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#0037
Charles Shannon
of his dreams whether the design be suggested
by the classic or by the modern world. Constable
once said, “ When I am before nature, I try to
forget that I have ever seen a picture.” I do
not suppose that Mr. Shannon ever forgets that
he has seen a picture. The sumptuousness and
magnificence of art, such art with which he
is in especial sympathy, say that of Giorgione
and Titian, and in latter days of Puvis de
Chavannes, is always present to his aesthetic con-
sciousness, which works in the subdued regions of
the Quietists.
Some painters are all craftsmen, Mr. Shannon is
half-craftsman and half-connoisseur. In his pictures
I see the virtuoso as well as the artist; the Venetian
maker of rich and suave decorations as well as the
modern painter; the designer of patterns with man
and woman as a pictorial background, Puvis de
Chavannes-like rather than Bastien-Lepage-like.
In his pictures I see that striving after the expres-
sion of something more than mere craftsmanship,
which was explained in one of the rare editorial
articles in The Dial.
“We make no claim to originality, not feeling
wiser than did Solomon who doubtless wrote the
Song of Songs; for all art is but the combination
of known quantities, the interplay of a few senses
only; that some spirit seems to transfuse these, is
due to a cunning use of a sixth sense—the sense of
possible relation commonly called Soul, probably a
second sense of touch more subtle than the first—
and this sense is more common to the craftsman
used to self-control than habit would allow.”
In all Mr. Shannon’s works there are signs of
that spirit of transfusion, that something which is
neither sight nor touch, urging him, from the in-
ception to the last lingering touches on a picture,
to call to his aid beauty—aesthetic, spiritual, sen-
suous as the case may be—but always beauty. So
insistent is this call that sometimes drawing gives way
to arrangement. Realism vanishes before it. Such
“ actual” subjects as women and children of to-day
MR. CHARLES SHANNON’S STUDIO AT KENSINGTON
15
of his dreams whether the design be suggested
by the classic or by the modern world. Constable
once said, “ When I am before nature, I try to
forget that I have ever seen a picture.” I do
not suppose that Mr. Shannon ever forgets that
he has seen a picture. The sumptuousness and
magnificence of art, such art with which he
is in especial sympathy, say that of Giorgione
and Titian, and in latter days of Puvis de
Chavannes, is always present to his aesthetic con-
sciousness, which works in the subdued regions of
the Quietists.
Some painters are all craftsmen, Mr. Shannon is
half-craftsman and half-connoisseur. In his pictures
I see the virtuoso as well as the artist; the Venetian
maker of rich and suave decorations as well as the
modern painter; the designer of patterns with man
and woman as a pictorial background, Puvis de
Chavannes-like rather than Bastien-Lepage-like.
In his pictures I see that striving after the expres-
sion of something more than mere craftsmanship,
which was explained in one of the rare editorial
articles in The Dial.
“We make no claim to originality, not feeling
wiser than did Solomon who doubtless wrote the
Song of Songs; for all art is but the combination
of known quantities, the interplay of a few senses
only; that some spirit seems to transfuse these, is
due to a cunning use of a sixth sense—the sense of
possible relation commonly called Soul, probably a
second sense of touch more subtle than the first—
and this sense is more common to the craftsman
used to self-control than habit would allow.”
In all Mr. Shannon’s works there are signs of
that spirit of transfusion, that something which is
neither sight nor touch, urging him, from the in-
ception to the last lingering touches on a picture,
to call to his aid beauty—aesthetic, spiritual, sen-
suous as the case may be—but always beauty. So
insistent is this call that sometimes drawing gives way
to arrangement. Realism vanishes before it. Such
“ actual” subjects as women and children of to-day
MR. CHARLES SHANNON’S STUDIO AT KENSINGTON
15