DOI issue:
No. 196 (July, 1909)
DOI article:Wood, T. Martin: ''Chosen pictures'' at the Grafton Gallery
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20967#0122
“ Chosen Pictures ” at the Grafton Cattery
never will, pass the invisible barrier which divides
them from all that is not obvious. And so all
these painters have had to make their own public
and their own appreciators; but all latter-day criti-
cism has been in their favour, as it never was in
favour of revolutionists before. Their intellectual
and self-conscious attitude towards their own aims
could not fail to enlist the support of writers who
understand that attitude better than any other.
But this self-consciousness has not been without
its deleterious influence. There is not always pre-
sent the art which conceals art. One of the most
admirable pictures in the gallery is Mr. Lambert’s
The Shop; but the particular view of the studio,
with its grouping of the figures in the canvas, is
all a very consciously arranged pictorial device.
Such deliberation of composition is always in
keeping with the nature of purely decorative paint-
ing ; but in this work the painting of the faces, of
the actions, and of the clothes of the figures is
intensely realistic in its suggestion, and that the
character of the composition may be identified
with such essentially spontaneous handling, it
also should be without evidence of too much
deliberation. The handling presupposes that the
view is frankly an impression, and the naivete and
freshness of this impression are only spoiled by the
formality of the composition — for it is formal
although it is not conventional.
A charming portrait is Mr. Francis Howard’s
Portrait of Mrs. Francis Howard, in what is per-
haps the best modern tradition, or the best that
modern art has as yet substituted for a tradition.
The convention which it subscribes to and which
Whistler developed and followed more elusively
and meaningly than anyone else, is one to which
some of the best portrait painters of the day have
contributed, giving it a stability which Whistler
with his ghostly methods was incapable of and did
not care for It is that of the figure turning into
“ REFUGEES
96
{By peionission of Messrs. Wm. Alarchant Jr Co.)
BY WILLIAM ORPEN, R.H.A.
never will, pass the invisible barrier which divides
them from all that is not obvious. And so all
these painters have had to make their own public
and their own appreciators; but all latter-day criti-
cism has been in their favour, as it never was in
favour of revolutionists before. Their intellectual
and self-conscious attitude towards their own aims
could not fail to enlist the support of writers who
understand that attitude better than any other.
But this self-consciousness has not been without
its deleterious influence. There is not always pre-
sent the art which conceals art. One of the most
admirable pictures in the gallery is Mr. Lambert’s
The Shop; but the particular view of the studio,
with its grouping of the figures in the canvas, is
all a very consciously arranged pictorial device.
Such deliberation of composition is always in
keeping with the nature of purely decorative paint-
ing ; but in this work the painting of the faces, of
the actions, and of the clothes of the figures is
intensely realistic in its suggestion, and that the
character of the composition may be identified
with such essentially spontaneous handling, it
also should be without evidence of too much
deliberation. The handling presupposes that the
view is frankly an impression, and the naivete and
freshness of this impression are only spoiled by the
formality of the composition — for it is formal
although it is not conventional.
A charming portrait is Mr. Francis Howard’s
Portrait of Mrs. Francis Howard, in what is per-
haps the best modern tradition, or the best that
modern art has as yet substituted for a tradition.
The convention which it subscribes to and which
Whistler developed and followed more elusively
and meaningly than anyone else, is one to which
some of the best portrait painters of the day have
contributed, giving it a stability which Whistler
with his ghostly methods was incapable of and did
not care for It is that of the figure turning into
“ REFUGEES
96
{By peionission of Messrs. Wm. Alarchant Jr Co.)
BY WILLIAM ORPEN, R.H.A.