International studio (55.1915)

Drawings by A rthur J. Gaskin

quite, to outline, but in the charming girl’s head
called Portrait we feel a delicious sense of colour
and tone, with the deep brown hair at one end of
the scale and the white insertion round the neck at
the other. The blue eyes, the rosy lips and the
pale flesh tones could never have been thus ren-
dered if heavy shadows had been introduced.
Yet how true to nature it all is. The coloured
reproductions and especially the beautiful baby
face Margaret speak for themselves.
It was this faculty for grasping the fundamentals
of art, and especially of ornamental or decorative
art, together with his feeling for romance, that
made Mr. Gaskin by far the most inspiring figure
that has yet appeared upon the teaching staff of
the Birmingham School of Art, though he has
never been its nominal headmaster. To him more
than to any other is due the pre-eminent position
achieved by that school,
though he was singularly
fortunate in being sur¬
rounded by a group of
young artists near to his
own age, working with
him and achieving many
of them no inconsider¬
able fame in the world of
art. Among these col¬
leagues of the nineties
may be mentioned the
names of Mr. Chas. Gere,
the well-known member
of the New English Art
Club, whose work is so
familiar to readers of
The Studio, Mr. Henry
A. Bayne, A.R.W.S.,
painter of a wall decora¬
tion in the House of
Lords, Mr. Sydney Mete-
yard, painter and book
illustrator, Mr. Treglown,
illuminator and writer,
Miss Newill, embroi-
deress, Miss Gere, the
gifted sister of Charles
Gere and painter of a
work recently bought for
the nation by the Con¬
temporary Art Society,
Mr. Edmund New, the
widely known book illus¬
trator, and Mr. Bernard
Sleigh, a painter and the
26

engraver of charming woodcuts. In addition there
were in Birmingham one or two other companions
not then working within the School of Art. All
these artists were in close sympathy with one
another and mutually helpful.
In these days of swiftly changing fashions it is
refreshing to see a man like Mr. Gaskin who has
his feet upon a rock, and who, while keenly ap-
preciative and observant of the interest and beauty
of contemporary life, is not engaged in the pitiful
scramble to keep up with the very latest sensation
of the hour. His art is guided by eternal prin-
ciples that are always new, and speaks to deep
instincts in the human race that never fail nor
change, whatever superficial variations the course
of time may bring. Greatly as the externals of life
and costume have changed in four centuries, the
faces left to us by Holbein or Bisanello are just


PORTRAIT

BY ARTHUR J. GASKIN