DOI Heft:
No. 111 (June, 1902)
DOI Artikel:Studio-talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19876#0071
Studio- Talk
"INNOCENTS ABROAD" BY J. S. SARGENT, R.A.
(See Philadelphia Studio- Talk)
What their subjects? What the general aim of and careful observation of the moods of nature,
their work ? The recent show is an answer to all and an honest endeavour faithfully to reproduce
these queries, at least a partial answer, and, to all them. Indeed, this devotion to nature is, if
intents and purposes, that answer, as far as it goes, possible, sometimes carried too far; resulting in
is a satisfactory one. There has been, during the a certain loss of individuality in the artist, and
last few years, a kind of pause in art-production at the critic is tempted to ask : have these young
Munich, and what has been done lately has not men no opinions of their own to express, or
been quite up to the level of the traditions of the is technical excellence their one and only aim ?
past. The old keen appreciation of nature seems Is their imagination lying altogether fallow ?
to have been to some extent in abeyance, and Is their ambition altogether in abeyance ? Have
the exquisite harmony of colour, which was one they no yearning after personal distinction, no
of the most marked characteristics of the modern original ideas to which they are eager to give
school, has been replaced by a reversion to the voice in beautiful form and colour? A merely
old monotonous and gloomy uniformity, at one superficial observer might say that all these indict-
time so universally adopted, yet in spite of ments are proved, and on the strength of that
which every artist had an individual style of unfair decision prophesy evil things for the art of
his own ; or, in the case of the few excep- Munich. Those, on the other hand, who have
tions to this rule, formed himself on the style watched for the last few years the development of
of some well-accredited master. Great as have the art-school of the Capital realise only too well
been the difficulties with which the younger men what self-abnegation on the part of these young
have had to contend, there is now no doubt that painters is implied by this readiness of theirs to
those difficulties have been or are in a fair way to restrain their own imagination and seek to give
be overcome, and it is only in the work of some first a purely impersonal rendering of what they see,
few of the older members of the Society that the rather than impressions coloured by the passage
faults referred to above are noticeable. On every through their own minds. German artists in
side we are met with examples of an earnest stud general, not only those of modern Munich, have
59
"INNOCENTS ABROAD" BY J. S. SARGENT, R.A.
(See Philadelphia Studio- Talk)
What their subjects? What the general aim of and careful observation of the moods of nature,
their work ? The recent show is an answer to all and an honest endeavour faithfully to reproduce
these queries, at least a partial answer, and, to all them. Indeed, this devotion to nature is, if
intents and purposes, that answer, as far as it goes, possible, sometimes carried too far; resulting in
is a satisfactory one. There has been, during the a certain loss of individuality in the artist, and
last few years, a kind of pause in art-production at the critic is tempted to ask : have these young
Munich, and what has been done lately has not men no opinions of their own to express, or
been quite up to the level of the traditions of the is technical excellence their one and only aim ?
past. The old keen appreciation of nature seems Is their imagination lying altogether fallow ?
to have been to some extent in abeyance, and Is their ambition altogether in abeyance ? Have
the exquisite harmony of colour, which was one they no yearning after personal distinction, no
of the most marked characteristics of the modern original ideas to which they are eager to give
school, has been replaced by a reversion to the voice in beautiful form and colour? A merely
old monotonous and gloomy uniformity, at one superficial observer might say that all these indict-
time so universally adopted, yet in spite of ments are proved, and on the strength of that
which every artist had an individual style of unfair decision prophesy evil things for the art of
his own ; or, in the case of the few excep- Munich. Those, on the other hand, who have
tions to this rule, formed himself on the style watched for the last few years the development of
of some well-accredited master. Great as have the art-school of the Capital realise only too well
been the difficulties with which the younger men what self-abnegation on the part of these young
have had to contend, there is now no doubt that painters is implied by this readiness of theirs to
those difficulties have been or are in a fair way to restrain their own imagination and seek to give
be overcome, and it is only in the work of some first a purely impersonal rendering of what they see,
few of the older members of the Society that the rather than impressions coloured by the passage
faults referred to above are noticeable. On every through their own minds. German artists in
side we are met with examples of an earnest stud general, not only those of modern Munich, have
59