DOI Heft:
No. 133 (April, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Hind, Charles Lewis: Ethical art and Mr. F. Cayley Robinson
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19881#0255
F. Cayley Robinson
anxiety if not fear in his eyes, personifies youth that
has still to learn that dangers are born but to be
overcome, and that the nettle of life can best be
conquered by grasping it firmly. Close by was
a picture representing the idea of labour, three
men in heroic attitudes taking in ballast, while a
fourth stoops to lift a bale from the ground (p. 241).
Under the section, A Winter Evening, my
attention, pleased, soothed, wandered from one
small subject to another; but the general idea was
the light of fading day mingling with firelight in
rooms delicately felt, with grave, sweet women
pausing in that hour that is made for reflection, or
preparing the evening meal for children who are
tired and ready for bed. The forms are all peace-
ful, the lines of the figures unemotional, the furni-
ture and the objects in the rooms all beautiful and
austere, without a fleck of modernity. The idea of
The Little Child Found is implied in the title. In
one drawing it is a small Roman child, in another a
child found in a London street by a London police-
man, but the idea is always the same, a helpless
creature lost, found, restored. The past and the
present are one to Mr. Cayley Robinson. He sees
the simple, elemental motives that move the human
heart and mind, motives that are the same in all
climes and ages. Wonder, endurance, labour, joy
are his themes, and in the picture called Dawn
(p. 239), formally and archaically beautiful, he
suggests the restlessness of man who must ever
be moving on to new pastures. They push off
in the grey morning from the old dwelling, and
as they leave the shores of this Cayley-Robinson
land that lies east of the sun, and west of the
moon, the lantern lights them over the water.
So it becomes plain that Mr. Cayley Robinson
allies painting with literary and ethical ideas. He
is not in the least affected by the anathemas that
have been hurled at the conjunction. Cloistral,
mannered at times, lapsing occasionally into forms
that lean to the bizarre, he has the distinction of
being entirely himself. His work touches the
FROM THE TEMPERA PAINTING BY F. CAYLEY ROBINSON
anxiety if not fear in his eyes, personifies youth that
has still to learn that dangers are born but to be
overcome, and that the nettle of life can best be
conquered by grasping it firmly. Close by was
a picture representing the idea of labour, three
men in heroic attitudes taking in ballast, while a
fourth stoops to lift a bale from the ground (p. 241).
Under the section, A Winter Evening, my
attention, pleased, soothed, wandered from one
small subject to another; but the general idea was
the light of fading day mingling with firelight in
rooms delicately felt, with grave, sweet women
pausing in that hour that is made for reflection, or
preparing the evening meal for children who are
tired and ready for bed. The forms are all peace-
ful, the lines of the figures unemotional, the furni-
ture and the objects in the rooms all beautiful and
austere, without a fleck of modernity. The idea of
The Little Child Found is implied in the title. In
one drawing it is a small Roman child, in another a
child found in a London street by a London police-
man, but the idea is always the same, a helpless
creature lost, found, restored. The past and the
present are one to Mr. Cayley Robinson. He sees
the simple, elemental motives that move the human
heart and mind, motives that are the same in all
climes and ages. Wonder, endurance, labour, joy
are his themes, and in the picture called Dawn
(p. 239), formally and archaically beautiful, he
suggests the restlessness of man who must ever
be moving on to new pastures. They push off
in the grey morning from the old dwelling, and
as they leave the shores of this Cayley-Robinson
land that lies east of the sun, and west of the
moon, the lantern lights them over the water.
So it becomes plain that Mr. Cayley Robinson
allies painting with literary and ethical ideas. He
is not in the least affected by the anathemas that
have been hurled at the conjunction. Cloistral,
mannered at times, lapsing occasionally into forms
that lean to the bizarre, he has the distinction of
being entirely himself. His work touches the
FROM THE TEMPERA PAINTING BY F. CAYLEY ROBINSON