DOI Heft:
Nr. 221 (August 1911)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: Some recent work by Mr. J. W. Waterhouse, R. A.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20973#0196
/. IV. JVaferhouse, R.A.
SOME RECENT WORK BY MR. to make a sensation by painting some obviously
J W WATFRHOUSE R A sordid actuality than to find a beautiful motive
which requires for its proper appreciation a care-
There has grown up of late years a certain fully cultivated taste. It saves them so much
tendency towards materialism in pictorial art, labour in educating themselves if they give up any
a tendency not altogether wholesome to insist idea of training their selective sense or of learning
upon and exalt the ugly and commonplace and to to discriminate between the good things and the
choose the bald facts of modern existence as bad in the world about them. Civilised life pro-
subjects for study. Many painters, in a mistaken vides them with plenty of repulsive motives ready
striving after realism, seek perversely for the to their hand; it would be waste of energy, they
deformities and defects which have come into life think, to choose material which would demand
as results of over-civilisation, and defend this of them refinement of thought and subtlety of
perversity by claiming that in the representation of expression.
such deformities they are strictly true to nature. But as a result of this attitude on the part of so
Others put forward the argument that ugliness is many of the artists of to-day it has become the
an essential of character and that beauty and fashion to decry sentiment in art as a thing
strength are incompatible—that a work of art necessarily feeble and mawkish. The distinction
which does not represent some abnormality in an between sentiment that is beautiful and finely
ugly way must have the taint of prettiness and be suggestive, and that empty sentimentality from
a weak and colourless reflection of nature. which comes the vice of prettiness, is in danger of
These fallacies have unfortunately gained many being forgotten. All kinds of sentiment are equally
adherents. A number of clever painters are at the banned by artists who call themselves progressive ;
present time wasting considerable capacities in all are treated with the same want of discrimination
the production of pictures which illustrate an and good taste by the men who pride themselves
objectionable misapprehension of the functions of on being "in the movement" and properly in touch
art. Really, the cult of ugliness, the worship of with the modern point of view,
the grossly material, is only a symptom of a kind Such an evasion of the responsibility which
of mental laziness with which those workers are lies upon every true artist, to aim always at the
afflicted who boast most loudly of their intimate best and highest type of expression, cannot be
and precise study of nature. It is so much easier too strongly condemned. The man who by
' ariadne" (By Permission of H. W. Henaerson, Esq.)
LIII. No. 221.—August 1911.
by j. w. waterhouse, r.a.
175
SOME RECENT WORK BY MR. to make a sensation by painting some obviously
J W WATFRHOUSE R A sordid actuality than to find a beautiful motive
which requires for its proper appreciation a care-
There has grown up of late years a certain fully cultivated taste. It saves them so much
tendency towards materialism in pictorial art, labour in educating themselves if they give up any
a tendency not altogether wholesome to insist idea of training their selective sense or of learning
upon and exalt the ugly and commonplace and to to discriminate between the good things and the
choose the bald facts of modern existence as bad in the world about them. Civilised life pro-
subjects for study. Many painters, in a mistaken vides them with plenty of repulsive motives ready
striving after realism, seek perversely for the to their hand; it would be waste of energy, they
deformities and defects which have come into life think, to choose material which would demand
as results of over-civilisation, and defend this of them refinement of thought and subtlety of
perversity by claiming that in the representation of expression.
such deformities they are strictly true to nature. But as a result of this attitude on the part of so
Others put forward the argument that ugliness is many of the artists of to-day it has become the
an essential of character and that beauty and fashion to decry sentiment in art as a thing
strength are incompatible—that a work of art necessarily feeble and mawkish. The distinction
which does not represent some abnormality in an between sentiment that is beautiful and finely
ugly way must have the taint of prettiness and be suggestive, and that empty sentimentality from
a weak and colourless reflection of nature. which comes the vice of prettiness, is in danger of
These fallacies have unfortunately gained many being forgotten. All kinds of sentiment are equally
adherents. A number of clever painters are at the banned by artists who call themselves progressive ;
present time wasting considerable capacities in all are treated with the same want of discrimination
the production of pictures which illustrate an and good taste by the men who pride themselves
objectionable misapprehension of the functions of on being "in the movement" and properly in touch
art. Really, the cult of ugliness, the worship of with the modern point of view,
the grossly material, is only a symptom of a kind Such an evasion of the responsibility which
of mental laziness with which those workers are lies upon every true artist, to aim always at the
afflicted who boast most loudly of their intimate best and highest type of expression, cannot be
and precise study of nature. It is so much easier too strongly condemned. The man who by
' ariadne" (By Permission of H. W. Henaerson, Esq.)
LIII. No. 221.—August 1911.
by j. w. waterhouse, r.a.
175