DOI Heft:
No. 49 (April, 1897)
DOI Artikel:Garstin, Norman: The work of T. Millie Dow
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18388#0157
The Work of T. Millie Dotu
but he oftentimes depicts fancies that take upon
themselves bodily form, yet holding aloof from
gross reality. To do this successfully is a supreme
effort of art, for in a fanciful subject absolute
realism destroys that mysterious quality which is
its chief reason for existence. The imagination is
cheated of its share by the completeness of the
statement of facts. Here is the great power of a
convention—it does not state facts absolutely; you
know what is meant, but at the same time you are
not for a moment deluded into thinking that you
see everything the artist means to express, and
are no passport for us into this realm : we must
procure our own credentials, we must prove our
own identity.
Mr. Dow seeks to present his imaginative sub-
jects with all the craft of a modern workman. He
trusts to his refinements of perception as to a
winnowing fan that shall separate those grains that
he would keep from the light chaff of irrelevance
that would obscure his subject.
In landscape Mr. Dow's artistic divinations are
perhaps at their happiest, because his colour sense
is so delightful; and the beauty of landscape is
A CORNER OF
TANGIER. BY
T. MILLIE DOW
your mind bravely busies itself filling in the blank
spaces.
The very unlikeness of the work to everyday
nature is its passport beyond the realms of every-
day nature, but the conventions of our ancestors
after all chiefly a matter of colour. Mr. Dow is
not occupied with the topographical facts of land-
scape, except for his own purposes of design, but
each picture portrays some exquisitely seen scheme
of colour and effect, some opalescent morning,
but he oftentimes depicts fancies that take upon
themselves bodily form, yet holding aloof from
gross reality. To do this successfully is a supreme
effort of art, for in a fanciful subject absolute
realism destroys that mysterious quality which is
its chief reason for existence. The imagination is
cheated of its share by the completeness of the
statement of facts. Here is the great power of a
convention—it does not state facts absolutely; you
know what is meant, but at the same time you are
not for a moment deluded into thinking that you
see everything the artist means to express, and
are no passport for us into this realm : we must
procure our own credentials, we must prove our
own identity.
Mr. Dow seeks to present his imaginative sub-
jects with all the craft of a modern workman. He
trusts to his refinements of perception as to a
winnowing fan that shall separate those grains that
he would keep from the light chaff of irrelevance
that would obscure his subject.
In landscape Mr. Dow's artistic divinations are
perhaps at their happiest, because his colour sense
is so delightful; and the beauty of landscape is
A CORNER OF
TANGIER. BY
T. MILLIE DOW
your mind bravely busies itself filling in the blank
spaces.
The very unlikeness of the work to everyday
nature is its passport beyond the realms of every-
day nature, but the conventions of our ancestors
after all chiefly a matter of colour. Mr. Dow is
not occupied with the topographical facts of land-
scape, except for his own purposes of design, but
each picture portrays some exquisitely seen scheme
of colour and effect, some opalescent morning,