Studio: international art (49.1910)

Mr. Robert Aiming Bell

ing not only to other sources of inspiration but
also to suggestions contained in the first lines
with which they touch the paper. There is a
sense in which a picture finishes itself.

The Archers is a panel of great interest because
it is so expressive of Mr. Bell’s later mood, that of
a romanticist trying to be classic. The interpre-
tation of classical themes not in their own con-
vention, the use of a classic motif by a mind that
is distinctly a product of romantic influences,
always gives us that unusual savour of remote,
fantastic experiences that has made the work of
Botticelli so acceptable to the present age. The
romanticists at the beginning of the nineteenth
century waged war upon the classic; we are as
romantic as ever, but we regard the classic itself
romantically. The feud round which so many
words have been written is scarcely sustained.
Pictures always reflect intellectual tendencies of
the time, and this entente between the classic and
romantic in art, the fusion of the two in pictures,
shows us life as in a mirror and the fusion of old
ideals which used to strive against each
other.

Interesting art leads to digression,
suggesting everything, while it may
pretend to little. In Mr. Anning Bell’s
painting, The Garden of Sweet Sound,
stress is laid upon the connection
between design and music, which lovers
of art affectionately trace. A garden of
sweet scent — that would have been
impossible in paint, for it is not to the
senses but through them that the appeals
of art are made. In the arts the two
most spiritual senses, vision and hear-
ing, leading direct into the soul, play
into each other, so that there can be
pictures painted to music, or music
written to pictures—though we are not
sure whether the latter has ever been
properly done. Beardsley’s famous
illustration to the Third Ballade of
Chopin, though it may not be your or
my interpretation, is a real illustration
to music, a fantasy born at least from
the memory of sound. And the atti-
tudes of the figures in Mr. Bell’s picture
become unattractive if by a mental
effort we attempt to separate the arrange-
ment of the design from the associa-
tions of music.

In chronicling an artist’s record, his
most interesting period is not always

260

identified with the moment of writing, but with
Mr. Anning Bell’s work it is so; it seems now on
the threshold of its most expressive achievement.
In paint he now seems to be finding more of the
freedom and emotionalism that he used to show
in illustrations for Keats and Shelley—an abandon,
a forgetfulness of the model that gives play to in-
tellectual feeling. Smaller panels, such as Mockery,
and above all The Archers, perhaps contain most
of this feeling, and are most anticipatory of a new
chapter. At every point of his career the artist’s
talent has been noticeable for the continual sense
of progression, and he is nearer now than ever to
the field of expression and success in which an
elaborate and difficultly acquired technique be-
comes instinctive.

The true artist goes his own way despite all
expressions of opinion, but those interested in
criticism of this work, or in tendencies that we
think we discern, may wonder at our use of the
ever-dangerous word “abandon,” with its invita-
tion in almost any art to clap-trap. Of art work,