DOI issue:
No. 156 (March, 1906)
DOI article:The International Society's sixth annual Exhibition, [1]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20714#0130
The International Society's Exhibition. First Notice
of a few remarkable examples. There was this
year, perhaps, an absence of anything very
remarkable. And because remarkable painters
exhibit at the International this implied that we
are not to be without disappointment of some
kind in any exhibition ; but, then, we had pleasur-
able surprises : such as Mr. Nicholson's Portrait of
Mrs. Curie. This work carried the painter into a
position which he has not formerly occupied,
seriously as he has always challenged considera-
tion as a painter. Here he leaves behind earlier
affectations and limitations, and reaches out
towards actual life, bringing to it an inspiration
purely artistic which he has derived from much
eclectic painting. His Jeivelled Bandalore was
scarcely less interesting. Mr. C. H. Shannon this
year gave us luminous sunlit flesh-painting in a
fresh green landscape surrounding, from which he
had lifted the grey curtain of tone which has so
often descended upon his paintings, conveying an
unfair impression that the artist wras seeking to evade
facing things out in actual daylight. We are glad
that Mr. Shannon is abandoning an apparent desire
that his pictures should look like old masters in
a museum at twilight. If he could conceive
form with one half the delicacy with which he
perceives the play of colour, if form were a more
sinuous, less lumpy thing to him, how fine a
painter he would be. The portrait by Sir James
Guthrie just cheated us of some " Guthrie " quality,
though it were difficult to say in what way. The
solid handling, the complete suggestion of atmo-
sphere, the feeling through paint for the substance
and the character of material, made this in some
ways equal to the artist's best work, but the
absence of a certain exquisite quality in the paint-
ing itself characteristic of earlier "Guthries" was
probably the source of our disappointment.
Mr. W. Strang, the newly-elected A.R.A., in
his picture, The Sea Pool, came close to those
scholarly qualities of painting and the tradition
of colour which seem to him the most worthy
'BERWICK-ON-TWEED" BY J. WHITELAW HAMILTON
110
of a few remarkable examples. There was this
year, perhaps, an absence of anything very
remarkable. And because remarkable painters
exhibit at the International this implied that we
are not to be without disappointment of some
kind in any exhibition ; but, then, we had pleasur-
able surprises : such as Mr. Nicholson's Portrait of
Mrs. Curie. This work carried the painter into a
position which he has not formerly occupied,
seriously as he has always challenged considera-
tion as a painter. Here he leaves behind earlier
affectations and limitations, and reaches out
towards actual life, bringing to it an inspiration
purely artistic which he has derived from much
eclectic painting. His Jeivelled Bandalore was
scarcely less interesting. Mr. C. H. Shannon this
year gave us luminous sunlit flesh-painting in a
fresh green landscape surrounding, from which he
had lifted the grey curtain of tone which has so
often descended upon his paintings, conveying an
unfair impression that the artist wras seeking to evade
facing things out in actual daylight. We are glad
that Mr. Shannon is abandoning an apparent desire
that his pictures should look like old masters in
a museum at twilight. If he could conceive
form with one half the delicacy with which he
perceives the play of colour, if form were a more
sinuous, less lumpy thing to him, how fine a
painter he would be. The portrait by Sir James
Guthrie just cheated us of some " Guthrie " quality,
though it were difficult to say in what way. The
solid handling, the complete suggestion of atmo-
sphere, the feeling through paint for the substance
and the character of material, made this in some
ways equal to the artist's best work, but the
absence of a certain exquisite quality in the paint-
ing itself characteristic of earlier "Guthries" was
probably the source of our disappointment.
Mr. W. Strang, the newly-elected A.R.A., in
his picture, The Sea Pool, came close to those
scholarly qualities of painting and the tradition
of colour which seem to him the most worthy
'BERWICK-ON-TWEED" BY J. WHITELAW HAMILTON
110