Studio: international art (48.1910)

Edward J. Gregory, R.A.

Spoils of Opportunity and The Sound of Oars.
Here the search for detail, the desire to record all
that he could see, has not tempted or misled him
into loss of breadth, and has not induced him to
disregard the vital principles of design. His
realism is admirable, but the decorative quality
of all three pictures is not less to be admired, and
the largeness with which they are conceived and
carried out is worthy of all praise. To see things
in this way, broadly and with a sense of dignified
completeness, and yet to be able to draw the
minutest distinctions between the little things
which fill out the pictorial scheme, is eminently
the faculty of the master.

Another quality which gives particular distinc-
tion to his art is the certainty and freedom of his
draughtsmanship. There is no academic pedantry
in his drawing and no laborious effort, but there is
a fascinating expressiveness and a delightful flexi-
bility which is obviously the outcome of an
absolute agreement between mind and hand. His
portraits and his figure subjects convey an im-
pression of unhesitating knowledge of form and
contour, and of an exact understanding of subtleties
of modelling. They show no struggle with diffi-
culties of statement, everything seems to come
right as a matter of course, and to fit together

naturally without any deliberate intention on his
part. But in this superlative completeness every-
one who knows what the attainment of accuracy
in draughtsmanship and modelling demands in the
way of patient application and exhaustive study,
will recognise one of the most convincing proofs of
the thoroughness with which he prepared himself
for the responsibilities of his profession. That his
work should wear this appearance of having given
him but little trouble is of the greatest possible
significance, because few painters succeed in con-
cealing so happily the actual struggle by which at
the last success has been secured.

There is in his management of the oil and
water-colour mediums the same air of confidence
that distinguishes his drawing. A lover of high
finish, he fell at no time into the mistake of
believing that mere surface elaboration would have
a meaning unless it logically explained the funda-
mental purpose of the picture. Finish, as he
rightly understood it, meant the carrying on of
technical processes until they had fulfilled to the
utmost their mission of explanation, until not
a touch more was needed to make clear the inten-
tion which the picture embodied. So his painting
is calm, deliberate and serious, without any fan-
tastic cleverness of brushwork, without any affected

"the sound of oars" {The property of lohn Maddocks, Esq.) by edward j. gregory, r.a.

90