Studio: international art (31.1904)

P. Cayley Robinson

with the majority of artists,
who, on the few occasions
when they read about the
theory or practice of art,
prefer the wise, trenchant,
epigrammatic and business-
like sayings of William
Hunt. Mr. Robinson con-
siders that Goethe gives the
most valuable advice to
artists, and that " The
Indenture," Book VII.,
Chapter IX., of " Wilhelm
Meister," contains the
essence of Goethe's art
teaching.

Mr. Cayley Robinson
is a slow worker—exacting,
sparing himself nothing,
and most painstaking.
"the night watch" from the tempera painting by f. cayley robinson His custom is to draw a

design carefully in char-
coal and chalk on brown

channel is to be landed in the slough choked up paper. Most ot his pictures are executed in
by the third-rate literary pictures that for so many tempera or water-colour, with occasionally an added
years made certain pro-
ductions of British painters
a synonym for all that is
trivial and inartistic. Mr.
Cayley Robinson, like Mr.
Alfred East and Mr. Albert
Goodwin, is among those
who use poetry and fine
literature as food for the
brain, as a stimulant to the
agsthetic and emotional
faculties. He testifies to
the great influence the
poetry of Milton and
Wordsworth has had upon
his art life; but above all
he is grateful to Goethe.

In that fealty we have
the key to his art work.
His motive in painting, as
I have said, is half ethical,
and may be described as a
deep desire to "connect
the fore-shadowings, or
rather the fore-splendours
of the past with the hope
of the future." To the
ethical art-camp he belongs
—not a very popular camp "mariners" from the tempera painting by f. cayley robinson

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