International studio (61.1917)

The Portrait Paintings oj Ambrose McEvoy

artist the

"STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT”

BY AMBROSE MCEVOY

a mirror,
painter's

the last, is that of a presence in the room. In
this Whistler has a successor—the painter who
is the subject of this article.
Mr. McEvoy had the unusual fortune to be
early a pupil in art, and at a school, the Slade,
where there was a live tradition. The time
was made remarkable too by the art of original
men, and the first “ International ” Exhibi-
tions were spreading the most powerful of
the foreign influences. He has since lived so
closely to the best art of the past and of his
time that one can almost say he has never seen
a bad picture. He has bravely approached
but certainly overthrown great obstacles that
lay between him and the attainment of his ex-
ceptional power of self-expression. At the right
moment a new direction was given to his brush.

in the depths of a consciousness, in a world at
the back of the painter’s mind, more sensitive
than the mercury background of
profound to the measure of that
ability to respond to life.
The more refined the vision of the
greater the strain upon his hand, so that in the
art of those who can see most we often meet an
indecision which is not present in that of the
artist who has less to cope with, who can take
in everything at a glance because there is so
little to take in. The measure of all that vision
can embrace is pre-established in ourselves. In
dull portraits it is always safe to hazard that it
was the painter and not the sitter who was dull.
Now I believe there will never come a time
when a really characteristic portrait by Mr.
McEvoy will not retain
its value. I believe that
future art will press
towards the point at
which he is arriving—
striving to reach the
spirit of the subject, the
spirit of the sitter, im-
patient of detail except
in the light of person-
ality, and quite unable
to dwell on it with the
old solemn belief in its
importance.
I was first conscious
of this direction in
modern portraiture when
regarding, in the Tate
Gallery, Whistler’s un-
finished picturej of the
elder Miss Alexander.
The impression preserved
in it is psychical. The
dark eyes, which alone
give it life, are clouded
and yet burning. The
clothes are just what
they were to the painter,
a nimbus investing a
presence rather than the
clothes upon a figure.
There are other full-
length portraits by
Whistler, carried to a
finish, in which the main
impression, preserved to
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