International studio (60.1916/1917)

Modern Art in Leeds

one who has attained the greatness of his style,
his breadth and force, and the complete independ-
ence of his creations—sometimes, it is true, a little
superficial and hasty, but far more often quite
magistral in their breadth. We may cite here, as
belonging to the Wilson Collection, his beautiful
painting of Old Kezv Bridge, of which a repro-
duction in colour appears among our illustrations,
and a design for a fan in which we surprise the
master in a smiling mood, whereas his art has
chiefly been attracted by great spectacles of
modern industry or the virile interpretation in
terms of sumptuous colour of his Oriental
experiences.
Industry, too, has inspired George Sauter to
one of his finest works—The Leeds Picture,
which forms part of the Wilson collection. This
canvas, very different in subject from those he is
best known by, symbolises the homage of Labour
to Beauty, to whom the products of local industry
are offered by attendant females, and is certainly
one of the most harmonious and complete
pictures that the artist has produced.
Sauter has often been reproached with not
carrying his pictures to completion. This reproach
is as a rule a proof of
ignorance, for as Theodore
Rousseau has very truly
observed, it is not the
amount of detail that
constitutes a finished
picture but the har¬
monious co-ordination of
its parts. One might,
with just as much in¬
justice, reproach Orpen
with giving too much
finish to his pictures, were
it not that he has himself
furnished a contradiction.
Though at times he ap¬
pears to be content with
an almost literal imitation
of nature, this artist is so
diverse that just when you
think you have grasped
some of the elements of
his personality he eludes
you. He is never the
same in any two works,
and one must be ac¬
quainted with all he has
done to formulate a judg¬
ment comprehending the

essential traits of his art. His canvas A Spanish
Woman shows him to be a fine painter with a sure
hand, a painter, too, who never trusts to the luck
of inspiration; at the same time very objective,
and more anxious about the solid modelling of his
figures than bathing them in an atmosphere in
which they can breathe and live. A draughtsman
of disconcerting precision, we see him express by
a stroke of his chalk psychological nuances of the
most subtle kind. Almost invariably his talent
evokes a very high opinion, and if at times we
may hesitate to follow him in the domain of
illustration and anecdote we feel obliged none
the less to recognise him as one of the most
original and versatile artists of the modern British
School.
George Clausen is represented in the Wilson
Collection by quite a large number of landscapes,
figure-subjects and interiors, which enable one to
follow the evolution of the artist, and to discern
the influences to which he has been subject and
from which he has at length freed himself.
Amongst these influences the earliest is that of
Bastien-Lepage, the great French realist, who some
thirty years ago seems to have exercised a real



“HARWICH QUAY” BY J. BUXTON KNIGHT

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