Studio: international art (32.1904)

The Art of Thomas Collier

creations of an artist so skilful and far-seeing in his
elaborate labours, "qu'il a su se tirer d? affaire"
where others would but have bungled and hesitated
—they are yet not essentially superior, in interest or
in quality, to the smaller drawings (I do not mean
the very small ones, for each art has its scale, and
water colour is neither for the big nor for the very
little); they are not superior, I say, and often they
are not equal to, the drawings of very moderate
size that in the course of a career of average length
he is discovered to have made by the hundred :
drawings which, though each one was done under
an individual and particular impulse, will not, and
cannot in the nature of things, acquire individual
and particular fame.

Have I explained myself sufficiently ? Briefly,
the thing is this : The oil painter lives, in the Future,
in virtue of a few large pieces, hanging in galleries ;
they are his titles to celebrity—and they are great
and few—but " titles manifold" it is (in the
phrase of Wordsworth) that are advanced by the
water-colour painter : his titles rest in the quality
and charm, not of some isolated pieces, but of the
large and diffused body of his work. And so,
though this or that drawing, of Thomas Collier's
say, may, from the dealer's point of view, be more

" important" than another—a little more " finished,"
perhaps, or a good deal more extensive—it is not
by this " important," or perchance more " finished,"
performance by which I seek to be allowed to
rank and class him ; it is by the delightfulness and
freshness, the genius and the skill, of about half of
all the hundred drawings, of every size and theme,
which in the earlier weeks of this year were shown
in London—at the Leicester Gallery.

They had been seen elsewhere—not they, but
the like of them, I mean—in an irregular way, over
many years. For twenty years about, their painter
was an honoured member of the Institute of Water-
colour Painters. The capital examples of his labour
were a feature of its annual shows ; they influenced
other artists—and especially, I must suppose, the
vigorous and enjoyable, but far less subtle talent of
Mr. Wimperis, who was hardly Collier's junior—
they, along with H. G. Hine's serene performances
in quite another method, kept men alive to the
existence of certain traditions of style and of taste—
for, in their individuality, they were never in the
least eccentric.

But that was long ago, or seems long ago, now,
to us, as we live our crowded days, and find
"Art" everywhere, to right and left—"Art is upon

"NEAR WALBERSWICK " FROM THE WATER-COLOUR BY THOMAS COLLIER

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