Studio: international art (40.1907)

Oliver Hall, Landscape Painter

gives to his art its decorative value. Form is
always rhythmic to its appreciators, and the
appreciation of it implies that value will be set
on a balanced representation of it in the canvas.
The departure which, in our opinion, will give
to Mr. Hall’s art its ultimate highest success will
be when this conscious arrangement of form, deli-
cately bathed as it already is by him in colour,
is not only hidden here and there by colour, but
willingly lost at times for the sake of the atmo-
sphere, apparent sometimes only to the imagination,
to be remembered always as enfolding, softening,
making indefinite and chimerical, an otherwise
very real world.

But to speak in this strain is perhaps to speak
not of the matter in hand; a danger that besets
candid criticism is the substitution of what is hypo-
thetical, the criticism of that which is not instead
of that which is. These paintings, which are the
expression of an individuality because they are just
what they are, can only from their own standpoint
have measure taken of their success. Some heavy
darks against the light, giving a suggestion of re-
lative values extremely pleasing to the eye, are
frequently met with in Mr. Hall’s paintings; the

pleasure they are capable of giving seems based
upon a very true observation of actual values. The
power to invent an arrangement of values which
keeps the secret of nature’s own arrangements, while
formulating them into the beauty of art, suggests a
deeper sympathy with nature and closer intimacy
with her than a literal method of direct transcrip-
tion. In Mr. Hall’s case we cannot read so
easily as in some cases, whether he sees nature at
once in so highly pictorial a way or how far he
accommodates to his picture. The result is every-
thing, and his art convinces; we do not question
ourselves—except when, as in this case, reviewing
his work and on questioning bent. Some artists
have a great knowledge of nature, and many hav.e
a great knowledge of paint; the rare thing is to find
a painter with knowledge of both so well assimilated
that the one finds expression easily in the other.

In Mr. Hall's work we have a value not entirely
to be identified with craftsmanship. To venture
behind the craftsmanship, to define the source of
its charm, is difficult as yet, for it is likely that
only part of his artistic message is yet spoken.
On account of an occasional change of plan in
work which he has exhibited, and judging it as we

“on the shore of the solway”
272

BY OLIVER HALL