Studio: international art (46.1909)

Studio-Talk

majority of whom were Edinburgh men. One of
the new associates is a native of Edinburgh,
another belongs to Ayrshire, and the third to
Perth. Mr. Marshall Brown, the Edinburgh asso-
ciate, showed good draughtsmanship in the Aca-
demy Life School, where he won the Stuart prize
and Chalmers bursary. He was one of the original
members of the Scottish Artists’ Society and was
recently the Chairman of its Council. A good
deal of his earlier work was the outcome of study
in the Highlands, but latterly he has devoted his
energies to work on the Berwickshire and East
Lothian coast. Indeed, he may almost be said to
have made his summer home at Cockenzie, a little
fishing village some ten miles east from Edinburgh,
wrhere the modern trawler is yet unknown, and
the old picturesque customs and garb of the line
fishermen still exist. The illustration accompany-
ing this note gives one of the most typical of these
fisher life studies, the principal figure carrying the
creel is the belle of the village, a fine compound
of rustic beauty and muscularity. Child life he has
admirably presented in Seaside Roses
and Wild Roses, both of which have
recently been reproduced in The
Studio. Mr. Brown has aimed at a
healthy and unmannered realism. His
figures are instinct with life, and their
landscape setting is always appropriate.

His compositions, though as a rule
simple and not burdened with detail,
do not sacrifice what will contribute to
artistic completeness, and his distances
convey the sense of space and the
feeling of atmosphere.

Commencing his artistic career as a
lithographic artist and illustrator, Mr.
George Houston is one of the most
individualistic of the younger school of
Glasgow artists. His work has been re-
cognised by the municipality of the
western city in their purchase of a large
landscape for the Kelvingrove Galleries.
Though he has worked a good deal at
Lochgoilhead his favourite field of study
is the Dairy district of Ayrshire, of
which he is a native. His Seed Time
in Ayrshire, shown at the Franco-
British Exhibition last year, and ac-
quired by Preston Corporation, is typical
of his style. He is keenly observant
and analytic, not depending greatly on
chiaroscuro for his effects, and his

3I4

colour is rich and well laid down. Spring, autumn
and winter effects he has carefully studied, and
the floating mist on a hillside, the watery atmo-
sphere so characteristic of November weather, with
its bleaching influence on colour, or the chilly,
half melted snow lying in patches on the brown
fields, he suggests with much skill. Mr. Houston
is a member of the Royal Scottish Society of
Water-colour Painters and the Society of Twenty-
five of London.

Mr. W. M. Frazer, the son of a Perth magistrate,
came to Edinburgh in the early eighties, and four
years later was joint Keith prizeman with Mr.
Duddingstone Herdman, his picture entitled Glow
Before Decay, being afterwards acquired by the
Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine
Arts in Scotland. He has been abroad a good
deal and recently visited Huntingdon and Cam-
bridgeshire. One result of his English expedition
is the beautiful evening landscape St. Ives, now in
the Royal Scottish Academy Exhibition. Conti

“IN SUMMER time” BY FRANCIS H. NEWBERY

(See Glasgow Studio-Talk)