Studio: international art (49.1910)

Recent IVork by Mr. Cayley Robinson

“the bridge”

BY CAYLEY ROBINSON

SOME RECENT WORK OF MR.
CAYLEY ROBINSON. BY T.
MARTIN WOOD.

In the Carfax Gallery a year ago a room was
hung entirely with the
pictures of Mr. Cayley
Robinson, and one real-
ized above everything in
connection with the artist’s
work, thathewas construct-
ing in it a haunted region.

Even in his more every-
day subjects—groups of
children by the fire—the
significance of the picture
seems not to lie in the
scene, but the feeling that
the fates themselves are
concealed — that some-
thing is portending. The
figures seem to be stand-
ing at the margin of an
imaginary world, without
passing into it, and a
knowledge of destiny is
seen in their eyes. In
the picture The Two
Sisters all the figures look
as if they felt that they
were watched by some

invisible watcher. This
kind of art is content to
appeal by the forces
which belong to painting ;
it does not encroach on
literary fields, and the
simplicity, the sometimes
almost empty - sounding
titles are useful in saving
those who are always con-
founding the province of
painting with that of litera-
ture. It is quite common
for people to speak as if
all ideas that can be con-
veyed in words are literary
ideas. All ideas are, in
a sense, literary, but the
subjective world as much
as the objective one
belongs to painting.

No one will dispute
this artist’s sense of design,
though they may feel it to be limited, and mark its
repetitions, but even in this they will be aware
more of the insistence on certain moods than
exhaustion of invention. The artist prefers that a
dignified architectural sense of drawing should

THE ROMAN LEGIONARIES


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