Studio: international art (42.1908)

Birmingham Painters and Craftsmen

quality of vision, and again by a fine sense of surface with the last exponent but one, and follows him,

or joy in the beauty and specific quality of mateiials. while the others are more in sympathy with Botti-

These are works which one feels would be in celli, and follow him. They are imitators all, each

place in ordered schemes of decoration; they are building upon his chosen foundation,

modest, and conspicuously free from the arrogance Nor is this practice of imitation less supported

and lack of restraint with which so much of modern by weighty authority than it is universal in fact,

work is tainted—that kind of modern work whose Many of the greatest masters imitated consciously,

aim appears to be the praise of the artist rather and were unashamed; and the example of Rubens

than the service of Art. and Velasquez may serve as defence enough for

And it is at this very modest and sincere work, the painters of our day. And our own Reynolds
in spite of its remarkable accomplishment, that so declared, as his settled conviction, that the imita-
many of our critics must needs sneer; this it is tion of masters as well as the study of Nature is
which to their somewhat limited sympathy appears necessary, not only to the student, but also to the
as affectation. Men who work thus are commonly artist throughout his life. Indeed, the pursuit of
charged with blind imitation of the early Italians; originality for its own sake leads him to the most
and it is assumed that they differ from the rest of dangerous of pitfalls, and is responsible for more un-
the moderns not only in their choice of a school wholesomeness and absurdity than any other error,
for imitation, but in that they imitate at all. Yet, But then, we are told, to choose the way of
when all is said, the amount of new thought, new the early Italians is to abandon Nature! Do those
principle, or new method which even great men critics who glibly put forward this amazing view
can add to the vast accumulated heritage of Art is seriously suppose that these men did not study
infinitesimal; and the whole difference on this Nature ? Have they never conceived the possi-
head between the last exponent of modernness bility that they knew her with an intimacy which
and the men of whom we are speaking, lies in the allowed them, out of the fulness of their know-
simple fact that the one chances to be in sympathy ledge, to choose those of her aspects which were

"JACOB AND RACHEL" (BUON FRESCO)
2l6

BY JOSEPH E. SOUTHALL