Studio: international art (34.1905)

Ruby Levick

PANEL IN REREDOS, ST. BRELADES, JERSEY BY RUBY LEVICK

MODELLED FOR MESSRS. ROGERS, BONE & COLES, ARCHITECTS

necessity for economy and good taste has simplified
the chapel into a beautiful place : a craving to
decorate has not outrun the purpose of the build-
ing ; fitting is it as the environment of the service
to which it is consecrated—a village service. For-
tunate was the choice of a decorator, for her art
has in itself the same elements of simplicity and
restraint which give to the little chapel its dignity.

In everything Miss Levick has done she has
given one the impression of having done it more
for the pleasure of finding self-expression in it than
for the pleasure of competing in sculpture, though
she must be taken seriously as entering the
competition for distinction amongst our youngest
sculptors by the fact of the individual element
that enters so largely into her art. The problems
that face the sculptor between Hellenic beauty
arid modernity, between what is classic and
what is realistic, what is scholarly and what is
romantic, do not affect such work as this, which
seems to be sheltered almost in a domestic circle,
and to exist, with a reminiscence here and there
of things learnt from one source and another,
for its own sake only. It may be prevented by
this contentment from receiving a very serious
consideration ; but if one goes deeper, one finds
in its unassuming qualities fidelity to its en-
vironment, to the conditions that surround the
sculptor; and in art what is really of value
expresses this. The lack of self-consciousness in
Miss Levick's art is not one of the least of its
qualities; that it is free from affectation, and
that it is concerned with an outlook which is the
outlook from the ordinary home, comes to be so
by a modification of the laws that give us the
tremendous sculpture of a Rodin, representing
the larger forces of the modern world—
might we not almost say, too, by a modifica-
tion of the laws which make the heroic sculp-
ture representative of Grecian heroism. The
range of Miss Levick's sculpture is within the
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small circumstances of life; and it is a true saying
that art does not rest with the object represented,
but with the manner of its representation.

It is curious that, although in painting England
admits of and even welcomes art which in its inten-
tion is narrow and in its expression limited—art
which concerns itself, as it were, with the perfecting
of gems ; hinting delicately at intimate sentiment, or
concerned altogether, perhaps, with the presenta-
tion of something of the slightest import, or having
no message other than that of captivating our sense
of pleasure—this does not seem to be the case with

DETAIL IN REREDOS PANEL BY' RUBY LEVICK

IN ST. BRELADES, JERSEY.