Studio: international art (2.1894)

A71 American Critic on English Art

no difficulty in awarding precedence to people of Henry Moore, the late Frank Holl, and Sir
importance, and other people had none. Frederic Leighton have been identified with the

In his first chapter we find : " The forces of Academy is no reason why their works should not
Great Britain are led by Sir Frederic Leighton, give distinction, as they do, to British exhibits,
and the atmosphere which he and his colleagues Grouped around these are lesser Academicians,
have transferred from London to Chicago, is not .... Then come the outsiders, and among them
that of the New Gallery or of the Grafton, but that one or two, like Swan the animal painter, are

of the Royal Academy itself. This leaves unintro- brilliant.....England has repeated a Royal

duced to us some of the most progressive and Academy in Chicago."

individualised artists of England. In a pre- " Style and an accomplished executive habit are
liminary survey the only pictures which tell of the the characteristics for which it is natural to look

first in a view of the pictures here, the im-
mensely important question of idea having
little interest except when one or both of the
two conservers are present in the picture. In
the English section there is style, there is
sometimes executive power, and there are
ideas. Insularity in art is puzzling. On its
face the idea is not attractive, for it may mean
more than a self-centred endeavour to put into
artistic form the essential qualities of a nation.
It has been good for France. It has been bad
for England."

So far the writer has been concerned with
England's place among other nations. A
second chapter devoted to the British Pic-
tures, which is headed, after the American
fashion, with crisp titles summarising its con-
tents : " Literary tendency of English Art—a
School enamoured of details—Some of the
best works, paintings by Sir Frederic Leighton,
Orchardson, and Watts." As an indirect proof
of courtesy towards our art, not common in
American criticism, one must note that Great
Britain is permitted to take the first place
among a dozen articles devoted to the various
countries where it is granted precedence even

kisherwomen, by th. verstraeten. (from the salon ° 1

supplement of l'independance belge) before America. With his opening sentence

the author returns to the theme of insularity,

distinctly new and unconventional impulse in which occupied the latter portion of his first

English art are by Wilson Steer, who has been article. He says: " The insularity of the Eng-

afflicted by the impressionism of Monet, and by lishman is, in one sense, curiously foregone in

C. W. Furse, a portrait-painter who emulates his art. However indifferent he may be in most

Whistler. Of such men as Walter Sickert, who is relations of life to the opinions of any outside

an echo in England of what Degas is in France, his own circle, he yet makes a strenuous effort

the British section contains no sign. But it gives in his pictures to awaken the intelligence of his

a good account of such English art as has been in auditors. He is content, as a rule, to awaken

its own country recognised and elevated to places it only at a few points. As far as his efforts go,

of honour. These places of honour are chiefly they leave nothing undone. That which helps to

distinguished by the initials R.A., which have in give the British pictures at the World's Fair a

turn become distinguished as the synonyms of place apart from all others in the Art Building,

routine art. Yet an Englishman need not become except those of Germany or Austria, is that they ar-

a fossil against his will when he is made one of rest attention almost exclusively through an appeal

the Forty. That Watts, Orchardson, Millais, to the intellectual sympathies or the affections.
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