International studio (55.1915)

The Edmund Davis Collection


mid-Victorian days that it cannot assume now. It
ranks with poetry, with Rossetti’s own, and with
Swinburne’s at its highest, affecting us by some-
thing quite intangible beneath the rich material
symbols it employs.
The Staymaker, by Hogarth. It is the fault of so
much modem criticism that it attaches too much
importance to self-conscious achievement. It is
not improbable that the original and enduring
part of all artistic work is that which is so native
to the constitution of the artist that it appears
wherever we can trace his hand, as a quality, of
importance to us, of which he. remains only super-
ficially conscious. He is generally striving for
something else. Hogarth was bent upon so many
things that he quite forgot
to be an artist. This he
was, however, “by the
grace of God,” even in
moments when he was
least concerned with the
attributes which would
give him the title. Thus
it is impossible for us to
encounter a work by this
painter without being fas¬
cinated by its quality and
execution. Hogarth’s
merriness, so English, and
his natural fantasy, in the
vein of Shakespeare,
sparkle in everything from
his hand. His power of
conveying the impression
of action without losing
the static balance of his
composition revealed him
a stage-manager of the first
rank in the arrangement
of his satires. He could
hardly ever suppress the
note of satire in his work.
It is not suppressed in The
Staymaker, which merely
relates an incident and has
no moral. We are not at
pains to explain to our¬
selves the whole story of
the incident depicted : this
can be done at leisure by
any one who is not en¬
tirely fascinated by the
dramatic control of light,
pleasant riot of the brush,

the distribution everywhere of the charm that is
the outcome of work enjoyed to the utmost and as
natural as breathing.
Study from the Nude, by Corot. Every painter’s
name is associated with one particular phase which
may be taken as authentic in its testimony to his
artistic character. But it is always interesting to be
able to point to a wrork in which we seem to meet
the artist on his way to self-discovery. Work of this
kind will sometimes appear so unlike everything
implied by the painter’s signature that without the
strongest evidence as to its authorship we should
not hesitate for a moment to give it to another
artist. If there is one thing we remember Corot
by it is by figures dancing in woods and often so

BY ALFRED STEVENS
87