International studio (42.1910)

Mr. G. W. Lambert's Paintings

perfection of their craft and the beauty and science manner, though, as has been indicated, he had for
of their pigment. His own preoccupation with the some little time then been making for the change,
various things one called " high art" ; and above A self-portrait of that date thus is a landmark, and
all the system of training that permitted students it is again interesting evidence of Mr. Lambert's
to go on painting and repainting on a study until subsequent advance that the model on which he
by sheer weight of plastered pigment some sort of based the manipulation of that head was the late
imitative appearance was achieved, these things, Velazquez Philip, in Trafalgar Square. For we
compared with the selective method, the considered see by a comparison of that self-portrait with the
process of the Venetian, the Fleming, or the Holiday in Essex, of this year, how our painter
Spaniard, suddenly appeared as inconceivably has gone on by going back. Back from the atmo-
absurd, as intolerably crude. To use his own spheric vision of a splendidly mature art towards
phrase, he " pulled out" of the atelier Delacluse the severe research that almost always has marked
and sought in his own studio to acquire a formu- the earlier work of the greater men. Unless I
lated method. misapprehend him, Velazquez' bodegone pieces to-

I need not say that this was no simple business, day would most excite Mr. Lambert's emulation.
To unlearn towards the term of studentship the In 1906 he also painted Going to Bathe, a canvas
habits, and to wean oneself from the laxnesses of that still is his most complete rendering of the
•that period, entail long struggles ; for in such a fusing influence of atmosphere. Of this fusion
case not only are involved
the quality and texture of
paint, but also the inesti-
ble importance of
severity of drawing and
design. Relentlessly the
tricks and cleverness of
high art had to be dis-
carded, and sacrificed the
easy unsound styles and
effective glossings. In fine
Mr. Lambert came to the
conclusion that a clean
sweep of such bric-a-brac
as he had amassed was
inevitable and an imme-
diate recourse to strict
simplicity the only remedy.
With this in mind it be-
comes only natural to put
his work into two periods ;
in one whatever was pro-
duced while he was getting
rid of the old haphazard
plan of " going on until
one got the look of the
thing," in the other the
canvases in which he had
hit upon an ordered pro-
cess and was pursuing it
with more or less address.

To 1906 I think we
should look to see him so
definitely across the line
that he might b^ said to
have arrive ' . a new "the admiral: 1810" by g. w. lambert

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