International studio (52.1914)

Sigurd Neandross

With regard to Mr. Tucker’s landscapes the
combination of honest outlook with a capacity
for the subtlest mental processes is entirely fe-
licitous. In these landscapes the sunlight quivers,
they communicate a sense of joy: a feeling of
passionate absorption in the beauty of the world
pervades them. They are the living creation of
the life in nature and of the spirit which perceives it.
But it is Mr. Tucker’s portraits that perhaps
most clearly illustrate both his strongest and his
weakest points. A reproduction of a portrait in
which the colour pattern plays an important part,
is unsatisfactory, but the accompanying repro-
duction of Mr. Tucker’s portrait, Ivory and Blue,
is illuminating even in black and white. The
drawing has not the freedom of the drawing in
the landscapes, the colour of the flesh is slightly
cold, but the psychology is intensely vivid and
truly revealing.
There is something positively ingenuous in the
way in which the more obvious appeal of the sub-
ject has been ignored. Think of that subject in
the hands of, let us say a colonel or even a major-
general in the army of Sargent imitators. What
opportunities it offers for feats of surface clever-
ness! From the point of view of fluency and com-
plete mastery of grammar, the portrait is imper-
fect, but from the point of view of design and
psychology it is a rare work.
We are not used to such serious portraiture and
to a complete immolation of what is called flat-
tery; for the average portrait painter has to sell
himself so often before he can "get on” that by
the time he arrives, he has lost the power of hon-
est vision. Our taste in portraits has become so
hopelessly corrupt that serious portraits are sel-
dom wanted.
Mr. Tucker’s are not portraits in the conven-
tional sense, since the centre of interest is not
directed at the head by any artificial means.
He composes his portraits with great care, con-
sidering the placing of the sitter and the relation
of each object in the picture to the design of the
whole, and he succeeds in producing the effect of
the entire subject, accessories as well as head, be-
ing bathed and saturated with light. These
portraits are richly original with an honesty as
pure as that of a child. They are none the less
painted with plenty of hard-won knowledge and
a rare discrimination. They breathe a finer at-
mosphere than that of a regulation portrait-
maker. I would rather have one than a hun-
dred of the cleverest works of all the Sargent
imitators.

SIGURD NEANDROSS
BY CHARLES DE KAY
A sculptor with a name that sounds
half Scandinavian, half Greek, is neverthe-
less an American. He was born of Norwegian
parents who came to America just in time to have
their son greet the light of day—if not exactly
upon the soil of the new world, yet upon the
Pacific Ocean, off the shores of California! The
question might be asked whether this birth on the
ocean wave should give Mr. Sigurd Neandross the
right to call himself an Oriental or claim that he
alone is an original modern Viking, more at home
on the salt flood than on mother earth. He seems
to have settled the matter by passing most of his


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