DOI Heft:
Nr. 119 (February 1903)
DOI Artikel:Image, Selwyn: Mr. Frank Brangwyn's landscapes and still-life
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19878#0019
Frank Brangwyn's Landscapes and Still-Life
mere boy, laid them on, was to show a power
many full-grown artists would have envied; and the
point is that in Mr. Brangwyn this ability was by
way of nature, for of direct teaching and assiduous
training he had then practically nothing at all. At
any rate, it was this abnormal gift in him that first
attracted me personally to his work. It seemed to
me at the time so unique that I could not doubt
it would carry him through to great things by-
and-by. He would settle down gradually to severer
study. He would not let this facility of the
brush content him and run away with him.
His strong accompanying sense of designing in
broad masses would more and more assert itself,
and demand from him an austerer insistence upon
form. As the design and the form grew, the
colour too would grow purer and more brilliant.
And so, beyond all question, it has come to pass.
Of course one is always pleased, a little flattered
too and established, to find time on one's side
realising one's anticipations. This must be my
excuse—I hops my readers will allow it—for here
setting down my reminiscence of Mr. Brangwyn's
boyhood, and how he then appealed to me.
On a former occasion, I understand, an article
has appeared in The Studio dealing with Mr.
Brangwyn's work and artistic position generally.
The present article is concerned directly only with
his landscape and still-life pieces. By these he is
not most widely known to the public. Perhaps it
is not too much to say that the artist himself hardly
regards this side of his work as seriously as he
regards his figure subjects. In some sense these
landscapes and still-life studies are, to him, rather
of the nature of by-play, of personal amusement in
his more leisured moments, " parerga," as the
Greeks would have called them—things beside the
main stress of a man's efforts in life, thrown off by
the way as some particular occasion entices him.
It is, however, but a commonplace to remark
" BRENTFORD "
FROM
THE AQUATINT BY FRANK
BRANGWYN
7
mere boy, laid them on, was to show a power
many full-grown artists would have envied; and the
point is that in Mr. Brangwyn this ability was by
way of nature, for of direct teaching and assiduous
training he had then practically nothing at all. At
any rate, it was this abnormal gift in him that first
attracted me personally to his work. It seemed to
me at the time so unique that I could not doubt
it would carry him through to great things by-
and-by. He would settle down gradually to severer
study. He would not let this facility of the
brush content him and run away with him.
His strong accompanying sense of designing in
broad masses would more and more assert itself,
and demand from him an austerer insistence upon
form. As the design and the form grew, the
colour too would grow purer and more brilliant.
And so, beyond all question, it has come to pass.
Of course one is always pleased, a little flattered
too and established, to find time on one's side
realising one's anticipations. This must be my
excuse—I hops my readers will allow it—for here
setting down my reminiscence of Mr. Brangwyn's
boyhood, and how he then appealed to me.
On a former occasion, I understand, an article
has appeared in The Studio dealing with Mr.
Brangwyn's work and artistic position generally.
The present article is concerned directly only with
his landscape and still-life pieces. By these he is
not most widely known to the public. Perhaps it
is not too much to say that the artist himself hardly
regards this side of his work as seriously as he
regards his figure subjects. In some sense these
landscapes and still-life studies are, to him, rather
of the nature of by-play, of personal amusement in
his more leisured moments, " parerga," as the
Greeks would have called them—things beside the
main stress of a man's efforts in life, thrown off by
the way as some particular occasion entices him.
It is, however, but a commonplace to remark
" BRENTFORD "
FROM
THE AQUATINT BY FRANK
BRANGWYN
7