DOI Heft:
Nr 76 (July 1899)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: The work of W. Reynolds-Stephens
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19232#0095
The Work of W. Reynolds-Stephens
his student life. His course of training was marked
by the same desire for comprehensive knowledge
that has controlled the entire course of his mature
practice. He was born, in 1862, in Canada, but
left that part of the world in very early childhood,
and was educated in England and Germany. Like
so many other men who have taken high rank in
the artistic profession he was destined for a very
different career, and his boyhood was passed in
pursuits quite unlike those which he has since
adopted. The particular vocation for which he
was considered to be fitted was engineering, doubt-
less because he gave evidence even then of that
constructive sense which has played since a part of
great importance in his art work; and until he
reached the age of twenty years the possibility of
any change in his occupation was not contemplated.
But then his craving to become an artist proved
irresistible; and, despite his prospects of success
as an engineer, he abandoned a post of some con-
siderable value to launch himself upon the sea of
troubles which is popularly supposed to be always
ready to engulf the aspirant for artistic fame.
From 1884 to 1887 he was a student in the
Royal Academy Schools, and while there he made
it quite clear that lack neither of capacity nor
industry would stand in the way of his progress in
after life. During these three years he distin-
guished himself by taking the Landseer Scholar-
ship for sculpture, and prizes for a set of figures
modelled from life, and a model of a design, as
well as another award, in painting, for a design
for the decoration of a public building. This
decoration he was, in accordance with the custom
of the Academy, commissioned to carry out in a
permanent form. The place selected for it was
a wall-panel in the refreshment room at Burling-
ton House, and, as events have proved, the choice
was a most unfortunate one. The space which
was allotted to the young artist is so situated
that any kind of painting applied to it is doomed
inevitably to destruction. Through the wall itself
passes the flue from the kitchens beneath the
refreshment room, immediately below the panel
is a large coil of hot-water pipes, and on either
side of it are two large ventilators. Obviously,
any mural decoration exposed to the changes of
temperature unavoidable with such surroundings,
and raked constantly by blasts of hot air laden
with London dust, would soon cease to be any-
thing but a grimy caricature; and this piece of
work, though Mr. Reynolds-Stephens completed
it so recently as 1890, has already become a ghost
of its former self. It has had to be cleaned so
78
often and so violently that what remains of it now
is only the preparatory under painting, and as time
goes on more dust and more cleansing will pro-
bably remove even these lower strata of the picture
and leave the wall once more a surface of bare
plaster. That this would be the fate of his design
he pointed out to the Council of the Academy,
and he received from them a promise that steps
should be taken to amend matters, but this pro-
mise has never been fulfilled.
The first appearance of Mr. Reynold-Stephens
as an exhibitor in the Academy galleries was made
in 1885, while he was still a student in the schools.
His contribution, which began a series that has
continued without a break until the present time,
was a water-colour drawing, A Valley near the Sea;
but it by no means foreshadowed any devotion on
his part to the particular class of art which it
represented. Indeed in 1887 he appeared not as
a painter but a sculptor, for he exhibited a statuette,
Pigeons; and although another water-colour draw-
ing, Slimmer, was hung in the following year,
sculpture again occupied him in 1889, when his
chief works were a high relief, Truth and Justice,
and a low relief, The Women of Amphissa, an
adaptation in the form of a long frieze from the
picture by Mr. Alma Tadema, for whose studio
the work was executed. A wall fountain showed
in 1890 his inventive power and his skill in the
application of decorative principles; and then for
“briar-rose” patera
BY W. REYNOLDS-STEPHENS
his student life. His course of training was marked
by the same desire for comprehensive knowledge
that has controlled the entire course of his mature
practice. He was born, in 1862, in Canada, but
left that part of the world in very early childhood,
and was educated in England and Germany. Like
so many other men who have taken high rank in
the artistic profession he was destined for a very
different career, and his boyhood was passed in
pursuits quite unlike those which he has since
adopted. The particular vocation for which he
was considered to be fitted was engineering, doubt-
less because he gave evidence even then of that
constructive sense which has played since a part of
great importance in his art work; and until he
reached the age of twenty years the possibility of
any change in his occupation was not contemplated.
But then his craving to become an artist proved
irresistible; and, despite his prospects of success
as an engineer, he abandoned a post of some con-
siderable value to launch himself upon the sea of
troubles which is popularly supposed to be always
ready to engulf the aspirant for artistic fame.
From 1884 to 1887 he was a student in the
Royal Academy Schools, and while there he made
it quite clear that lack neither of capacity nor
industry would stand in the way of his progress in
after life. During these three years he distin-
guished himself by taking the Landseer Scholar-
ship for sculpture, and prizes for a set of figures
modelled from life, and a model of a design, as
well as another award, in painting, for a design
for the decoration of a public building. This
decoration he was, in accordance with the custom
of the Academy, commissioned to carry out in a
permanent form. The place selected for it was
a wall-panel in the refreshment room at Burling-
ton House, and, as events have proved, the choice
was a most unfortunate one. The space which
was allotted to the young artist is so situated
that any kind of painting applied to it is doomed
inevitably to destruction. Through the wall itself
passes the flue from the kitchens beneath the
refreshment room, immediately below the panel
is a large coil of hot-water pipes, and on either
side of it are two large ventilators. Obviously,
any mural decoration exposed to the changes of
temperature unavoidable with such surroundings,
and raked constantly by blasts of hot air laden
with London dust, would soon cease to be any-
thing but a grimy caricature; and this piece of
work, though Mr. Reynolds-Stephens completed
it so recently as 1890, has already become a ghost
of its former self. It has had to be cleaned so
78
often and so violently that what remains of it now
is only the preparatory under painting, and as time
goes on more dust and more cleansing will pro-
bably remove even these lower strata of the picture
and leave the wall once more a surface of bare
plaster. That this would be the fate of his design
he pointed out to the Council of the Academy,
and he received from them a promise that steps
should be taken to amend matters, but this pro-
mise has never been fulfilled.
The first appearance of Mr. Reynold-Stephens
as an exhibitor in the Academy galleries was made
in 1885, while he was still a student in the schools.
His contribution, which began a series that has
continued without a break until the present time,
was a water-colour drawing, A Valley near the Sea;
but it by no means foreshadowed any devotion on
his part to the particular class of art which it
represented. Indeed in 1887 he appeared not as
a painter but a sculptor, for he exhibited a statuette,
Pigeons; and although another water-colour draw-
ing, Slimmer, was hung in the following year,
sculpture again occupied him in 1889, when his
chief works were a high relief, Truth and Justice,
and a low relief, The Women of Amphissa, an
adaptation in the form of a long frieze from the
picture by Mr. Alma Tadema, for whose studio
the work was executed. A wall fountain showed
in 1890 his inventive power and his skill in the
application of decorative principles; and then for
“briar-rose” patera
BY W. REYNOLDS-STEPHENS