DOI issue:
No. 60 (March, 1898)
DOI article:Baldry, Alfred Lys: The work of T. C. Gotch
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18391#0093
The Work of T. C. Gotch
it was marked by the tragic force which was so well
exemplified in the canvas'7W,v7 Life and Death,
exhibited at the Academy in 1890 ; but always the
chief desire of the artist was to realise the actuality
of the scene he was depicting, to make his picture
convincing by its very avoidance of any sugges-
tion that he had introduced into it anything for
which he had not had a definite and producible
warrant. He based his claim, then, to attention
quite obviously upon his undeniable faculty for
being exact, and he sought for realism as if it
were worthy to be the one supreme aim of all
modern artists.
But even in the midst of his devotion to this
branch of practice he showed that the instinct was
in him to extend the limits of his art so that they
might include something that demanded deeper
thought and a greater degree of invention. In
1886 he exhibited, in the first show of the New
English Art Club, a great painted allegory, Destiny,
which proved that, despite the realistic studies he
had produced before, and was to continue to pro-
duce during the next four or five years, his mind
was inclined towards the personifications of ab-
stract ideas, that are to-day accepted as represent-
ing him most completely. This picture, which is
now the property of the National Gallery of South
Australia, was treated with real dignity and with
full grasp of dramatic significance, but its symbolism
was not subtle and its arrangement was somewhat
obvious. It ranks in the artist's record rather as
an experiment, as an attempt to find the way along
which he wished to travel, than as a final declara-
tion of his conviction. That he had not then
made up his mind is proved by his work during the
succeeding four years, which culminated in the
appearance of the frankly realistic 'Twixt Life a?id
Death. This was simply a pictorial statement of a
scene that might quite possibly have been studied
from real life. It made few demands upon the
painter's imagination, and was calculated to exer-
cise rather his powers of memory and sympathetic
observation than his capacity to reason out and put
into intelligible shape images that were formed in
77
it was marked by the tragic force which was so well
exemplified in the canvas'7W,v7 Life and Death,
exhibited at the Academy in 1890 ; but always the
chief desire of the artist was to realise the actuality
of the scene he was depicting, to make his picture
convincing by its very avoidance of any sugges-
tion that he had introduced into it anything for
which he had not had a definite and producible
warrant. He based his claim, then, to attention
quite obviously upon his undeniable faculty for
being exact, and he sought for realism as if it
were worthy to be the one supreme aim of all
modern artists.
But even in the midst of his devotion to this
branch of practice he showed that the instinct was
in him to extend the limits of his art so that they
might include something that demanded deeper
thought and a greater degree of invention. In
1886 he exhibited, in the first show of the New
English Art Club, a great painted allegory, Destiny,
which proved that, despite the realistic studies he
had produced before, and was to continue to pro-
duce during the next four or five years, his mind
was inclined towards the personifications of ab-
stract ideas, that are to-day accepted as represent-
ing him most completely. This picture, which is
now the property of the National Gallery of South
Australia, was treated with real dignity and with
full grasp of dramatic significance, but its symbolism
was not subtle and its arrangement was somewhat
obvious. It ranks in the artist's record rather as
an experiment, as an attempt to find the way along
which he wished to travel, than as a final declara-
tion of his conviction. That he had not then
made up his mind is proved by his work during the
succeeding four years, which culminated in the
appearance of the frankly realistic 'Twixt Life a?id
Death. This was simply a pictorial statement of a
scene that might quite possibly have been studied
from real life. It made few demands upon the
painter's imagination, and was calculated to exer-
cise rather his powers of memory and sympathetic
observation than his capacity to reason out and put
into intelligible shape images that were formed in
77