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#0297
Grosvenor Thomas
"THE RIVER BY GROSVENOR THOMAS
work he cultivates the habit of regarding nature will find, also, that quite a considerable group of
with a certain impersonal affection which does not sane workers are setting him a sound example of
descend to particulars and is frankly worship of thoughtful effort to present nature in her best array
an ideal. The only danger is that he may carry of ideal graces and under aspects which enhance
this love of an ideal into a pure convention, that without exaggeration her greatest charms,
he may get so far away from his goddess that he There is, indeed, in existence now a very notable
ceases to see her at all, but against this danger the school of painters who have found a thoroughly
really intelligent man will guard himself carefully, correct middle course between the bombast of
lest he fall into it unawares. what was once called imaginative landscape and
This then is necessary for the painter of imagina- the crude reality which results from visual accuracy
tive landscape, that he should be a nature lover, undirected by taste, who have learned to under-
that he should know and understand her ways, and stand the sentiment of nature and at the same
that he should at no time allow himself to fall out time to eliminate from their work everything which
of the train of her immediate followers, but that might clash with this sentiment or diminish its
he should beware of approaching her in any spirit pictorial value. These men work in a spirit of
but that of purely platonic affection. If he wants wholesome romanticism, seeing rightly what are the
proof of this necessity, he need only look round poetic possibilities of the subjects they prefer and
within the bounds of the profession he follows ; he expressing by well controlled technical devices con-
will find many warnings in the mistakes of his victions which are based upon fundamental artistic
fellow artists, in the dull, unthinking realism of principles. The school is modern in feeling and
this artist, in the extravagant and incredible fantasy progressive in practice, but its modernity is whole-
of that one whose dreams have run beyond all some and its progressiveness has no " new art "
reason into a convention which is so unreal that it taint; it is a school which respects traditions without
has ceased to be anything but ridiculous. But he being ■ enslaved by them, and yet is fully in touch
259
"THE RIVER BY GROSVENOR THOMAS
work he cultivates the habit of regarding nature will find, also, that quite a considerable group of
with a certain impersonal affection which does not sane workers are setting him a sound example of
descend to particulars and is frankly worship of thoughtful effort to present nature in her best array
an ideal. The only danger is that he may carry of ideal graces and under aspects which enhance
this love of an ideal into a pure convention, that without exaggeration her greatest charms,
he may get so far away from his goddess that he There is, indeed, in existence now a very notable
ceases to see her at all, but against this danger the school of painters who have found a thoroughly
really intelligent man will guard himself carefully, correct middle course between the bombast of
lest he fall into it unawares. what was once called imaginative landscape and
This then is necessary for the painter of imagina- the crude reality which results from visual accuracy
tive landscape, that he should be a nature lover, undirected by taste, who have learned to under-
that he should know and understand her ways, and stand the sentiment of nature and at the same
that he should at no time allow himself to fall out time to eliminate from their work everything which
of the train of her immediate followers, but that might clash with this sentiment or diminish its
he should beware of approaching her in any spirit pictorial value. These men work in a spirit of
but that of purely platonic affection. If he wants wholesome romanticism, seeing rightly what are the
proof of this necessity, he need only look round poetic possibilities of the subjects they prefer and
within the bounds of the profession he follows ; he expressing by well controlled technical devices con-
will find many warnings in the mistakes of his victions which are based upon fundamental artistic
fellow artists, in the dull, unthinking realism of principles. The school is modern in feeling and
this artist, in the extravagant and incredible fantasy progressive in practice, but its modernity is whole-
of that one whose dreams have run beyond all some and its progressiveness has no " new art "
reason into a convention which is so unreal that it taint; it is a school which respects traditions without
has ceased to be anything but ridiculous. But he being ■ enslaved by them, and yet is fully in touch
259