SOME RECENT DRAWINGS BY
MARI BAUER

By M. T. H. SADLER

HOT the least remarkable feature of Mari
Bauer’s art is that he has contrived to re-
main an Impressionist without appearing
demode, without continuing to speak the
language of a Brief and vanishecl epoch. One knows
so well the brilliant-hued landscapes — a river-bend,
a bridge, perhaps a few cows — painted, in good or
bad Imitation of Monet, with little slashes of colour,

that shout their period, as surely as the poeme de-
cadent brings back, faded and theatrical, the yellow
of the nineties. Even Monet himself, and Sisley and
Pissarro and the rest, look old-fashioned to our modern

eyes, and when the masters are survivals what shall be
said of their disciples ?
That Bauer escapes this fate of being left behincl by
time is due essentially to his never having lost control
of his medium. He has found and perfectecl his formula
but it has never mastered him. Or, to put it in a slightly
different way, he has found a formula so adequate for
the subjects of his choice that subject and treatment
blend utterly, and there is absent altogether the sus-
picion that the latter is forcibly applied to the former.
From this Charge Monet cannot be wholly exonerated.
His landscapes are paint, but those of Constable are
grass and sunlight, and Bauer’s eastern crowds are life.
It may be objected that Bauer’s work deals almost en-

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