Studio: international art (41.1907)

The Royal Academy, igoy

for the occurrence in life of incidents which suggest
romantic composition. The canvas called Noon,
by Mr. Arnesby Brown, in which some cattle
are drawn up in the wide shadow of a large
tree, is painted with original and pleasant realism.
The Wherry is also a fine picture by the same
painter. Mr. Stanhope Forbes has painted
Newlyn again, pushing his art a little further
along the lines which long ago he had chosen.
Mr. J. W. North's Ye Valleys Low, except for
some unpleasant brown shadows to which we
might take exception, is a true rendering of valley
mist creeping through the trees. The Off-Shore
Wind is one of the best sea pieces Mr. Napier
Hemy has done. In this case he depends on
scarcely anything to interest us but the rendering
of the sea. In his Bound for London he turns his
face landward, and attacks the difficulties of the
line of houses upon the river bank successfully.

In portraiture and other figure subjects the
associates are also very successful. Mr. Cope's
portrait of His Majesty the King is one of the
most successful Royal portraits which has been
painted for a number of years. Mr. George Henry's
picture In the Mirror is a singularly accomplished
painting. The scheme is white graduating delicately
to grey, and valuable notes of colour are given with
the black closed fan which the lady holds and some
mysteriously beautiful red reflections in the gilt
mirror. A green porcelain bowl of daffodils makes
another pleasure for the eye. It is when Mr. Henry
shows his fastidious taste in thinking out these
harmonies, which depend almost upon the colour
of trifles for their success, that he is at his best.
Quite a different way of arriving at beauty is dis-
played by Mr. Strang. It is a very difficult way.
In his love for colour Mr. Strang puts a red, which
partakes of the beauty of the colour of the
Venetians, against a blue or a green no less
separately beautiful and pleasurable to the eye, but
when they are all three together they somehow
seem often to rob beauty of each other by their
sharp contrast, and spoil the effect in the picture
as a whole. The art of Mr. Edward Stott, with its
conscious effort at sentiment not only in the subject
but in the rendering of it, has attained this year in
The Reaper and the Maid and The Cottage
Madonna all the harmony of colour which is the
feature of his finest work.

Among the more interesting pictures from outside
the ranks of members and associates, Mr. G. W.
Lambert's large Portrait Group attracts immediate
attention. Attention to details is given in a
broad manner, and it is perhaps where this atten-
3°

tion is shown that the painting is best, but in
the transition from deliberate to summary treat-
ment which is made in different parts of the canvas,
and the acceptance of naturalistic motives only to
subject them to decorative restraint, the artist shows
an indecision of purpose from which we should be
glad to see him escape. He robs his figures of the
spontaneity of that which is accepted frankly from
nature; the people who sit for him seem self-
conscious as they surrender to the pose chosen for
them. Still we are conscious that here a painter
of original thoughts is evolving in a very interesting
if roundabout way. The atmospheric picture
called Clapham Church of Mr. Buxton Knight is
another very interesting work from outside. It is
full of the restlessness of a certain kind of fine
weather in England, and the painting is quite
masterly.

Mr. Mark Fisher's Meadows is a good example of
his art in its present manner. As far as one could
see at the distance at which it was away, the picture
by Mr. Arnold Priestman 01 Littlehampton Quay is
one which deserved to be hung much lower down.
Mr. Robert W. Allan's Arriving Home, with its
clear blue sunlit sea and dark-sailed fishing boats,
is admirable. Another seapiece of great merit is
The Lizard, of Hon. Duff Tollemache. Mr. Walter
Donne's From the Battlements of Windsor Castle
is an interesting landscape of the topographical
kind, though if the view is, as we imagine, taken as
it stands now, modern buildings and all, one won-
ders why the sightseers on the battlement are put
into crinolines and poke bonnets. A September
Morning is just one of those delicate pictures with
the sunlight in them which Mr. Arthur Friedenson
is teaching us to look for with pleasure from his
brush. But for the vividness of the shot-silk dress
the portrait of Mrs. Young Hunter, by her husband,
would be a very excellent painting. A dramatic
picture, which doubtless is a popular one with the
general public, is Mr. F. Cadogan Cowper's scene
of charitable nuns entertaining the Devil disguised
as a troubadour. The painter shows considerable
power over dramatic facial expression. The figure
of the Devil is slightly confused with the design of
the window (one of the famous Fairford windows
we believe) which forms its background, but there
may be metaphor in this. A Flemish Peasant, by
Walter Langley, is notably a work of confidence
and simplicity in technique. Mons. J. E. Blanche
is not seen to such advantage here in his portrait
of Miss B. Caiel as he was in the recent Inter-
national Exhibition. The Firelight and Pearl of
Mr. Walter West, whilst charming in its drawing is