DOI Artikel:
Marriott, Charles: The paintings of Miss Hilda Fearon
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43457#0049
The Paintings of Hilda Fearon
The difference, of course, is comparative rather
than absolute. In art, as in life, both men and
women have to lose themselves to find themselves,
but for men the recovery is earlier, fuller and more
general. Few women, indeed, survive the ordeal
in painting. The reason why there are fewer good
woman painters than writers is not that women are
mentally and emotionally less fitted to be painters
than writers, but that the technique of painting
makes a greater demand upon their physical
powers with a consequent relegation, if not
destruction, of personality. At rare intervals,
however, a woman painter comes through the
stress of training with her personality undamaged.
Such a woman painter is Miss Hilda Fearon, and
it is her rarity and importance that justify what
seems like a digression into the subject of sex in
art. The remarkable detachment of her pictures
is due, I think, not to lack of sensibility or cold-
ness or poverty of temperament, but to the self-
sacrificing enthusiasm with
which she has embraced
the technical side of paint¬
ing. Her full personality
has been held up while
she perfected its means of
expression. Every serious
artist goes through three
definite phases : that of
the amateur, in which there
is often a direct, though
spasmodic and uncon¬
trolled, expression of tem¬
perament—an unstanched
effusion of personality, so
to speak; that of the
student, in which the man
or the woman is tem¬
porarily laid on the shelf;
and that of maturity, in
which the artist and the
man or woman are recon¬
ciled. Before the artist
can be born, the amateur,
with his or her easy effusive¬
ness, must die; and in Miss
Fearon the amateur died
very young. But not
without leaving interesting
and significant records.
One picture I have in
mind is a water-colour of
bad, but in feeling, in emotional atmosphere, it is
obviously the work of a singularly rich and sensitive
temperament. As an interpretation of the spirit of
place it could hardly be bettered. With other
works of the same period it removes any doubt
about the fulness of Miss Fearon’s personality.
Quite early in life, then, Miss Fearon rose up
and strangled the amateur and, at all cost of
personality deferred, set herself to master the craft
of painting. To her technical progress the pictures
reproduced in these pages bear witness better than
words. There are no hollow places in her
career; no flukes into popularity by the appeal of
subject at the expense of workmanship. But what
I would insist upon is that the progress has not
been purely technical. From picture to picture
Miss Fearon has broadened and deepened her
channel of expression, adjusted its levels and made
firm its banks; and presently the full tide of
personality will come flooding in. Exactly when
a Cornish farm. In some
ways it is almost laughably
28
“ ALICE ”
BY HILDA FEARON
(The property of Will Ashton, Esq., of Adelaide)
The difference, of course, is comparative rather
than absolute. In art, as in life, both men and
women have to lose themselves to find themselves,
but for men the recovery is earlier, fuller and more
general. Few women, indeed, survive the ordeal
in painting. The reason why there are fewer good
woman painters than writers is not that women are
mentally and emotionally less fitted to be painters
than writers, but that the technique of painting
makes a greater demand upon their physical
powers with a consequent relegation, if not
destruction, of personality. At rare intervals,
however, a woman painter comes through the
stress of training with her personality undamaged.
Such a woman painter is Miss Hilda Fearon, and
it is her rarity and importance that justify what
seems like a digression into the subject of sex in
art. The remarkable detachment of her pictures
is due, I think, not to lack of sensibility or cold-
ness or poverty of temperament, but to the self-
sacrificing enthusiasm with
which she has embraced
the technical side of paint¬
ing. Her full personality
has been held up while
she perfected its means of
expression. Every serious
artist goes through three
definite phases : that of
the amateur, in which there
is often a direct, though
spasmodic and uncon¬
trolled, expression of tem¬
perament—an unstanched
effusion of personality, so
to speak; that of the
student, in which the man
or the woman is tem¬
porarily laid on the shelf;
and that of maturity, in
which the artist and the
man or woman are recon¬
ciled. Before the artist
can be born, the amateur,
with his or her easy effusive¬
ness, must die; and in Miss
Fearon the amateur died
very young. But not
without leaving interesting
and significant records.
One picture I have in
mind is a water-colour of
bad, but in feeling, in emotional atmosphere, it is
obviously the work of a singularly rich and sensitive
temperament. As an interpretation of the spirit of
place it could hardly be bettered. With other
works of the same period it removes any doubt
about the fulness of Miss Fearon’s personality.
Quite early in life, then, Miss Fearon rose up
and strangled the amateur and, at all cost of
personality deferred, set herself to master the craft
of painting. To her technical progress the pictures
reproduced in these pages bear witness better than
words. There are no hollow places in her
career; no flukes into popularity by the appeal of
subject at the expense of workmanship. But what
I would insist upon is that the progress has not
been purely technical. From picture to picture
Miss Fearon has broadened and deepened her
channel of expression, adjusted its levels and made
firm its banks; and presently the full tide of
personality will come flooding in. Exactly when
a Cornish farm. In some
ways it is almost laughably
28
“ ALICE ”
BY HILDA FEARON
(The property of Will Ashton, Esq., of Adelaide)