International studio (81.1925)

mceRriACionAL

think there can be too many roses, or that, as
roses, they matter. After all, we who look upon
his work and appraise it today are so very far
from being fin de siecle or from understanding the
impulses that moved the men of the nineties.
We do not feel the need for the perfume of deca-
dence to dissipate the mustiness of Victorianism.
But even were Conder alive today, he would still
be belittled because of the poetical quality of his
work. A poetic picture, as everyone knows, is a
little girl sitting in a field of flowers; or a sweet-
faced nun in a white habit, with hands folded in
prayer. The painting of fans of course is a mere
avocation; it has no purpose; it does not identify
the artist with this or that school of theorists.
And so, because his appropriate tag cannot be
found, he must go without the label of the artist.

In the last number of The Savoy, Arthur
Symonds—who had had to write most of it him-
self—wrote in his valedictory: "Comparatively
few people care for art at all, and most of these
care for it because they mistake it for something
else." Conder would probably have disagreed
with this. He found a great many people who
cared about art; people who scolded and encou-
raged him in his youth and admired and purchased
him in his maturity.

Charles Conder was a descendant of Louis
Francis Roubiliac, a French sculptor who designed
many eighteenth-century porcelains; and Conder's
fan-figures are plainly descended therefrom. He
was born in London in 1868 and was shortly after-

wards taken to India. Between the ages of five
and seventeen he was again England, but in his
eighteenth year was sent to work with an uncle
in Australia. Conder's father was a civil engineer
and his uncle a surveyor, and it was the intention
of the family that he should become, like them, a
servant of the government. But Conder was bored
with his apprenticeship to his uncle and went to
Sydney and worked on a newspaper there for
about two pounds per week. It was in Australia
that he met Phil May, sent there for his health;
and Arthur Streeton, the landscape painter, with
whom a warm friendship sprang up. When he
went to Melbourne he found himself in another
group who met weekly to discuss art and scold
Conder because he would not apply himself seri-
ously to the study of form. He was incapable
then, as always, of regular and steady work, and
consistently refused to work from a model. He
was keenly interested in all methods of applying
color but was completely indifferent to materials.
Most of his work in Sydney was done on cigar
boxes or pieces of pasteboard.

He was equally indifferent about his personal
appearance and impatient of such earthly annoy-
ances as regular meals, taken solely for nourish-
ment, and regular hours of work. One concession
was made to the decencies of life. On a nail in his
room hung a frock coat, vest and trousers of a
correct cut, a top hat, gloves and a stick, so that
he might when he chose sally forth clad in gar-
ments that would insure his admission to the tea

thirty-eight

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