DOI Heft:
Nr. 170 (May 1907)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: The landscape-paintings and water-colours of Oliver Hall
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20774#0290
Oliver Hall, Landscape Painter
The landscape - paintings
AND WATER-COLOURS OF
OLIVER HALL. BY T.
MARTIN WOOD.
It is always a question how close an artist can,
in the light of a knowledge which is scientific,
interpret nature, retaining the while the con-
sciously pictorial composition which the old masters
teach. There are few artists who have attempted
this with more promise of success than Mr. Oliver
Hall. In his earlier work he leaned perhaps almost
entirely to a reminiscence of older landscape art,
and now, even when concentrated on purely
naturalistic aims, he is never betrayed into forget-
fulness of composition as that word was once
understood. A decorative instinct seems one of
the strongest of his artistic merits, and it would
perhaps be true to surmise that this instinct,
gratifying itself in the contemplation of earlier
devices of picture-making, made Mr. Hall a
student of those devices rather than that his
scrupulous regard for composition was forced
upon him by such study. For it seems so much
a part of his methods, it is so little obtrusive and,
with him, apparently so unconscious, that it gives to
his work a charm which is wanting in that which
deliberately attempts to make nature conform to a
preconceived decorative formula. This point we take
first in dealing with Mr. Hall’s work, because one of
the chief attractions of his art has always been its
completeness. Each of his paintings is brought to
the state when it may in the old sense of the term
be called a picture—when the artistic statement
which it contains is epigrammatically polished
and presented as a finished creation, not simply
as a transcription from some part of nature carried
across a strip of canvas, the size of which has been
more or less carelessly determined.
With his belief in the necessity of finishing the
task of picture-making to the end, when once a
picture as apart from a study has been begun, the
artist accepts many responsibilities, and much is
required which is forgiven those who frame any
transcription direct from nature which has chroni-
cled a passing effect. Scrupulous regard for pic-
torial design carries with it necessity for beauty of
finish, for a finished presentation of the idea such
“ KNARESBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE”
268
BY OLIVER HALL
The landscape - paintings
AND WATER-COLOURS OF
OLIVER HALL. BY T.
MARTIN WOOD.
It is always a question how close an artist can,
in the light of a knowledge which is scientific,
interpret nature, retaining the while the con-
sciously pictorial composition which the old masters
teach. There are few artists who have attempted
this with more promise of success than Mr. Oliver
Hall. In his earlier work he leaned perhaps almost
entirely to a reminiscence of older landscape art,
and now, even when concentrated on purely
naturalistic aims, he is never betrayed into forget-
fulness of composition as that word was once
understood. A decorative instinct seems one of
the strongest of his artistic merits, and it would
perhaps be true to surmise that this instinct,
gratifying itself in the contemplation of earlier
devices of picture-making, made Mr. Hall a
student of those devices rather than that his
scrupulous regard for composition was forced
upon him by such study. For it seems so much
a part of his methods, it is so little obtrusive and,
with him, apparently so unconscious, that it gives to
his work a charm which is wanting in that which
deliberately attempts to make nature conform to a
preconceived decorative formula. This point we take
first in dealing with Mr. Hall’s work, because one of
the chief attractions of his art has always been its
completeness. Each of his paintings is brought to
the state when it may in the old sense of the term
be called a picture—when the artistic statement
which it contains is epigrammatically polished
and presented as a finished creation, not simply
as a transcription from some part of nature carried
across a strip of canvas, the size of which has been
more or less carelessly determined.
With his belief in the necessity of finishing the
task of picture-making to the end, when once a
picture as apart from a study has been begun, the
artist accepts many responsibilities, and much is
required which is forgiven those who frame any
transcription direct from nature which has chroni-
cled a passing effect. Scrupulous regard for pic-
torial design carries with it necessity for beauty of
finish, for a finished presentation of the idea such
“ KNARESBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE”
268
BY OLIVER HALL