Studio: international art (9.1897)

Studio- Talk

So the true appreciation of Morris as a great
poet, a great artist, and a great social leader, may
traverse his strongly expressed views upon design
and style at every point, and yet remain loyal to
his teaching. For he taught honesty in construc-
tion, the importance of fine material, and skilled
industry. You may regard the Kelmscott books
as only exquisite bric-a-brac ; you may declare that
his carpet designs were mere re-arrangements of
old motives, his patterns only faithful studies of a
disciple. Yet the great designer, the great colourist,
and the superb craftsman remain untouched by
such criticism, and commands your reverence as
one who made possible all that we prize, although
he himself cared no jot for the experiments or the
achievements which seem to many of us the real
harvest of the seed he sowed, and the actual out-
come of the labour he expended so prodigally in
fighting for the revival of the applied arts in Eng-
land. In short, it is the vivid artistic personality of
a great pleader that remains witness for ever; not
the diagrams he drew to illustrate his argument, but
the logical conclusions which others have gathered
from the plea which he advanced so ably.

The death of such an artist as Mr. George du
Maurier is felt very much more generally, and is
the cause of far keener and more immediate regret,
than would be excited by the loss of a picture
painter of greater scope and higher degree of
executive skill. As he devoted himself almost
entirely to what was really illustration of the social
events of his times, he became influential in
a fashion which would have been impossible had
he expended his energies upon art of a serious and
permanent kind. The fact that what he did was
necessarily ephemeral, inspired by the moment and
meant for the amusement rather than the instruc-
tion of his contemporaries, gave him an immediate
claim to public attention. He had to go through
no slow process of popularisation or of waiting till
his aims and intentions might be appreciated by
the people to whom he appealed ; his subjects were
sufficient introduction, and the footing which they
gave him was made secure by the manner in which
he treated them. That he should be seriously
missed is a necessary consequence of the readiness
with which he was accepted; he became an in-
stitution at once and his absence seems the more
to be lamented because we have come to regard
him as indispensable. We have yet to see whether
there is any one else who can continue his work
with any touch of his fascination. At present he

seems to have left no one who can treat his sub-
jects as he treated them.

The exhibition of the Institute of Painters in
Oil Colours is notable this year because it con-
tains a few very good pictures and a quite reason-
able number of canvases that, without being in
the first rank, are quite worth looking at. The
show would, indeed, be an unusually good one were
its average merit not so seriously depreciated by
the contributions of some of the older members of
the society, large works undeserving of attention
except as examples of what to avoid, offensive in
their conventionality, and inexcusable on account
of their absolute lack of proper pictorial qualities.
The things that are really worth looking at are
those by men who have not so far forgotten the
real aspect of Nature that they are content with
mere mannerism. In Mr. Alfred East's Apple
Orchard on the Avon, for instance, and in his
smaller Autumn Study, there is evidence of very
sincere study as well as a thoroughly earnest inten-
tion to gain by legitimate means the happiest ex-
pression of his individual view. Mr. Austen
lirown's October Evening is another picture which
combines charm of style with real accuracy to
Nature; and both Mr. Leslie Thomson, in his
Axmouth and Afternoon on the Broads, and Mr. J.
L. Pickering, in his Blakeney Hill, prove them-
selves able to observe intelligently and to paint
with admirable power. Such pictures as these
save the exhibition from reproach and give to the
collection as a whole an air of real distinction,
which, but for their presence in the Gallery, it
would certainly lack. The figure painters are
hardly seen to equal advantage. With the excep-
tion of Sir James Linton's Meditation, Mr. AY
Llewellyn's Labour of Love, Mr. F. Markham
Skipworth's Delia, and Mr. Alexander Mann's
powerful Portrait of Alfred Ward Esq., there is
little to note. A clever sketch, Cigarette, by Mr.
James Clark, is interesting, and Mr. William Rainey's
Dutcli Skippers is a by no means disagreeable
study in low tones; but what other figure subjects
have been hung follow too much the accustomed
lines to be memorable in any particular way.

At the Suffolk Street Galleries the Royal Society
of British Artists is holding an exhibition of
members' work. It is, on the whole, more satis-
factory than usual, because it is less stereotyped
and shows more freshness and variety. Some
of the contributors, like Mr. Cayley Robin-
son and Mr. R. C. W. Bunny, touch an un-

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