International studio (43.1911)

F. H. S. Shepherd


“the death of the virgin” (oil)

admits the improbable into a composition. How-
ever delightful in appearance such a costume, it
is only by a sort of dextrous trick of the brain

BY F. H. S. SHEPHERD

on an artist’s part that he
can succeed, even in his
own mind, in separating
appearances from their
“associations” and ob-
tain for vision a divorce
from feeling: and always
at the cost of all that is
most vital in a picture.
In such a picture as the
artist’s The Death of the
Virgin we touch other
problems. It is obvious
that there can be no hold
here upon the actual cir-
cumstances of the event,
and that the artist deals
only with what might be
probable. And as a rule
in this kind of picture it
is the work that clings
too closely to probabili-
ties that fails ; so slight is
our hold on probabilities in such a matter. Some-
where the logic of what is probable breaks, and
there begins the purely creative element of the


“the country house” (water-colour) by f. h. s. si-iepherd
(By permission of the Chenil Gailery)

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