DOI Heft:
Nr. 163 (September, 1910)
DOI Artikel:Baker, C. H. Collins: The paintings of Walter W. Russell
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19867#0251
Walter IV. Russell
Prints sufficiently describes that harmony of pale small portraits of people set about with objets d'art
gold and silver, and the distinguished note of that the "New English" painters have made so
taste that brought off the staccato touch of emerald fashionable. Of men Mr. Russell has painted
green. The Mirror is composed of a richly sen- few pictures, the best of which is N. Hardy, Esq.,
sitive arrangement of silver and golden delicate a life-size piece of considerable penetrative sym-
greens in the girl's bodice and the brocade of the pathy. Of women, on the other hand, or at least
settee ; a gamut of black and silver in the hat and of one woman, he has given us many delightful
skirt; and a tactful touch of scarlet in the candle versions. Peculiarly lucky in his subject, he has
shade : all are fused harmoniously by the atmos- been able to paint from this lady a continuous
phere and the fine quality of the grey wall. In series, in which, starting from the Lady in Black
these pictures, in the fragile quality of rose and of 1900, we can trace the development of his
blue in the Children in the Barn, and in the manner of painting. In that year first, I think,
reticent wealth of colour that pervades the portrait he became interested in a more ordered use of
of Charles Moore, Esq. (1902), to whom I owe pigment, caring to preserve and make distinctly
much for facilities of study and for the reproduc- valuable transparency in the shadows in opposition
tions here, we have that instinctive taste, that to the more solid painting of the lights. He
feeling for grey and that unfailing reiteration which adhered, in figure subjects and in portraits, to
are the property of fine colourists. this method (which, after all, seems capable of
That portrait brings me to this branch of Mr. the best results) as late certainly as 1907,
Russell's practice. It may be said to be one of maintaining it while his tone key and his colour
the first, as it is of the most successful, of those scheme were lightening. In his latest phase,
"THE BRIDGE, BARNARD CASTLE" (I9O4) BY WALTER W. RUSSELL
{In the possession of Charles H. Moore, Esq.)
174
Prints sufficiently describes that harmony of pale small portraits of people set about with objets d'art
gold and silver, and the distinguished note of that the "New English" painters have made so
taste that brought off the staccato touch of emerald fashionable. Of men Mr. Russell has painted
green. The Mirror is composed of a richly sen- few pictures, the best of which is N. Hardy, Esq.,
sitive arrangement of silver and golden delicate a life-size piece of considerable penetrative sym-
greens in the girl's bodice and the brocade of the pathy. Of women, on the other hand, or at least
settee ; a gamut of black and silver in the hat and of one woman, he has given us many delightful
skirt; and a tactful touch of scarlet in the candle versions. Peculiarly lucky in his subject, he has
shade : all are fused harmoniously by the atmos- been able to paint from this lady a continuous
phere and the fine quality of the grey wall. In series, in which, starting from the Lady in Black
these pictures, in the fragile quality of rose and of 1900, we can trace the development of his
blue in the Children in the Barn, and in the manner of painting. In that year first, I think,
reticent wealth of colour that pervades the portrait he became interested in a more ordered use of
of Charles Moore, Esq. (1902), to whom I owe pigment, caring to preserve and make distinctly
much for facilities of study and for the reproduc- valuable transparency in the shadows in opposition
tions here, we have that instinctive taste, that to the more solid painting of the lights. He
feeling for grey and that unfailing reiteration which adhered, in figure subjects and in portraits, to
are the property of fine colourists. this method (which, after all, seems capable of
That portrait brings me to this branch of Mr. the best results) as late certainly as 1907,
Russell's practice. It may be said to be one of maintaining it while his tone key and his colour
the first, as it is of the most successful, of those scheme were lightening. In his latest phase,
"THE BRIDGE, BARNARD CASTLE" (I9O4) BY WALTER W. RUSSELL
{In the possession of Charles H. Moore, Esq.)
174