Studio: international art (24.1902)

1

The New English Art Club

the subject, to straighten neither modelling nor
colour, supposes such a manipulation of paint as
no one else possesses. The picture is no dream
or reminiscence—it is a piece of good news ; and
so little has the painter felt any call to set it away
from us into a fabled world, that we can catch sight
of bright, pearly Chelsea through the window.

For those who remember the picture, also of
women's figures little draped, which hung at the
last exhibition in the place which Mr. Steer's now
occupies, the gaiety of The Mirror turns a little
point of malice against the painters who are less
at ease. The picture in question was painted in a
helpless mood by a painter of rare and welcome
distinction. Half-hearted, apparently, in pursuit of
a subject which did not favour the exquisite manner
he has got for himself of touching the canvas with
paint, Mr. Charles Shannon drooped his women's
figures about, beyond any demands of composition,
in deprecating poses ; he purified flesh of its blood,
strengthened the shapes of limbs to imposingness,
depressed the heads from their prettiness, suggest-
ing that he had an excuse for painting undraped
figures in the shape of. a moral about marriage, a
lesson which the spectator sought uneasily and
sadly failed to find. One saw with pleasure why
Mr. Shannon dressed the models of his picture at
the International in their peculiar costumes. His
peculiar touch was engaged by the delicate drawing

of a figure under grey silk. Such a reason is
sufficient—one asks for nothing more.

One does ask more from Mr. Strang. That his
unfluent and stiff painting is fitted to tell us that
the man Christ on earth was in simpleness and
poverty among the simple and the poor was hardly
sufficient justification for painting Emmaus, since the
stiff quality is unpleasant, and he wearies us a little
with his long-winded tale of reality. I think he
has wearied himself, for in a moment of forgetful-
ness he has put in a Titian woman holding aloft a
plate of fruit at the back, and an uncalled-for study
of a back in the foreground. Judging from the
picture, one would imagine that " Why not paint
an Emmaus ? " about represented the extent of the
motive which drew the artist to this subject. Once
settled at the task and finding in the execution of
it, in the actual business of painting, little of that
inspiration which might carry a painter, in the
wake of his hand and eye, to a higher plane of
interest, Mr. Strang has, no doubt, put a serious
face upon it. But his Emmaus looks out of place
in an exhibition of the New English Art Club
exactly because it lacks seriousness, a seriousness
which no after contraction of the brows can replace,
for it goes with an initial interest in the vision
offered and a desire to be at it with hand and
medium. With exceptions, of course (Mr. Sholto
Douglas's portrait, for example, is clearly one of

" THE RAINBOW

266

(In possession of C. K. Butler, Esq. Copyright reserved)

BY F. WILSON STEER -