pleteness, it was necessary to master a technique rather from the outside influences of Degas,
capable of expressing all aspects of a subject pass- Whistler, and Puvis de Chavannes, all of whom
ing logically from a solid basis to the subtleties were kindly encouraging to him in his immature
of finish. Rothenstein's work is pre-eminently the promise. In Paris, in 1890, he met Conder, and
result of thought, the impressions created in his at once entered into a close friendship with him,
mind being sufficiently vivid to permit of the which lasted until Conder's death, and for whose
retention of spontaneity through all the processes work his enthusiasm was strong and lasting,
of thought and deliberate execution. He is not Conder and Rothenstein, unlike most English
at the mercy of his feelings at the moment of students, entered keenly into the life of the French
creation, but has subdued them to his service, painters, and were in close communication with
His first step is to obtain a thoroughly sound and Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin, and others of the
accurate ground-work in which proportion is not same group, and they held an exhibition of their
infrequently actualised by measurement. The works in 1891, when they were both students at
work then proceeds in solid paintings, gradually Julian's, which attracted a good deal of attention,
rising in key, all attempts at finish or surface In 1893 he first exhibited at the Salon, when
subtleties being kept until the work is ripe for he showed two pictures, UHomme qui sort (a
them. He uses practically no medium, so that portrait of Condtr) and A Young Peasant Girl.
his pigment remains in a

homogeneous condition _

unaffected by the un-
known and probably dis- ■ B---,-■MMMwgpy)

integrating properties of
oily mediums.

To a mind so far-seeing
and so thorough as
Rothenstein's, the limits
of portrait-painting would f «

inevitably have proved „_

irksome and narrow,
although it is a branch
of art which has always H
attracted him, and one in
which he has attained
great distinction. It was M
originally his intention to
become a portrait-painter,
but his interest in all ^3 3

phases of human life pro-
hibited his obtaining >if a
intellectual and artistic

satisfaction in any one I yJKw&^™^

side. ,%

For one year and a half mk*$kfsy£ '■ fSHBg

Rothenstein worked in

the Slade School under p - "^^^^^^^^r'-^''

Professor Legros, who, ^"fSS^w,*^- -■' ' 'i; jg

wishing to restrain his „ "V'{; 'y M *.^r*>.&,*j „ ' K$Bk

youthful impatience, kept '. .^c.i . • :*

him working during the

, , .. . . 'AN INTERIOR" I1V WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN

whole time in the antique (/„ the coUection of E. J. ffesshm, Esq., New York)

38