International studio (49.1913)

Mr. Walter West's Landscapes


FROM A LEAD-PENCIL DRAWING BY J. WALTER WEST, R.W.S.

MR. J. WALTER WEST’S LAND¬
SCAPES. BY ALEXANDER J.
FINBERG.
It is customary, I believe, among tutors at the
universities to advise their students whose intellec-
tual faculties appear to be of a second-rate order
not to attempt to take their degrees in classical or
philosophical subjects, but to devote themselves to
historical research. When I was a student at the
art schools in London and Paris I remember that
we used to look upon landscape painting very
much in the same way as the university dons regard
the study of history. It appeared to us as a safe
kind of refuge for those students whose natural
powers did not permit them to hope to succeed
in the higher ranks of art. It was a matter of
common observation that students who could only
turn out very weak and wooden drawings and

only one lower step of degradation. The biggest
duffers and the most unfortunate had to go into
business or turn art critics.
These ideas, I say, were rife among the art
students of my time. We have most of us, I
think, by this time seen good cause to revise and
alter them. No doubt a good many artists think,
as Sir William Richmond does, that those critics
who do not agree with them ought to be tortured
and hanged; but the common sense of the com-
munity has come to perceive that critics have
a certain definite, if restricted, sphere of usefulness
in the intellectual life of the times. There is
something more to be said for them beyond the
obvious fact that they are not great artists.
But it is not with the status of the critic that I am
immediately concerned in this article. What I
wish to draw attention to is the landscape work of
an artist who has already achieved a great reputa-

paintings from the life were
able to produce quite re-
spectable representations of
landscapes and buildings.
The intimate knowledge of
anatomy, and the subtle,
delicate, and accurate per-
ception of form necessary
for the figure-painter seemed
hardly required for land-
scape painting. So we came
to look upon landscape
painting as a kind of half-
way house between artistic
glory and success, and
ignominy and failure. The
happy and gifted student
naturally became a great
figure-painter; the less
gifted and fortunate had to


fall back on landscape and
animal painting. There was

“OLD THORNS, BEVERLEY WESTWOOD.” FROM A LEAD-PENCIL DRAWING
BY J. WALTER WEST, R.W.S.

XLIX. No. 195.—May 1913

177