DOI Heft:
No. 59 (February, 1898)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: The work of E. Borough Johnson
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18391#0023
TJie JVork of E. Borough Johnson
"EVANGELINE FINDING GABRIEL" FROM A PAINTING BY E. BOROUGH JOHNSON
and is emphasised by the reproductions which interpretation of his thoughts about art, and this
accompany this article. They show, perhaps more gives them a value that cannot be over-estimated,
vividly than anything else he does, how his instinc- Yet it can hardly be said that, even in his exhibi-
tive realism is saved, by subtle perception of line tion pictures, he has, so far, surrendered much of
and modelling, from ever degenerating into exag- his individuality to please the taste of the people
geration or from being warped into caricature; and who do not think as he does. Sombre subjects
at the same time they reveal plainly the spirit and are notoriously not calculated to meet with much
intellectual intention by which he is controlled, approval from a public which prefers to be tickled
In such studies there is none of that tendency to and amused. The representation of the tragedies
make concessions to the popular fancy which he, of low life, the exhibition of squalor and suffering,
like all sincere artists, recognises as one of the are less likely to excite the sympathies of the
chief dangers in the path of the man who paints to modern art lover than to affront his aesthetic con-
exhibit and, as an almost inevitable sequence, to victions. But Mr. Borough Johnson, so far as his
sell. Whatever may be the obligation which a experiments have at present carried him, is essen-
painter feels to conceal, in his gallery pictures, his tially an illustrator of the grim and painful side of
strongest convictions, because they may be out of existence. He has studied and rendered, hitherto,
harmony with the less educated views of his patrons, in his figure-pictures, not much that would corn-
in his studies he almost invariably gives us his real mend itself to the men who deny to art the right to
self; and Mr. Borough Johnson in his pencil draw- be didactic by the exhibition of the startling con-
ings has no hesitation and no wish to hide one atom trasts between poverty and wealth. He has occu-
of his beliefs. We may take them as the truest pied himself largely with what may be called social
10
"EVANGELINE FINDING GABRIEL" FROM A PAINTING BY E. BOROUGH JOHNSON
and is emphasised by the reproductions which interpretation of his thoughts about art, and this
accompany this article. They show, perhaps more gives them a value that cannot be over-estimated,
vividly than anything else he does, how his instinc- Yet it can hardly be said that, even in his exhibi-
tive realism is saved, by subtle perception of line tion pictures, he has, so far, surrendered much of
and modelling, from ever degenerating into exag- his individuality to please the taste of the people
geration or from being warped into caricature; and who do not think as he does. Sombre subjects
at the same time they reveal plainly the spirit and are notoriously not calculated to meet with much
intellectual intention by which he is controlled, approval from a public which prefers to be tickled
In such studies there is none of that tendency to and amused. The representation of the tragedies
make concessions to the popular fancy which he, of low life, the exhibition of squalor and suffering,
like all sincere artists, recognises as one of the are less likely to excite the sympathies of the
chief dangers in the path of the man who paints to modern art lover than to affront his aesthetic con-
exhibit and, as an almost inevitable sequence, to victions. But Mr. Borough Johnson, so far as his
sell. Whatever may be the obligation which a experiments have at present carried him, is essen-
painter feels to conceal, in his gallery pictures, his tially an illustrator of the grim and painful side of
strongest convictions, because they may be out of existence. He has studied and rendered, hitherto,
harmony with the less educated views of his patrons, in his figure-pictures, not much that would corn-
in his studies he almost invariably gives us his real mend itself to the men who deny to art the right to
self; and Mr. Borough Johnson in his pencil draw- be didactic by the exhibition of the startling con-
ings has no hesitation and no wish to hide one atom trasts between poverty and wealth. He has occu-
of his beliefs. We may take them as the truest pied himself largely with what may be called social
10