International studio (59.1916)

MR. ARTHUR WARDLE’S
PASTEL PAINTINGS.
Each of the mediums which are at the
disposal of the artist has certain qualities of its
own which make it particularly suitable for some
type of artistic expression—qualities which are
peculiar to it and by which it is specially adapted
for the effective realisation of the artist’s intention.
The painter who has sufficiently studied the
resources of his craft and knows by right compari-
son which method will serve him best in the work
he has undertaken, selects his medium with an
accurate prescience of the results which he pro-
poses to attain, and uses its technical characteristics
as important means to the end at which he aims.
The medium may even become to him a matter of
temperamental preference, and the choice of it
may be dictated by his inherent aesthetic instinct:
he may find in its mechanical peculiarities some

definite advantages which are helpful in making
more convincing the personal purpose of his
art.
In other words, the material he adopts for the
expression of his ideas counts as one of the essen-
tials of his practice, and he adopts it in preference
to any other because he feels that with its assistance
alone he can set forth fully the ideas that he wishes
to convey to his public. He may be, it is true,
a master of more than one medium ; but in that
case he keeps them apart, using each one accord-
ing to the demands of the work he has to carry
out, and making it fulfil the executive mission for
which it is obviously fitted. The medium, in fact,
becomes the language of his art: a language he
knows so well that he can think in it and translate
instinctively into its idioms the fancies he has in
his mind; that he does not mix his idioms or
confuse one language with another is the proof
that his knowledge is complete—evidence that he


STUDY OF A TIGRESS EATING
LIX. No. 233.—July 1916

BY ARTHUR WARDLE