Studio: international art (12.1898)

Mr. F. E. fames s IVater-Colours

Francis |amcs. They are of assistance to him,
even of incalculable assistance to him, in all the
things that he depicts, in all the visions he realises.
Bui I think they are of most use to him of all
when it is (lowers he is looking at ; composing w ith
grace : painting with ineffable charm.

And, so far as 1 understand, flowers were the
subject with which he chose to begin.

It would be thoroughly unfair, now, to Francis
lames to consider him only as a flower-painter.
Outside flowers altogether, there is a class of effect
which he has made; his own, and which is his by
reason of his habitual command of colour, fearless,
original, and gay. T am talking of the church
interiors, beheld in keen, clear light, and interest-
ing less it may be by their architecture—as to which
while Mr. Fulleylove, Mr. Albert (loodwin, and Sir
Wyke Bayliss, speak, who is there that shall speak
with equal authority to-day? - - interesting less
by their architecture than by their hues and their
illuminations, and their accidents and accessories ;
the ornaments about the altar, the wreath of
flowers that encircle the figure of a saint, the bit
of heraldic glass that recalls Nuremburg, the sacred
piece hoisted above the altar; the banner, it may
be, or perhaps only the pink cushion, or the little

green curtain that gives privacy to the box of the
confessional. At Rothenburg, as well as at
Nuremburg itself, Mr. James went in for very
serious draughtsman's study of statues in their
niches, of the traceried wall, of plate upon the
altar, of thi s and that little detail, ol \\hi» h the
treatment remained broad while it became finished.
At Nuremburg—to name two, that lor excellent
reasons T remember--admirable is the broad and
luminousness, picturesqueness of his interiors of
the kaiser kapelle and of St. Sebald. At Rothen
burg, as far as simple architecture is concerned,
what a variety lay before him ! And yet from all
its richness and variety he turned now and then
to paint the humble window of the little bourgeois
or little tradespeople's house ; the window sill with
its few pots of green leaved and blossoming flowers,
seen, some of them, against the brown red shutter;
fragile fuchsia, and healthy geranium, and that puce
flower you know so well, and its name eludes you
—does it ?—for the moment.

But whether Francis James is occupied with
flower painting, or with church interiors of Germany
or of the Eastern Riviera, or with landscape pieces,
or with studies of the village shop, it is always the
same spirit of broad interpretation that dominates