Studio: international art (27.1903)

John Lavery

prominent qualities of his style could be admir- of the fact that here is a British painter, who has
ably demonstrated. He secured graceful pose and never been treated with anything approaching
movement in the figures, with sparkles of sunlight fairness in his own land, but whose works
and shadow in the artistic composition of the land- have nevertheless been eagerly sought after and
scape. ... In colour the picture is very agreeable, acquired by nearly every Government of Europe,
being a scheme of warm-toned white with green." Obviously this home neglect is partly due to the
Of the same class is the picture here described deplorable fact that Great Britain, in spite of
as A Portrait Group, which shows us a party of being numbered amongst the richest nations of
croquet players playing the game on a lawn, with the world, is the one nation which does nothing,
the sea as a background. Apropos of sea studies, in a national sense, to encourage living painters;
nothing could well be more delightful than a but, worse still, is so supinely indifferent to home-
picture entitled Ariadne, upon which I am in- born and contemporary genius, that it allows the
formed the artist has worked again and again since gallery going by the name of the National Gallery
its first exhibition many years ago. It chanced to of British Art, established by the munificence of a
return to his studio some few weeks since, and I private individual, the late Sir Henry Tate, to be
had an opportunity of seeing it in its latest state, dominated by a body of men whose qualification
A more chaste, and indeed
classic, study of the nude
—a young girl, her long
tresses blowing in the
breeze, is facing a deep-
blue sea—one need not
hope to find. As a deco-
ration, too, this picture is
singularly successful.
Another picture upon
which Mr. Lavery has
worked repeatedly over a
long course of years — it
has now finally, after being
exhibited all over the
world, come into the
possession of the National
Gallery, Brussels — is the
Night after the Battle of
Langside, an exceedingly
spirited piece of work.

Here may as well be said,
what had to be said some-
where in the course of this
essay, that the career of
John Lavery presents a
most impressive object-
lesson, not only to neg-
lected, and, in a commer-
cial sense, unsuccessful
painters of parts—men who
have been driven into ob-
scurity by the indifference
to their duties to British art
of those who are supposed
to watch over its interests—
but to the nation at large,
which is invited to take note " nora " by john lavery

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