Studio: international art (8.1896)

Some Pictures at the New Gallery

for the beauties of light and shade—in a word, less
of a painter, and perhaps less of an artist too, for
his pictures have not the same penetrating effect as
Mr. Watts's. The latter appears to be passionately
devoted to all that makes for subtleness and beauty
in painting, while Sir Edward, whose vision is more
fixed, more definite, gives the impression that the
persons and the things he represents are but the
core, the nucleus, unfurnished with that final
casing wherein lurk the pulsations of life. Thus,
while Mr. Watts is above all a painter of rare
ability, Sir Edward Burne-Jones is in the first place
a poet, with a weakness which impels him to sacri-
fice all else for sonority of rhyme, and clothe his
thoughts—strange contradiction !—in the bye-gone
forms which preceded that movement of renascence
and reform from which the genius of England took
its rise. There can be no doubt that, had the
fates made Burne-Jones a sculptor, his marble
would have produced precisely the same sensation
as the most admired productions of his brush.

His Aurora is very happily placed between Mr.
Watts's two little pictures. Beating her cymbals,
Dawn advances on tip-toe, with curious eyes, as
though surprised to see once more the half-light
which she typifies. Such is the original idea of the
poet-artist, who has invested his poetry with just so
much materialism as is needed to suggest the
human form. Mr. Watts's two pictures, on the
other hand, speak of the innocence and the sadness
of our poor humanity. In the one we see the two
first-created beings, all unconscious of their naked-
ness, showing in their placid faces the happy
ignorance of those who yet know nought either of
good or evil, no more than the spotless lilies flower-
ing at their feet. In the other their paradise is
ended—the fall has come; even the lilies are
bruised and broken, under the weight of the
monster of sin who soils their whiteness as he
crawls. Eve, the temptress, in a lovely attitude of
sadness, hides her face in her golden hair; while
the man, the dupe, half stupefied, conceals his
wretchedness beneath the leaves of the fig-tree.
And on the tree above his head sits the raven,
black harbinger of evil days. One could not wish
to see anything more beautiful than these two little
pictures.

Among other pictures claiming attention and
interest in a lesser degree is the Page by Mrs.
Marianne Stokes, a work obviously inspired by
Heine's verses, and also by the early Italian
painters. Heine, himself, although not particu-
larly devoted to the Fatherland, would doubtless
have preferred that the interpreter of one of his
166

stories should have borrowed the style of the old
German masters ; that the dame should be draped
in a robe of stiffest folds, and the page have some-
thing of Gothic gducherie, and yet be charming
withal. As for the Primitives of Italian art, they, of
course, would have advised recourse to one of
Boccaccio's Tales, or to one of the delightful little
poems of St. Francis, ripened like flowers in the
valley of Assisi, and breathing all the perfumes of
the faith of ages. As it is, however, the picture is
full of delicate beauty and charm, the raised gold
on the robe being put on with great effect, and in
perfect taste. We are still in Italy, for a few
moments with M. Giovanni Costa, who has suc-
ceeded in giving an excellent impression of the
grand and noble lines of the mountainous region
of Carrara.

M. Fernand Khnopff s picture suggests that those
caressings may hide the most terrible claws. There
is knowledge in this work, and art too, from sheer
force of will, but one is conscious of an impression
as of over-effort. One need not try to be archaic
in this too-old world of ours; it suffices to be an
artist, that is, to put into one's work—almost un-
consciously, as it were—so much emotion as may
be shared by others; and it is sometimes the
simplest things which produce the most feeling.
The woman's figure in Mr. Henry J. Ford's picture
is remarkable for the care bestowed on the dress
and the detail generally. But the palm for work of
this kind must be bestowed upon Mr. John D.
Batten, in respect of his St. George—not that there
is any too much honour attaching to such a dis-
tinction ! After all this effort and trouble Mr.
Watts's broad and generous work, Earth, comes
as a rest and a relief. It is the figure of a
ruddy-haired woman, her hands filled with autumn
fruit; the colouring full of warmth, and the whole
picture instinct with healthfulness and life.

One of Mr. Alma Tadema's chief cares seems to
be to put the greatest possible number of things in
the smallest possible space, as witness his Family
Group. Nor is there any reproach implied hereby,
for there is nothing so difficult as to decide upon
the exact size your scheme shall take. In the
present case there is evidence of an elaborate care,
which might, indeed, give additional charm to the
picture, if it did not seem to imply a certain diffi-
dence, a sort of timidity, which is altogether in
keeping with a painting insignificant in subject as it
is in dimension. At the same time, a work of this
kind may well possess distinct points of interest,
especially when, as in Mr. Alma Tadema's picture,
there is expression in the faces.