Studio: international art (49.1910)

Henry

motij of his work was clear in the large Toilet of
1896; the small Toilet of a year or so later, and
in the Girl with a Parrot of that period. In The
Crystal Gazer of 1906, and The Bird Cage of
1907, it had but acquired a more beautiful ex-
pression, it was but seen in a more accomplished
setting. His motif lifts his work clear of mere
brilliant observation and of mere narrative; it
makes it lyrical Though his figures are set
about with shimmering stuffs, rich harmonies and
all-saturating light, yet it is their humanity and the
implication of their complexities and mysteries
that make them beautiful. There is in these
pictures an atmosphere of sub-conscious ex-
pectancy of and wonder at we know not what.
The women in The Crystal Gazer and The Bird
Cage, indisputably ladies through and through,

Tonks

are surprised by us at some moment of mute
question, prescient of calamity. Why, we won-
der, this troubled communion with the Fates ?
What has happened that this little-more-than girl,
with her air of pure serenity, thus pauses in her
dressing to gaze into the pool of mystery? The
girl whom at The Bird Cage we intrude on, too,
is obsessed with dreams. Absently, yet tenderly,
she feeds her pet, while presage of the tears and
gladness her womanhood will know flushes her face
with pleasure and unconscious regrets. As beneath
the gaiety of Watteau’s fetes flowed a bourdon of
gentle melancholy, so in the most individual of
Mr. Tonks’ interpretations of young womanhood,
behind the daintinesses and sumptuous array, in
spite of the clear light and sparkling colours, there
stirs this breath of sub-conscious apprehension.