International studio (50.1913)

Mr. Brangwyns Tempera Paintings at the Ghent Exhibition

who have the common’sense to use it, it is a piece
of criticism that applies very well to all artistic
demonstrations. Mr. Brangwyn would think me
the fool that I should think myself were I to
pretend to lavish indiscriminate admiration on
every work that proceeded from his hand; but the
application of Johnson’s dictum means something
very different to that. It means that if an artist is
worth taking at all he is worth taking as he is ; not
minimising faults or attempting to turn them into
inverted excellences, but taking the whole man, and
liking what we like in him with a will.
After all, criticism in the long run is a very
personal matter; and an artist has much upon his
side if he complain that he works neither for A nor
for B nor for C, but for himself and anyone who
comes along to understand what he is driving at.
Mr. Brangwyn is, I think, an artist of this sort: he
makes a personal appeal :
you take him or you leave
him : and the consequence
is that his work provokes
an individual sentiment of
pleasure or dislike that
gives to either feeling some¬
thing of added strength and
value, and shames one out
of the ordinary stock-in-
trade banalities of praise or
blame.
There are some painters
who seem to have suc¬
ceeded in leaving out of
their works all the essential
qualities which make them
what they are to us as men.
Mr. Brangwyn is certainly
not one of these. In all
his work, sometimes in far
greater measure than at
others, “for it needs happy
moments for this skill,” one
can find a reflection of that
keen, confident, absolutely
living spirit which seems to
clear the air for friend or
foe, which keeps its pos¬
sessor vigorous and young,
and braces others to fresh
■endeavour. There is some¬
thing boyish—if I might
say so in a good sense,
boisterous—about this flow
and eddy of artistic life ;
4

and as I think of him and his work I find myself
almost insensibly falling back into the vernacular
of past days. Take these panels. What is the
meaning, some captious critic might say, of these
figures against the broad, deep blue sky ? Why do
they hold this, and that, and the other ? What are
they doing ? I do not know : I do not care. I like
these “hefty” men : I like these “jolly” bananas,
and pots, and baskets : I like that hunk of frozen
meat, and that bright yellow carpet, and that fierce
red coat : I like the contrast between the pure,
deep blue and the light, bright colours of the
grouped figures : I like the smoking chimneys : I
like the pumpkins. Nor do I like them simply for
what they are, because they are strong, and
vigorous, and stand out bravely against the blue
night: I like them in the position for which they
are designed. The room which now contains them


TEMPERA PANEL

BY FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A.