International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Paintings of Pilade Bertieri

satisfied with what he does arrests his development
before it has really begun, and if he does not
develop his own capacities the limit of his power
to convince is very quickly reached—he exhausts
his whole stock of knowledge in a burst of youthful
exuberance, and for the rest of his life he is con-
demned to repeat himself more and more feebly
and inefficiently. Even if he has at the beginning
captured the popular position to which he aspired
he cannot hope to retain it; his public will not
stand by him when they discover that he has
nothing more to tell them than they already know
by heart.
However, there are still some artists who have
not in any way yielded to the tendency of the
moment—who, on the contrary, respect the older
tradition of pictorial practice and follow it with
all sincerity. These artists are the more valuable
because they are exceptions to what has become
too general a rule, and they set a standard of per-
formance which it is well that the public should be
encouraged to recognise. They provide the work
which will endure, while their irresponsible con-
temporaries are only amusing the crowd and are
adding to the sum total of the nation’s art nothing
which has any possibilities of permanence.

It is because he belongs to this small band of
serious students of artistic principles that the paint-
ings of Mr. Pilade Bertieri claim special considera-
tion. It is because he is consistent in his effort
to attain those qualities of expression and execution
which have distinguished the best art of every
generation that he deserves to be noticed; and
it is because he understands what is expected of
the artist who hopes to make a place for himself
in the record of the school to which he belongs
that he has a right to approval. In nothing that
he has produced is there any hint of superfici-
ality ; he is always in earnest, always trying to
use to the utmost the material at his disposal,
and always concerned to do himself credit both
as an observer and a craftsman. Indeed, one of
the most decisive merits of his work is its invariable
thoroughness. His insight into character is excep-
tionally acute, his method of realising what he
has seen is unusually elaborate, and his effort to
attain completeness is remarkably well sustained.
Ingenious suggestion and happy accident do not
enter into the processes of his art, he is not satisfied
unless he has got out of his subject all that it has
to offer him and unless he has deliberately recorded
everything in it that matters.


“THE GIUDECCA, VENICE
80

BY PILADE BERTIERI