International studio (60.1916/1917)

Modern Art in Leeds

Modern art in leeds: the
COLLECTION OF MR. SAM
WILSON. BY ABEL TORCY.
Although Leeds ranks as one of the most
important and at the same time one of the
wealthiest cities of England, it would be difficult
to pretend that as an artistic centre it has attained
any marked prominence. Some excellent libraries
are to be found there, but no author of any
renown ; one can hear some good music there,
but I am not sure that it would be possible to find
a single composer. As to the museum, in spite of
the intelligent activity of Mr. Frank Rutter, who
since his installation as curator has done his best
to elevate the taste of the citizens, it is, leaving out
of account a few works, not at all worthy of a city
whose commerce and industry have given it a place
among the first in the kingdom. Exhibitions of
pictures are by no means frequent, and are gener-
ally of inferior interest, and private collections are
both few in number and on the whole rather poor in
quality. Among these, never¬
theless, there is one in which
we find some of the greatest
names in contemporary
English art represented—
I refer to the collection of
Mr. Sam Wilson.
It is to Mr. Wilson that
the City Art Gallery at Leeds
owes the admirable decora¬
tive panels by Mr. Frank
Brangwyn which in 1906
ornamented the British
Section at the Venice Ex¬
hibition. With the Sadler
Collection, the Brangwyns of
the Fulford Collection and
the celebrated bronze fire¬
place of Alfred Gilbert these
panels constitute the chief
things of artistic importance
to be seen in Leeds. This
fireplace, worthy of the
palace of a Medici, is the
most notable item in the
collection of Mr. Wilson,
and to describe it adequately
would require a special
article and numerous
detailed illustrations of the
figures, columns and orna¬
ments which give it high
LX. No. 239.—January 1917

decorative value. In an article contributed to
this magazine seven years ago (November 1909)
Mrs. Macklin, who had a short time previously
paid a visit to the master sculptor at Bruges,
speaks of this monumental cheminee, on which
Gilbert was still working at the time of her visit,
as one of his most important productions.
Although Brangwyn is only represented in the
Wilson Collection by a couple of sketches and
a canvas of moderate dimensions, this master
displays such qualities of style, such imaginative
inventiveness and such vigour of facture that it
would be not at all an exaggeration to pronounce
him the greatest lyric painter of modern days.
Every foreigner who takes an interest in English
art is astonished that here in his own country
homage is not paid to him as one of the two
authentic geniuses of contemporary art—the other
being the great French sculptor, Auguste Rodin.
That certainly is how he is regarded on the
Continent, and perhaps before long it will be
the opinion here also, for I do not know of any


“romantic landscape”

BY JAMES PRYDE
IO9