DOI Heft:
Nr. 191 (February 1909)
DOI Artikel:Hind, Charles Lewis: Charles H. Shannon, artist and connoisseur
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20966#0025
THE STUDIO
CHARLES H. SHANNON,
ARTIST AND CONNOISSEUR.
BY C. LEWIS HIND.
Roaming through rooms of ultra-modern pictures
at Berlin, I paused before an eight-foot canvas
called The Painter at Work. The scene depicted
was mid-winter, snow covered the ground, icicles
hung from the trees, you could feel the bitter wind,
and in the foreground of the forlorn waste stood
the painter, grim, determined, fur-clad, pinched
with cold, his canvas held taut by small cables, at
work. I make no criticism of his method. If it
suits him to pamt direct from inclement nature, it
is the right way for him. The result is all that
concerns the critic, who must forget his own pre-
dilections, and consider
only the intention and per-
formance of the painter,
whether the end be a
snow-and-ice piece by a
hardy German, a vivid
Venetian actuality by Mr.
Sargent, or some idyll of
form and colour by Mr.
Charles Shannon, noted,
remembered, and after
long reflection worked
out in the tranquillity of
his studio.
Indeed, the time-
honoured and time-weary
phrase, emotion remem-
bered in tranquillity, might
be applied to Mr. Shan-
non’s art. Repose is its
note. Reflection envelops
it like an atmosphere.
When he paints his own
portrait you feel that you
have passed into some
still, unharassed corner of
the world, as in the pic-
ture illustrated on this
page, showing the artist
seated in his studio beneath
the protecting majesty of a
Greek torso. The painter
XLVI. No. 191.—February,
is as calm as the torso. He is working, but
not in the way that the hardy German works ;
his aesthetic consciousness is active, stirred by the
lithographs, drawings, photographs, or whatever
they may be, that he has taken from the portfolio
and scattered for his delight. The most .promi-
nent among them is one of his own lithographs.
There is no vanity in that. When a man’s entire
life is devoted to his art, and to the collection of
rare and beautiful things that feast the eye and
feed the brain, his own particular productions
become almost impersonal, a step in the edifice of
art, which began so long ago and of which the end
is endless.
In writing about a painter it is arguable whether
it is better to know him personally, or only through
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST BY CHARLES SHANNON
I909.
3
CHARLES H. SHANNON,
ARTIST AND CONNOISSEUR.
BY C. LEWIS HIND.
Roaming through rooms of ultra-modern pictures
at Berlin, I paused before an eight-foot canvas
called The Painter at Work. The scene depicted
was mid-winter, snow covered the ground, icicles
hung from the trees, you could feel the bitter wind,
and in the foreground of the forlorn waste stood
the painter, grim, determined, fur-clad, pinched
with cold, his canvas held taut by small cables, at
work. I make no criticism of his method. If it
suits him to pamt direct from inclement nature, it
is the right way for him. The result is all that
concerns the critic, who must forget his own pre-
dilections, and consider
only the intention and per-
formance of the painter,
whether the end be a
snow-and-ice piece by a
hardy German, a vivid
Venetian actuality by Mr.
Sargent, or some idyll of
form and colour by Mr.
Charles Shannon, noted,
remembered, and after
long reflection worked
out in the tranquillity of
his studio.
Indeed, the time-
honoured and time-weary
phrase, emotion remem-
bered in tranquillity, might
be applied to Mr. Shan-
non’s art. Repose is its
note. Reflection envelops
it like an atmosphere.
When he paints his own
portrait you feel that you
have passed into some
still, unharassed corner of
the world, as in the pic-
ture illustrated on this
page, showing the artist
seated in his studio beneath
the protecting majesty of a
Greek torso. The painter
XLVI. No. 191.—February,
is as calm as the torso. He is working, but
not in the way that the hardy German works ;
his aesthetic consciousness is active, stirred by the
lithographs, drawings, photographs, or whatever
they may be, that he has taken from the portfolio
and scattered for his delight. The most .promi-
nent among them is one of his own lithographs.
There is no vanity in that. When a man’s entire
life is devoted to his art, and to the collection of
rare and beautiful things that feast the eye and
feed the brain, his own particular productions
become almost impersonal, a step in the edifice of
art, which began so long ago and of which the end
is endless.
In writing about a painter it is arguable whether
it is better to know him personally, or only through
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST BY CHARLES SHANNON
I909.
3