Studio: international art (52.1911)

Drawings and Studies of George Belcher

He has never striven after originality ; the
desire to be clever at all costs, so characteristic
of modern art, has not touched him. He has
been content to produce simply from the
resources of his own mind without regard
to the tendency of the times or the practice
of the outside world; consequently he has
given us work which is thoroughly the ex-
pression of his own feeling, the result of his
observation, and which inimitably bears the
impress of his own personality.

In the execution of his work he has always
used charcoal. He seems to have kept always
a clear, consistent ideal before him, and his
aim in execution, as in conception, has been
to delete the superfluous and to constantly
simplify, to "go for" only those things that
really matter. Experience has confirmed his
opinion that charcoal — most responsive and
sympathetic of mediums—is most suitable for
rendering the subtlety and delicacy which he
finds in his models and for expressing those
fine shades and precise touches of emphatic
form which are so characteristic of his
drawings.

The great suggestiveness of the medium, too,
he knows how to value for the indication
of the backgrounds to his drawings. Another
distinctive feature of his drawing is the many
painter-like qualities it embodies. Such delicate
apprehension of values and subtlety of tone are
qualities not often met nor associated with
black-and-white art. He has resisted many
suggestions that he should abandon the more
personal medium of charcoal in favour of pen-
and-ink. Very rightly, although at some sacri-
fice, he has remained faithful to the medium
for which he has most feeling.

In some of his drawings finished for repro-
duction, one is occasionally conscious of a
feeling of restraint in the draughtsmanship, due
doubtless to some slight feeling of imposed
limitations, inevitable, I imagine, in the exe-
cution of work for special and definite purposes.
In this respect many of his studies are finer.
They have a freedom, a sketchiness, which is
never loose in the sense of incorrect drawing
and which possesses irresistible charm. His
drawing at its best—and it always maintains
a high level—has a classical precision and sim-
plicity. It is possible that he might obtain a
finer line with pencil work, but it would be at
a sacrifice of other qualities. There is no
medium which combines the peculiar properties
of all mediums, and, after all, charcoal is, par
90

excellence, his medium. All his figures are
the result of thorough and detailed study. The
clothes which drape them are their own, and
full of character and personality.

He is particularly happy in his treatment
of backgrounds, which he keeps definite yet
atmospheric and also unobtrusive. Every
artist who has striven for simplicity and the
reduction of drawing to essentials knows the
difficulty of managing a background, and how
often the force of a figure may be reduced in
value through over-emphasis or misplacement
of background detail. The mise en scene,
so to speak, of Belcher's drawings is always
the result of actual study.

The public knows his work chiefly through
reproductions to which some joke is attached.
These, however, by no means represent his best

STUDY BY GEORGE BELCHER