International studio (58.1916)

A Modernizer of the Greek Ideal: J. H. Fry

in every respect with his feeling for classic beauty.
It must be “a daughter of the gods divinely fair,”
a wholesome, full-blooded, round-limbed woman
able to battle if necessary, certainly able to bear
lusty children. Opulent forms people his can-
vases. It may be a Sappho, an Aspasia, or
Poseidon’s daughter gathering pebbles by the
shore, a Dryad gazing wistfully between tree
trunks, or enchantresses of the sea such as lured
Ulysses and his crew, or the nymphs of the
Rheingold teasing Alberich. To him these wo-
men appeal intensely and he paints them heroic-
ally and with a plastic sense that is rare. They
become not only part of their surroundings but
by their grandeur and dignity they dominate

and the forms of the departed are painted in
silvery greys and opalescent colour. Keeping their
places admirably in a great composition the
whirl and rhythm are poetically expressed but
without undue sentiment.
Greek art, beautiful as it is and expressive as
it is of the intellectual and noble condition, owes
its beauty to that which the early Greeks strived
after and sought to be rather than what they
actually were. It ignores or illuminates or re-
moulds all human failings however overpowering
they may be in real life. While people hated
and fought, loved and were sorrowful, in the days
of Pericles as now, life being so much less com-
monplace, the. Greek intellect when it did not


THE ETERNAL DRIFT

BY J. H. FRY

forest or grove, air or ocean. Nature yields
precedence.
A pure classicist, J. H. Fry has drawn upon
Greek art to adorn immortal legends. His vision
and treatment are all his own, though the legends
are yours and mine. In the canvas called
Oceanities one feels unerringly the fugue
which prompted the composition and forecasted
the rhythm of waves and nymphs in interrelated
sport and motion. Though avoiding a high-
keyed palette, Fry is a strong colourist, obtaining
strong dramatic effects by simple untrained
methods. In his great work, Paolo and
Francesca, embodying the eternal theme of the
love which outlives the tomb, we see them bright-
robed, strongly illuminated, soaring above lurid
patches of deep, red sky whilst Dante and Virgil

ignore an irresponsible condition, imbued it with
a dignity which all but converted vices into
virtues. Nearly all false standards to-day can be
traced to that period. Therefore Greek art is
beautiful because of its freedom from contact with
ordinary human conduct.
A classic art will arise when we have passed
the experimental stage, when we shall emerge
richer intellectually and with an understanding
made generous by expression. Every human
virtue and all human shortcomings will be con-
sidered and will help in the creation of this art.
Nothing will be eliminated, nothing ignored, but
it will be calm and serious because we shall have
weathered the storm and profited by it, not be-
cause we have avoided it or denied its existence.
In J. H. Fry’s art there is a distinct sign of the

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