DOI Heft:
No. 28 (July, 1895)
DOI Artikel:Wedmore, Frederick: Some portraits seen this season
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17294#0142
Some Portraits of this Season
knows so well how to bestow, he had but to record these three men—an artistic feeling real in them
in his Academy picture. At the New Gallery he all, and very deep in at least one or two of them—
recorded it also, and did so in a theme which called would always, I should hope, prevent the exaggera-
out his fullest charm as colourist and brushman— tion of a quality for which their gift is most
I mean Jungle Tales, a group in which all three marked. With them all, if a portrait is not in
figures are portraits, but the result the thing it was every case a likeness, it is at all events a picture—
intended to be—a picture not " commissioned " it is not only an attitude,
by any one of the sitters,
but desirable on its merits
to all the world : the back
of a graceful head, a de-
lightful child seen in pro-
file, her mind exercised
critically, but upon the
whole approvingly, in re-
gard to her mother's read-
ing, and the strange thing
read, and then, again, a
third participator in the
seance, a yet younger child
(as I surmise) more naively
and simply receptive, a
critic less alert, but wel-
come for her contribution
to the singular charm of
colour which is one of the
several recommendations
of Mr. Shannon's scene.
Very high indeed among
the year's successes in pure
portraiture do I place Mr.
H. S. Tuke's Mrs. George
Talbot, of which in the
article upon that artist, in
the last number of The
Studio, there was a re-
production which suggested
sufficiently the interest of
the model and the refine-
ment and ease of the treat-
ment. But, like Mr.
Shannon (and, it may be,
unlike Mr. Cope), Mr. H.
S. Tuke is a colourist, a
colourist fascinating and
true, and he has painted with what a subtlety If Mr. Seymour Lucas, in some remarks he made
that brunette's head, that pure white dress, the the other day, happened to have the present writer
flowers, lilac or violet-coloured, gleaming out of in his mind at all when he spoke of the criticism
the white ! In feminine portraiture, Mr. Lavery is bestowed upon " costume painiers," let me assure
of a school not alien to Mr. Tuke's, yet by no him that whoever may consider him a mere painter
means markedly akin to it. We find generally in of costume, I, at least, am far from so considering
Mr. Lavery's work—as we should expect to find in him. I do not even consider—will he but hear
Mr. Whistler's or Mr. Guthrie's—a greater insist- me graciously—-that he paints costume with any
ence upon gesture. But the artistic feeling of all special fineness : there are, I mean, painters who,
123
A LADY IN BLACK " BY JOHN LAVERY'
knows so well how to bestow, he had but to record these three men—an artistic feeling real in them
in his Academy picture. At the New Gallery he all, and very deep in at least one or two of them—
recorded it also, and did so in a theme which called would always, I should hope, prevent the exaggera-
out his fullest charm as colourist and brushman— tion of a quality for which their gift is most
I mean Jungle Tales, a group in which all three marked. With them all, if a portrait is not in
figures are portraits, but the result the thing it was every case a likeness, it is at all events a picture—
intended to be—a picture not " commissioned " it is not only an attitude,
by any one of the sitters,
but desirable on its merits
to all the world : the back
of a graceful head, a de-
lightful child seen in pro-
file, her mind exercised
critically, but upon the
whole approvingly, in re-
gard to her mother's read-
ing, and the strange thing
read, and then, again, a
third participator in the
seance, a yet younger child
(as I surmise) more naively
and simply receptive, a
critic less alert, but wel-
come for her contribution
to the singular charm of
colour which is one of the
several recommendations
of Mr. Shannon's scene.
Very high indeed among
the year's successes in pure
portraiture do I place Mr.
H. S. Tuke's Mrs. George
Talbot, of which in the
article upon that artist, in
the last number of The
Studio, there was a re-
production which suggested
sufficiently the interest of
the model and the refine-
ment and ease of the treat-
ment. But, like Mr.
Shannon (and, it may be,
unlike Mr. Cope), Mr. H.
S. Tuke is a colourist, a
colourist fascinating and
true, and he has painted with what a subtlety If Mr. Seymour Lucas, in some remarks he made
that brunette's head, that pure white dress, the the other day, happened to have the present writer
flowers, lilac or violet-coloured, gleaming out of in his mind at all when he spoke of the criticism
the white ! In feminine portraiture, Mr. Lavery is bestowed upon " costume painiers," let me assure
of a school not alien to Mr. Tuke's, yet by no him that whoever may consider him a mere painter
means markedly akin to it. We find generally in of costume, I, at least, am far from so considering
Mr. Lavery's work—as we should expect to find in him. I do not even consider—will he but hear
Mr. Whistler's or Mr. Guthrie's—a greater insist- me graciously—-that he paints costume with any
ence upon gesture. But the artistic feeling of all special fineness : there are, I mean, painters who,
123
A LADY IN BLACK " BY JOHN LAVERY'