DOI issue:
No. 224 (November 1911)
DOI article:Salaman, Malcolm C.: Pictures and etchings of the Hon. Walter James, A. R. E.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21155#0129
Hon. Walter James, A.R.E.
employ, whether oil or pastel, a medium that
he uses very frequently and with favour, especially
for the rapid rendering of the transient influences
of light and shadow.
Now, in the splendid Cheviot, the Hills Above, Mr.
James has used pastel with masterly effect for what
is primarily a sky-picture. It is a great October sky,
with big white, grey and blue clouds sweeping
boisterously across a plane of deep blue space,
some in forms like wild Atlantic waves breaking
into foam, while in the far distance, across a serene
plane of turquoise blue, calm white clouds are
floating low. On the moorland foreground the
grass and heather spaces are shadowed or light-
ened by the capricious movements of these great
clouds. In the middle distance a brilliant patch
of light shows up a characteristic moorland road
undulating away; near at hand a heavy local
shower is falling, and beyond is the splendour of
great dark hills with distant Cheviot command-
ing the scene in purple dignity. Here, in this fine
picture, earth and sky are shown in true relation,
the sky dominating without being unduly obtrusive,
and pastel here thoroughly justifies the bold, rich
manner of its use. It is the medium too of The
Sills Bum, which we also reproduce, and it renders
very happily the play of light and shadow over the
warm hues of the bracken and the rowan-trees,
under a bright turquoise sky with flaky clouds.
Mr. James is so close and intimate an observer
of nature that he sees colour with a very subtle
sense of its infinite gradations of tone under
varying light. So he is a very true colourist, and
he has the gift of persuading one of his truth.
Take The Marches, which we represent in
colours ; who but a very subtle colourist, with an
unerring eye for tones, could have treated those
successive planes of hilly moorland so as to
convey that infinite sense of distance ? From the
little pool in the marshy foreground one's eye is
carried across the valley of the North Tyne into
Cumberland, with Cross Fell in the distance, and
one feels that just so must this spacious northern
landscape have looked under that light and
vapoury July sky, in which the clouds take shape and
move in harmony with the land. And this natural
"THE SILLS BURN "
FROM THE PASTEL BY THE HON*. WALTER JAMES, A.R.E.
107
employ, whether oil or pastel, a medium that
he uses very frequently and with favour, especially
for the rapid rendering of the transient influences
of light and shadow.
Now, in the splendid Cheviot, the Hills Above, Mr.
James has used pastel with masterly effect for what
is primarily a sky-picture. It is a great October sky,
with big white, grey and blue clouds sweeping
boisterously across a plane of deep blue space,
some in forms like wild Atlantic waves breaking
into foam, while in the far distance, across a serene
plane of turquoise blue, calm white clouds are
floating low. On the moorland foreground the
grass and heather spaces are shadowed or light-
ened by the capricious movements of these great
clouds. In the middle distance a brilliant patch
of light shows up a characteristic moorland road
undulating away; near at hand a heavy local
shower is falling, and beyond is the splendour of
great dark hills with distant Cheviot command-
ing the scene in purple dignity. Here, in this fine
picture, earth and sky are shown in true relation,
the sky dominating without being unduly obtrusive,
and pastel here thoroughly justifies the bold, rich
manner of its use. It is the medium too of The
Sills Bum, which we also reproduce, and it renders
very happily the play of light and shadow over the
warm hues of the bracken and the rowan-trees,
under a bright turquoise sky with flaky clouds.
Mr. James is so close and intimate an observer
of nature that he sees colour with a very subtle
sense of its infinite gradations of tone under
varying light. So he is a very true colourist, and
he has the gift of persuading one of his truth.
Take The Marches, which we represent in
colours ; who but a very subtle colourist, with an
unerring eye for tones, could have treated those
successive planes of hilly moorland so as to
convey that infinite sense of distance ? From the
little pool in the marshy foreground one's eye is
carried across the valley of the North Tyne into
Cumberland, with Cross Fell in the distance, and
one feels that just so must this spacious northern
landscape have looked under that light and
vapoury July sky, in which the clouds take shape and
move in harmony with the land. And this natural
"THE SILLS BURN "
FROM THE PASTEL BY THE HON*. WALTER JAMES, A.R.E.
107