DOI Heft:
No. 174 (September, 1907)
DOI Artikel:The landscape paintings of Mr. Grosvenor Thomas
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20775#0295
Grosvenor Thomas
THE LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS and suggests nothing; it is uninspired and
OF MR. GROSVENOR THOMAS, uninspiring.
At its best, however, it can be very definitely
There are broadly two divisions into interesting, for it is capable of being treated with
which the whole of landscape painting can be exquisite sympathy and with a true regard for the
separated; into one comes all work that is con- dainty charm of nature. In the canvases of Sir
cerned chiefly with the facts of nature, into the John Millais, for instance, the representation of
other those pictorial exercises which deal with fact was carried to something like perfection. He
poetic abstractions and subordinate actualities to had an extraordinary power of vision which enabled
large and generalised effect. The purely realistic him to see things in exactly their right relation,
landscape depends for its popularity upon strict and he had consummate technical capacity, by the
realisation of little things, upon minute care and use of which he could reproduce in a masterly
truth in the representation of details, and it fashion whatever he saw. Nature's fantasy, her
demands from the artist not only much close- largeness of suggestion, and her romantic self-
ness of observation but also a high degree of revelation, were in a sense incomprehensible to
executive skill. At its worst it is unpoetic and him; he understood her only when she showed
matter-of-fact, merely a plain statement of what herself without disguise, when she ceased to be
is obvious ; and it excites no emotion save that elusive and sat simply and frankly for her portrait,
of surprise at the patience of the painter who But no portrait painter ever set down with more
can bore into a mass of trivialities and record sincere truth all the characteristic peculiarities of
them with absolute fidelity. It teaches little his sitter's features, or produced more convincingly
"houghton mill"
XLI. No. 174.—September, 1907.
by grosvenor thomas
257
THE LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS and suggests nothing; it is uninspired and
OF MR. GROSVENOR THOMAS, uninspiring.
At its best, however, it can be very definitely
There are broadly two divisions into interesting, for it is capable of being treated with
which the whole of landscape painting can be exquisite sympathy and with a true regard for the
separated; into one comes all work that is con- dainty charm of nature. In the canvases of Sir
cerned chiefly with the facts of nature, into the John Millais, for instance, the representation of
other those pictorial exercises which deal with fact was carried to something like perfection. He
poetic abstractions and subordinate actualities to had an extraordinary power of vision which enabled
large and generalised effect. The purely realistic him to see things in exactly their right relation,
landscape depends for its popularity upon strict and he had consummate technical capacity, by the
realisation of little things, upon minute care and use of which he could reproduce in a masterly
truth in the representation of details, and it fashion whatever he saw. Nature's fantasy, her
demands from the artist not only much close- largeness of suggestion, and her romantic self-
ness of observation but also a high degree of revelation, were in a sense incomprehensible to
executive skill. At its worst it is unpoetic and him; he understood her only when she showed
matter-of-fact, merely a plain statement of what herself without disguise, when she ceased to be
is obvious ; and it excites no emotion save that elusive and sat simply and frankly for her portrait,
of surprise at the patience of the painter who But no portrait painter ever set down with more
can bore into a mass of trivialities and record sincere truth all the characteristic peculiarities of
them with absolute fidelity. It teaches little his sitter's features, or produced more convincingly
"houghton mill"
XLI. No. 174.—September, 1907.
by grosvenor thomas
257