Studio: international art (23.1901)

James Pryde s Drawings

and Phil May, he does not appeal irresistibly to all
sorts and conditions of men. For a designer to
delight both his fellow-artists and the great public,
which is not specially informed in matters of art
and takes no heed of technical skill, is a rare piece
of good fortune, destined to only a few men in
each generation. For the most part, the designer
who is true to himself, who will not for any most
tempting consideration win applause in a fashion
of which his artistic conscience disapproves, finds
that his first, and perhaps his least congenial,
business is the education of a public for himself.
To this process Mr. Pryde, at all events, has
an almost unconquerable repugnance. If he

produces much he exhibits little, and that spas-
modically.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising
that Mr. Pryde has come to be regarded rather as
the partner of a brilliant collaboration than as an
artist with a powerful and definite individuality of
his own. And yet when he has exhibited with the
International Society at Knightsbridge, his work
has never encountered that most galling form of
destructive criticism which is silence. Some opinion
—whether flattering or the reverse—it has never
failed to call forth. It would have been extra-
ordinary if this had not been the case, for Mr.
Pryde's work is altogether too remarkable to be

FROM A DRAWING BY JAMES PRYDE

102