Studio: international art (22.1901)

/. M. Swan, A.R.A.

In the practical part of his profession Mr. Swan
is remarkable for his command over many materials.
As a craftsman he is unusually well equipped, for
he can express himself convincingly in almost all
the mediums that are available for the worker in
art, and he amply understands the possibilities
and limitations of each one of them. As an oil
painter he is fluent and direct, and yet quiet and
well-disciplined. His touch is broad and easy,
and he paints with a fulness of pigment that gives
richness and solidity to his pictures ; but he avoids
that display of brushwork for its own sake, which
is apt to lead astray the man who suffers under a
consciousness of his own cleverness. Even in his
most detailed canvases there is no "niggling" and
no straining after elaboration of paint texture.
Every brush-mark is considered, deliberate, and
significant, always beautifully drawn, and set down
with concise intention; and each one has its share
in the completion of the technical scheme. No
suggestion of haste ever weakens the effectiveness
of his handiwork; it reflects the habitual foresight
that has been characteristic of the artist all through
his life. Each touch is thought out before it is
put on the canvas, and it fulfils its purpose exactly
because that purpose has been thoroughly under-
stood beforehand. It does not follow that Mr.
Swan is a slow worker because he is deliberate in
this way; on the contrary, he has a very definite
gift of speed; but no one knows better the difference
between speed and hurry, and the value of pre-
liminary care as an aid to rapidity of expression.

His water-colours, pastels, and black-and-white
drawings are equally to be praised for their strength
and completeness, and for the manner in which
they regard the distinctive qualities of the re-
spective materials. In water-colour he is almost as
forcible as he is in oils, but he gains his effects
straightforwardly, and without any imitation of the
more solid medium. For pastel, he has, perhaps,
a greater liking than for water-colour. This method
of working is so well adapted by its simplicity for
his particular purposes, and gives him so readily
the results at which he aims, that it is easy to
understand his preference for it over another that
is less tractable and less trustworthy in its
mechanism. To be able to draw in colour without
being hampered by the tricks of his medium is for
him an especial advantage, as he can devote his
whole attention to the subject before him, and can
record it without a moment's hesitation while the
impression it has made upon him is fresh in his
mind. It is this rapidity of working that gives to
his pastels their unusual quality. They are
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astonishingly sure and delightfully certain, and
have been carried out obviously in moments of
enthusiasm when the best part of his artistic
nature has been centred upon something that
seemed to him to be worthy of a special effort. In
black-and-white he is even more summary in his
manner, and more often than not he simplifies his
statement so as to confine it to little more than a
single detail.

To his sculpture he devotes all his powers of
design, and all his love of flowing line and
exquisite intricacy of curve and modelling. He
begins by building up his work in large, simple
masses, in a curiously rugged and uncompromising
fashion; and these masses are carefully adjusted
and their relation one to the other exactly decided
before the filling in of lesser details is taken at all
into account. Even in the final finishing and
working up of the surface he preserves the same
sort of largeness of execution, and tries to retain
something of the spontaneous ease of the first clay
sketch. To be superficial or mechanical is as far
from his intention in sculpture as it is in oil
painting. Such easily attained qualities are not
what he desires ; he wants instead the bigness that
comes from the pursuit of great ideals, and he pre-
fers the ruggedness that means much to the sham
finish that is only too often a cloak for uncertainty.

Indeed, in this the whole character of Mr.
Swan's art can be summed up. It is rugged and
large, with the forcible assertion of what he believes
that is only possible to a man who has too much
independence to try to make friends with people
whose minds are always wavering under outside
influences. The fashions of this school or that are
nothing to him, and he would never surrender his
beliefs to curry favour with the world. He knows
that his convictions are not the careless conclusions
that come from hasty study; and he feels, as
he can without conceit, that on his own subject
he can hold his own against any opponent. So he
takes up his position and sturdily refuses to yield
to any pressure that may be put upon him by
the timid lovers of weak convention. He is
moved to protest against the trivialities that
are the resort of the incompetent, and he makes
his protest effectual by his avowal of his own
strong creed and by the illustrations he gives of
his confidence in the faith that he professes. From
such a personality, work that is suave and elegantly
artificial is not to be expected—it would be too
incongruous and too unnatural. But we may well
be thankful for the presence of such an artist in
our native school. He is a rallying point for men