International studio (47.1912)

Glyn IV.
unquestionable, if limited by his rather special out-
look, showed themselves at an early age. His
interpretation of art is a somewhat narrow one, and
holds itself quite aloof from the deeper springs of
nature and reality. His art is exotic rather than
indigenous. He paints for elegant and rich sur-
roundings. In a commonplace environment one
of his pictures would be as out of place as a
butterfly in a pickle factory.
It is a difficult matter to write of the work of a
fellow artist. Definite and decided opinions of
the aims and functions of art might lead to pre-
judice towards that which does not come within
the scope of such a purview. It is still a question,
in seeking the most becoming manner of treat-
ing the work of a living artist, whether it should
be approached from the standpoint of its achieve-
ment or whether it should be critically examined
on the side of its alleged shortcomings.
I imagine that there can be no doubt as to
which treatment is likelier to be of grearer value
to the artist himself. It would be invidious,
nevertheless, to confine oneself strictly to the
critical side, however profitable and attractive such
might appear.
There has always seemed to me something
dandified, something exquisite and precious, about
Glyn Philpot’s work, as though he were a sort of
Beau Brummel of painting, seeking ever to devise
new elegances, to beribbon his work with unheard-
of colours, to evolve some subtle perfume which
shall attract attention and make his work remark-
able among that of his fellows. Be that as it may
—and it is after all only a fancy—it is certain that
almost everything he has produced has the quality
of being exquisite, whether in arrangement of
colour harmonies or in fancy of treatment, in a
high degree.
This is the result of his curious cast of mind,
which gives him a predilection for the rare and
precious. Gifted as he is, Philpot might, with a
different character and a different outlook on life,
have achieved almost anything; as it is, he has
become known as the painter of beautiful portraits,
of fine and harmonious arrangements of colour, as
the lover of beautiful materials, as the interpreter
tar excellence of surface qualities and beauties.
For one who demands of art some expression of
what is vital in life, who values truth above beauty,
and who derives inspiration and satisfaction from
the work of such a man as Camille Pissarro, that
great lover and poet of nature—the greatest, though
(and probably for that very reason) by no means the
best understood of the French Impressionists—it
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Philpot
were difficult to rest content with the work of an
artist who follows unquestioningly the well-worn
and fully exploited paths of other-day painters—
paths which lead to the attainment of circumscribed
and conventional notions of beauty. In progress
is life. And the intensity of life is only to be felt
and expressed through personal experience.
The constant reiteration of themes which have
long since attained such excellence as was in them
is an attempted cultivation of barren ground.
The artist who is labouring in the same linesand
in the same way as artists did a hundred or more
years ago is not carrying on traditional art, as is
generally supposed ; even that consolation must be
denied to him. The true tradition is developed
through Claude, Corot, Pissarro, and the Impres-
sionists up to the present day.
But occasionally there occurs an artist of brilliant
personal gifts, who is as a thing apart and seems to
have no place in the logical sequence of art de-
velopment. He may be likened to a meteorite
which flames across the sky and disappears. He
astonishes by his brilliancy, but afterwards men
and things go on uninfluenced by his dazzling
transit. The work ot such an artist, being per-
sonal and not universal, is not educative, and can
further the development of art no jot.
Of such an exceptional nature was Charles
Conder and Aubrey Beardsley, and of such, though
in a different way, is Glyn Philpot.
Despite the definitely personal nature of Philpot’s
art, it must at the same time be admitted to be
somewhat derivative. This quality of being in-
fluenced (through keen sympathy) by the activity
of men whose work possessed something which
awakened responsive chords in his own nature
was one of the earliest to show itself. One of his
very early paintings, if I remember rightly, was
a remarkable production in the pre-Raphaelite
manner, a sort of symposium, so to speak, in
which various masters of that movement took part.
This power of assimilation of certain features of
the work of other masters has since grown into a
marked characteristic, almost a fault.
To trace the various influences to be found in
his work has lately been the joy—a very gratifying
one, no doubt—of many critics,—writers whose
critical faculties stand paralysed before works of
art in unfamiliar forms, but who hail with joyous
because safe recognition that which they have seen
so often before. In this way, Goya, Manet,
Lawrence, Orpen even, have been cited as being
among his progenitors.
Although it must be admitted that various in