International studio (55.1915)

Alfred Hartley, Painter and Etcher

an Italian sky above, must have almost fulfilled our
artist’s inmost desire.
The Mooring Post, Lake Como. This is one of
those subjects Hartley has made peculiarly his own.
Few living men can convey so simply and yet so
effectively in aquatint the subtle spell of Italian
scenery. Slight as is this sketch, how wonderfully
it has caught the sun-kissed radiance, the brooding
peace of an Italian summer’s day ! In other of his
etchings, for which there is not space in this article,
Hartley has perhapst caught still more effectively
the pomp of Italian sunlight, and the unique grace
of her towns and villages, so exquisitely punctuated,
as they usually are, by the massive silhouettes of
her cypresses, which cast deep pools of purple shade
athwart her dust-white roads and her still whiter
walls.

of the fecundity of the old earth and of her
fostering maternal fruitfulness. Hartley calls this
print simply The Glade. It might well have been
named “ An Idyll of Summer,” for it has been seen
with a poet’s vision.
An Essex Stream. A rather flat and not very
exciting county is Essex for the most part. But
its villages and homesteads are as dear to the
hearts of its people as the more obviously beauti-
ful ones in Devon or Somerset. And here it all
is portrayed with that sympathetic vision which
characterises Hartley’s work. The fine old church,
the clustering cottages, the mill, the spacious
meadow dear to the hearts of the children at
cowslip time, and the sluggish stream full of
infinite possibilities to every right-minded boy

At Low Tide. Here
we have the dignity of
the clouds and the
spaciousness of the
Atlantic conveyed to our
minds with unmistakable
fidelity. And yet how
simply! Three or four
flat tones, but there it
all is. Those towering
cumuli have the majesty
of Alps. There is a
latent power in the dark
ribbon of water. We
know it has an ocean’s
strength, though at the
moment it is toying with
the level sand in mere
ripples of lace-like foam.
Only great accuracy ot
proportion could convey
this sense of space and
elemental power. What
cockleshells are the
fishing-boats! what pig-
mies the bathers in this
meat drama of sea and
sky!
The Glade. In the
repetition of form and
mass in the trees, together
with their stately height
and the designed sim-
plicity of land and sky,
we realise something of
the glory of a still sum-
mer’s evening, something
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“OLD ARCHWAY, ASOLO ” AQUATINT BY ALFRED HARTLEY, R.B.A., R.E.
(By permission op Messrs. Dowdeszvells)