International studio (55.1915)

THE STUDIO

The paintings of Leonard
CAMPBELL TAYLOR.
As I sit down by the warmth of a bright
hearth and the comfortable light of a shaded lamp
to discuss art, guns are roaring and belching forth
death and destruction, thousands of mothers’ sons
are lying dead or moaning in agony.—Klio is turn-
ing over a new leaf, and blood, as usual, is her ink.
And yet, as time passes and the writing becomes
fainter, this great European War will be chronicled
in heavy tomes, will be commented upon with
much acumen by learned historians, will be digested
with much difficulty by unwilling schoolboys—dead
matter. But perchance the eager student or the
unwilling scholar may pause for a moment to look
upon an “old” picture painted at the time of the
Great War, and it will speak to him—a living
thing.
In truth, works of art, counted as toys and
baubles by the multitude, neglected and rejected

whilst the cannons roar, are the fruits by which
we are known to posterity; they are a better record
of our existence than the chronicles of our most
glory-covered battles.
It is a curious fact, too, that those artists whose
bent and ambition have prompted them to paint
“history”—the historical painter taking precedence
in the academical hierarchy—are precisely those
who have thereby achieved less lasting fame and
appreciation, whilst the humbler painters of por-
traits, landscapes, and even of still-life enjoy en-
during favour.
Those who are fortunate enough to possess an
inborn love of art will know that this love is a
kind of worship—not worship of persons, but of the
manner in which the artists have recorded their
own joys, their admiration of the world they live
in. And unless a work of art possesses besides, or
rather beyond and above, its technical achievement
this spirit of worship and reverence, it lacks the
highest quality of art.


“THE MUSIC-ROOM” BY l> CAMPBELL TAYLOR
LV. No. 217.—March 1915

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