Studio: international art (12.1898)

Frank Brangwyn and his Art

"LE ROI DU CHANT1ER." DESIGN FOR TAPESTRY BY FRANK BRANGWYN

placed more or less hors de combat; some have their
hands to their heads, others are crying in their
pain. By various signs we are made to feel the
price they have paid for their victory. A brawny
ruffian who has come through unscathed is hand-
ling the oar, urging the boat through the churned-
up water, water of the darkest and most uncom-
promising blue. The town itself is in flames, the
hill-side a hot burnt yellow, and the whole a strong
demonstration of what, but for the admirable skill
in which the colours are arranged and harmonised,
and for the sanction which the theme gives—a
highly dramatic and violent episode—might be
called coarse colour. The qualities revealed in The
Buccaneers were repeated in The Slave Market,
Orange Market, Trade on the Beach, Blood of the
Grape, and in many other works. The Slave Market

was exhibited at the Royal Academy and is now in
the permanent collection at Southport. It is a
remarkably well-balanced design and like all Mr.
Brangwyn's pictures, it has the merit of contain-
ing as a subsidiary, though, I submit, not to be ne-
glected virtue, a story or idea. I apprehend that
in painting his pictures Mr. Brangwyn's principal
aim—and in fact this is obvious to the most super-
ficial—is to produce a decorative design, pleasing
in line and sensuous in colour. This, of course,
should be the primary aim of every picture, though
every picture which has a naturalistic base, as the
foregoing pictures by Mr. Brangwyn have, must be
in the sentiment of nature. That they should
contain some literary significance has been held by
many modern critics, quite wrongly however, to be
an artistic error. On the contrary, the absence of