DOI issue:
No. 171 (June, 1907)
DOI article:Dibdin, E. Rimbault: Mr. E. A. Hornel's paintings of children and flowers
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20775#0030
E. A. Hornel
veloped his exquisite sense of it, he has learned consequently in each succeeds in being new. I
to be more merciful to those who demand lucidity have a crow to pluck with him, however, when he
of form. He has even begun to deal in distances returns from Ceylon, over some of the later versions
—not at all in the spirit of Copley Fielding, but yet of this theme, in which a new and delightful colour
in a masterly style which shows that his one-plane effect is obtained by the introduction of the
compositions were not the result of inability to ordinary pink wild rose—a vegetable I have never
express atmosphere and manage perspective. With as yet discovered disputing on sandhills the
distances, however, as with his foregrounds, there supremacy of the white-and-gold burnet rose. He
is no quest of novelty for its own sake; the fine is so true an observer, however, that I quite expect
sweep of shore line and head'and in The Captive to be worsted in the argument.
Butterfly has been repeated again and again, each If asked to define Hornel's art in a single phrase
time with seme new charm in the treatment, just I should call him an exponent of the music of
as Hokusai reiterated the outline of Fuji-san, each colour. As that, however, is perhaps too vague for
time the same, yet with some fresh revelation of its English use (most of us being more or less colour
majesty and beauty. One version of that fascinat- blind), let us set it aside and call him a painter of
ing bit of shore line is seen in Reverie, and children and flowers. He has painted many other
the girl in the foreground, and the burnet roses things, notably birds, lambs, and other children of
and dry oak apples, are all more or less adapted the four-footed sort, but his chief business is with
from The Captive Butterfly. There never was a children and flowers—the most perfectly melodious
more inveterate maker of replicas than Hornel, yet facts in the visible world of beauty, and therefore
one never thinks of grumbling, for he addresses the best adapted to his method of composition,
himself to each new version with the fire which in They are his melodies, to be woven into complex
most of us is exhausted in the first expression, and beauty with the harmony and counterpoint of his
1 A SPRING IDYLL '
8
(Purchased by the Belgian State)
BY E. A. HORNEL
veloped his exquisite sense of it, he has learned consequently in each succeeds in being new. I
to be more merciful to those who demand lucidity have a crow to pluck with him, however, when he
of form. He has even begun to deal in distances returns from Ceylon, over some of the later versions
—not at all in the spirit of Copley Fielding, but yet of this theme, in which a new and delightful colour
in a masterly style which shows that his one-plane effect is obtained by the introduction of the
compositions were not the result of inability to ordinary pink wild rose—a vegetable I have never
express atmosphere and manage perspective. With as yet discovered disputing on sandhills the
distances, however, as with his foregrounds, there supremacy of the white-and-gold burnet rose. He
is no quest of novelty for its own sake; the fine is so true an observer, however, that I quite expect
sweep of shore line and head'and in The Captive to be worsted in the argument.
Butterfly has been repeated again and again, each If asked to define Hornel's art in a single phrase
time with seme new charm in the treatment, just I should call him an exponent of the music of
as Hokusai reiterated the outline of Fuji-san, each colour. As that, however, is perhaps too vague for
time the same, yet with some fresh revelation of its English use (most of us being more or less colour
majesty and beauty. One version of that fascinat- blind), let us set it aside and call him a painter of
ing bit of shore line is seen in Reverie, and children and flowers. He has painted many other
the girl in the foreground, and the burnet roses things, notably birds, lambs, and other children of
and dry oak apples, are all more or less adapted the four-footed sort, but his chief business is with
from The Captive Butterfly. There never was a children and flowers—the most perfectly melodious
more inveterate maker of replicas than Hornel, yet facts in the visible world of beauty, and therefore
one never thinks of grumbling, for he addresses the best adapted to his method of composition,
himself to each new version with the fire which in They are his melodies, to be woven into complex
most of us is exhausted in the first expression, and beauty with the harmony and counterpoint of his
1 A SPRING IDYLL '
8
(Purchased by the Belgian State)
BY E. A. HORNEL