Studio: international art (20.1900)

yantes A umonier

style of work, I have always felt grateful for the
kindly help I received from Mr. Wyllie."

In 1873, when Mr. Aumonier was still working
as a designer for calicos, his beautiful landscape,
An English Cottage Home, was hung on the line
at the Academy, and purchased by Sir Newton
Mappin for his collection at Sheffield. The position
of the persevering and hard-working student was
now, to a great extent, made, though it took many
years for his peculiar style of painting to be fairly
appreciated by the general public. In France the
faithful, fresh and original treatment of landscape
would probably at once have met with full recog-
nition, but in England such delicate work is apt to
escape notice; why, it is difficult to explain, unless
it be the result of the unfortunate eagerness of
critics to group all art workers in schools, and to
leave out those whose very genius sets them apart
from all other interpreters of Nature. It was well
said by the author of an able monograph on the art
of England, written in 1890: "Like all the really
great artists in the world, Mr. Aumonier retires
into the background and causes his pictures to
talk for him. We do not say ' This is a landscape
according to Aumonier' as we do say ' This is a
landscape according to Vicat Cole or Leader.' We
simply consider the scene, its beauty or interest,

and forget in the pleasure we gain from its con-
templation the method by which it has been
produced; and those of us who have painted
sufficiently from Nature, or who have studied Nature
sufficiently without painting to know the aspect she
assumes in this English land, must recognise the
sincerity and adequacy of this art. Even Cox
himself does not give us a fresher, more thoroughly
English rendering of English scenery, nor is
De Wint more unpretending and more sincere."

Mr. Aumonier has never studied abroad, and he
never left England until 1891, when he spent part
of the year in Italy, chiefly in Venice and in the
mountains of Venetia. " I have never," he says,
" copied a picture for study. I have never made
photographs instead of sketches, or worked from
them. I don't believe in it. I care very little
for clever technique—the individual art feeling in
work is the quality that appeals most to me."

It is, indeed, just this " individual art feeling "
in James Aumonier's own work which appeals so
very forcibly to all who are able to appreciate his
true observation and close interpretation of the
quiet homely English scenes he especially delights
to render. Take, for instance, his When the Tide
is out, and the Silver Lining of the Cloud, exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1895, the Old Sussex

A SUSSEX HAYFIELD" FROM A PAINTING BY JAMES AUMONIER

(By permission of Robert Dalby, Esq.)

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