Studio: international art (12.1898)

Frank Brangwyn and his Art

This was in 1890. It was then that the present
writer first made acquaintance with the artist's work,
and he can distinctly remember the strong, though
not unmixed, impression created on his mind by a
picture from his brush, entitled Ashore. This
picture represented the rescue of the crew of a
vessel which, coming to grief in a gale, had run
aground. It is a characteristic of much new and
vital work that on first encountering it, the impres-
sion it leaves is not altogether favourable. Un-
consciously, and however catholic the mind of the
critic may be, it cannot help measuring everything
fresh by a standard, an impalpable standard, result-
ing from the study and contemplation of pictures
generally, a standard which exists, so to speak, in
the impenetrable recesses of the brain. So that
even those critics and amateurs who, free from parti
pris, are prepared to accept and hail everything in
art that is worthy wherever it is to be found, did not
accept Mr. Brangwyn unreservedly upon their first
acquaintance with his wTork. The year following
Mr. Brangwyn's debut, 1891, saw him again at the
Royal Society of British Artists, the directorate of
which gallery gave wall space, and with wisdom
and justice, to his Burial at Sea. This picture
was afterwards exhibited at the Salon, and was
awarded a medal. In this year Mr. Brangwyn
again wen Sojth and exhibited the results of his
labours in Bond Street. In 1892, his Convict Ship
was shown at the Academy. Afterwards, at the
Chicago Exhibition, it gained for its painter a gold
medal. It excited a great deal of notice both in
England and America, and from this time forth the
art world began to reckon with Mr. Brangwryn, and
to watch his career wTith the interest born of con-
fident expectation. It was not long before his work
began to be talked about in every continental capital,
and his pictures to find places of honour, not only
in Paris, but in Berlin, Copenhagen, Wurtemberg,
Munich and other European cities. The continent
is not inclined to take English art too seriously,
and the Englishman who gains a European repu-
tation while still in his twenties is to be envied.
A few years later the French critic, M. Renan,
while by no means spoiling Mr. Brangwyn with
unreserved praise—he was sufficiently severe on
his limitations, and not without justice condemned,
as applied to certain works, the negligence of his
drawing—expressed the hope that Mr. Brangwyn
would become a leader for our young painters.
"Mr. Brangwyn's pictures," wrote M. Renan, "are
remarkable ; the eye is happy in front of the frames
of this new comer; the eye opens and takes in a
Teal joy. In France we shall all be sincerely dis-

appointed if Mr. Brangwyn does not keep the
promises he is giving to art." Of the The Buc-
caneers, the picture immediately following The
Convict Ship, exhibited at the Salon, and afterwards
at the Grafton Galleries, this French critic says,
" I can assure you it was appreciated by all true
French artists ; among the industrial products that
crowd the Champs Elysees, it will remain dazzling
in the memory of all." I quote M. Renan thus
far to prove that in a very few years Mr. Brangwyn
had succeeded in capturing French appreciation, and
because his criticism, expressed with native vivacity,
is identical with what I have adventured elsewhere,
and could but paraphrase once again to-day. It
is true to say of Frank Brangwyn's canvases that
the eye is happy in front of them, that it opens
and takes in a real joy, and that his pictures remain
dazzling in the memory. Flis pictures positively
swim in colour; his reds, blues, and greens are
juxtaposed with daring, but with a daring which
more than justifies itself. It is rare indeed for a
Western artist to possess the faculty, the powrer to
revel in joyous abandonment, in a perfect blaze of
colour, and yet never to be guilty of an impropriety;
never to allow one colour to trespass upon the
rights of another, or to offer it an affront. The
Western artist, so soon as he relaxes, so soon as
he tries to escape from rigid severity, degenerates
into licence and vulgarity, while the Eastern artist
can play with colour without committing offences
against decency and decorum.

It is, of course, this particular faculty, this
orientalism which gives to Mr. Brangwyn's art its
especial value and distinction. In The Buccaneers,
as it seems to me, he made good the claim to
possess this peculiarly rare colour instinct as
applied to Western painters, a claim tacitly advanced
by his previous work. This picture represents an
incident, at one time a common enough one, and
still unhappily not of infrequent occurrence, in the
life of a Mediterranean town. A party of buc-
caneers, Riffian pirates for all I know, have set
fire to a town, having previously pillaged it. The
marauders are putting off with their booty in suc-
cessive boats. In the foreground of the work we
have the leader of the gang and his party, a boat
full of scoundrels of all shades of black and brown,
dressed in silks and fabrics of every imaginable
colour. In the stern of the vessel sits the captain,
his hand on the rudder, a picture of unscrupulous
and cynical daring, the bright lines of his head-
gear and zouave backed by the blood-red flag on
which the insignia, appropriated from some petty
principality, is displayed. Many of the crew are

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