DOI Heft:
No. 199 (October, 1909)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: A picture collector's experiment
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20968#0040
A Picture Collector s Experiment
'THE VALUERS BY WILLIAM ORPEN
monplace cannot enter. The juxtaposition of old
and new work on the walls in this collection is
very interesting, because it makes possible appre-
ciation of such affinities between certain modern
and older painters; not as regards style, the
subject of frequent comparisons, but in the matter
of inspiration.
Amongst modern painters represented are Charles
Shannon, Charles Ricketts, James Pryde, Charles
Conder, Wilson Steer, W. Tonks, Walter Sickert,
and William Orpen. All these names are. familiar
to the foreigner through the Press, yet if he lands
in England to study the work of this present
school, is there any public institution to which
we can direct him ? Fortunately it is being con-
served by a few collectors in a country from
which, as a rule, all the best things go abroad.
We are grateful when we find, as in this collection,
a Whistler sea-piece, one of the few which have
not gone from England, and sea-pieces by Conder,
in which the Whistler influence is apparent, belong-
ing to the art of this island nation, and rightly the
subtlest appreciations of the sea and the haze-
veiled horizon that the world has seen as yet.
18
Things as different from these as The Birth
oj Venus, by the pre-Raphaelite, Mr. Spencer
Stanhope, are hanging on the wall. The beauty
desired of the pre-Raphaelites was of a most
indeterminate character, and in proportion to its
indefiniteness was their passion for all the out-
ward signs of reality and a method that did not
even release the real at the point where all reality
tends to escape into illusion—the point at which
Whistler had the genius to arrive. In the pre-
Raphaelite movement art was set upon the rejec-
tion of all conventions, just as in Wilson's time
it had accepted them all; and yet in the matter
of inspiration, as distinct from methods, it was
Wilson who went to life while the pre-Raphaelites
went back to art. Wilson's imagination at least
encountered at first hand, as part of the places he
wished to paint, and so as part of nature, the
associations of ruined gardens from which his
pictures took their beginning. But for choice the
pre-Raphaelites would not encounter a mood even
of this refinement at first hand, but rather as
interpreted to them through the fourteenth-century
traditions of Italian art. Life they intended should
'THE VALUERS BY WILLIAM ORPEN
monplace cannot enter. The juxtaposition of old
and new work on the walls in this collection is
very interesting, because it makes possible appre-
ciation of such affinities between certain modern
and older painters; not as regards style, the
subject of frequent comparisons, but in the matter
of inspiration.
Amongst modern painters represented are Charles
Shannon, Charles Ricketts, James Pryde, Charles
Conder, Wilson Steer, W. Tonks, Walter Sickert,
and William Orpen. All these names are. familiar
to the foreigner through the Press, yet if he lands
in England to study the work of this present
school, is there any public institution to which
we can direct him ? Fortunately it is being con-
served by a few collectors in a country from
which, as a rule, all the best things go abroad.
We are grateful when we find, as in this collection,
a Whistler sea-piece, one of the few which have
not gone from England, and sea-pieces by Conder,
in which the Whistler influence is apparent, belong-
ing to the art of this island nation, and rightly the
subtlest appreciations of the sea and the haze-
veiled horizon that the world has seen as yet.
18
Things as different from these as The Birth
oj Venus, by the pre-Raphaelite, Mr. Spencer
Stanhope, are hanging on the wall. The beauty
desired of the pre-Raphaelites was of a most
indeterminate character, and in proportion to its
indefiniteness was their passion for all the out-
ward signs of reality and a method that did not
even release the real at the point where all reality
tends to escape into illusion—the point at which
Whistler had the genius to arrive. In the pre-
Raphaelite movement art was set upon the rejec-
tion of all conventions, just as in Wilson's time
it had accepted them all; and yet in the matter
of inspiration, as distinct from methods, it was
Wilson who went to life while the pre-Raphaelites
went back to art. Wilson's imagination at least
encountered at first hand, as part of the places he
wished to paint, and so as part of nature, the
associations of ruined gardens from which his
pictures took their beginning. But for choice the
pre-Raphaelites would not encounter a mood even
of this refinement at first hand, but rather as
interpreted to them through the fourteenth-century
traditions of Italian art. Life they intended should