Studio: international art (13.1898)

Mr. Nico Jungmann! s Drawings

been (to quote his own words) " to make studies
per .w, and make them express their own character."
Later on he hopes to proceed to finished paintings;
but for a while he is satisfied to complete isolated
decorative drawings, such as those here re-
produced.

but these studies are by no means an equivalent
for a "snap-shot" coloured by hand. When a
happy idea strikes him he makes a careful drawing
of it without models, and some of these are so true
and so beautiful that, but for his own playful con-
tempt for them, one might easily be roused to enthu-
siasm, although he declines to regard them as
completed works. Afterwards he poses his models,
and in a straightforward and most accomplished
manner draws the figure or the group with infinite
care. The actual drawings are made with a sort
of crayon of his own preparation, and to an outsider
the results appear to be just elaborate pencil
studies. But the curious power and realism of his

2f>

completed sketches are accompanied by SO much
remarkable subtlety in the use of the line, th.it face
to face with the actual work one cannot help feel-
in- inclined, under the influence of a lir^t im
pression, to forbear from any further and lengthier
analysis, and to rest content with the ensemble.
After the drawing has been advanced to this
stage, Mr. Jungmann adds the necessary colour,
and the work is complete. "That is all!'" as a
conjurer who has mystified you exclaims, when, to
heighten the impression, he professes to explain
one of his feats of legerdemain.

At twenty-five, to have done as much as he has
is a worthy achievement, especially when one re-
members that it is only two years since Mr. Nico
Jungmann's studies of London life shown at " The
Little Salon " were first mentioned with approba-
tion in these pages, with comment that expressed
faith in his future. But the fulfilment then seemed
far more distant than it has proved to be, for in
the short time which has elapsed Mr. Jungmann
has developed a distinctly personal manner of
expression. Selecting subjects from his native
country, he has recorded them in a way that is at
once singularly like the effect of a good Japanese
colour-print, and yet no more imitative of the
method of Harunobu or Hokusai, than is one of
Mr. W. P. Nicholson's woodcuts. It is pleasant to
recognise the influence of Japan manifesting itself
indirectly in the work of many of the younger men;
for it is a mere commonplace to assert that only
those influences which can be completely assimi-
lated, and are reproduced indirectly, become of
lasting value. To make a spurious Japanese
colour-print is not a laudable effort, for, even if it
be sufficiently like its prototype to pass as genuine
for a single minute, the pleasure it yields only lasts
as long as its imposture remains undetected. But
to assimilate the pleasant convention of outline
and colour, with or without landscape or other
background, is open to all who care to attempt
it, and Mr. Jungmann, whether consciously or
the reverse, has in these studies of 1 Hitch
peasants approached the effect of a first-rate
Japanese colour-print. This is perhaps less ap-
parent in the illustration in colour which accom-
panies this article, than in the majority of his
designs. Despite the skilful paraphrase which has
reproduced " Neeltje Tuyp" so dexterously, the
reduction in scale (the original is eighteen inches
high) and the different texture of the paper are
responsible for the loss of a certain atmospheric
greyness which brings the water-colour into perfect
tone, and adds a singular delicacy to its robust