DOI issue:
Nr. 189 (December 1908)
DOI article:Frederic Yates: Romanticist
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20965#0226
Frederic Yates, Romanticist
the impression of her romantic sentiment without
laying undue stress upon the unnecessary actualities
by which the clearness of this impression might be
obscured. His method is primarily one of elimina-
tion, which excludes from the pictures he paints
everything that does not help to strengthen the
idea formed in his mind as a result of close obser-
vation; and with a view to this elimination he
subjects the material that he proposes to treat to a
process of careful analysis, disregarding unessentials
and dwelling only on the vital matters which give
to the pictorial design its proper coherence.
That this analytical habit does not lead Mr. Yates
into conventionality is a point that must be insisted
upon. He refers everything so scrupulously to
nature that he escapes entirely the risk of formal-
ising his convictions, and does not sacrifice his
spontaneity for the sake of conformity to a rule of
practice. Just as his study of the Barbizon masters
has not diminished his capacity for individual
expression, so his love of investigation has not
made him any less responsive to natural influences.
He can seize with certainty upon the right aspect
of a landscape and can realise it upon his canvas
with a breadth and dignity of statement which can
be welcomed as wholly satisfying. He plays
charmingly with subtleties of colour and with graces
of design, and the way in which he treats relations
of open-air tone is always to be commended for its
delicacy and sympathetic understanding.
Best of all, he shows by the firm construction of
his pictures that he has fully that instinct for deco-
ration without which no fine pictorial achievement
is possible. He balances judiciously the masses of
his compositions, and he spaces his design with a
perfectly correct sense of proportion, neither over-
insisting upon the dominant lines nor weakening
them in a mistaken belief that strength is of less
importance than elegance. This feeling for con-
struction he tests very severely in one particular
branch of his landscape work—in his snow scenes,
which by their inevitable vehemence of tone con-
trast are calculated to show up mercilessly any
defects there might be in his scheme of con-
struction. But in these his pattern is as well
adjusted and as rightly related as in any of the less
exacting motives with which he concerns himself,
and they show no lessening of his control over the
mechanism of his craft.
Some idea of the determination with which he
‘snow at rydal
204
(The Property of E. Howell, Esq.)
BY FREDERIC YATES
the impression of her romantic sentiment without
laying undue stress upon the unnecessary actualities
by which the clearness of this impression might be
obscured. His method is primarily one of elimina-
tion, which excludes from the pictures he paints
everything that does not help to strengthen the
idea formed in his mind as a result of close obser-
vation; and with a view to this elimination he
subjects the material that he proposes to treat to a
process of careful analysis, disregarding unessentials
and dwelling only on the vital matters which give
to the pictorial design its proper coherence.
That this analytical habit does not lead Mr. Yates
into conventionality is a point that must be insisted
upon. He refers everything so scrupulously to
nature that he escapes entirely the risk of formal-
ising his convictions, and does not sacrifice his
spontaneity for the sake of conformity to a rule of
practice. Just as his study of the Barbizon masters
has not diminished his capacity for individual
expression, so his love of investigation has not
made him any less responsive to natural influences.
He can seize with certainty upon the right aspect
of a landscape and can realise it upon his canvas
with a breadth and dignity of statement which can
be welcomed as wholly satisfying. He plays
charmingly with subtleties of colour and with graces
of design, and the way in which he treats relations
of open-air tone is always to be commended for its
delicacy and sympathetic understanding.
Best of all, he shows by the firm construction of
his pictures that he has fully that instinct for deco-
ration without which no fine pictorial achievement
is possible. He balances judiciously the masses of
his compositions, and he spaces his design with a
perfectly correct sense of proportion, neither over-
insisting upon the dominant lines nor weakening
them in a mistaken belief that strength is of less
importance than elegance. This feeling for con-
struction he tests very severely in one particular
branch of his landscape work—in his snow scenes,
which by their inevitable vehemence of tone con-
trast are calculated to show up mercilessly any
defects there might be in his scheme of con-
struction. But in these his pattern is as well
adjusted and as rightly related as in any of the less
exacting motives with which he concerns himself,
and they show no lessening of his control over the
mechanism of his craft.
Some idea of the determination with which he
‘snow at rydal
204
(The Property of E. Howell, Esq.)
BY FREDERIC YATES