DOI Heft:
No. 227 (February 1912)
DOI Artikel:Dixon, Marion Hepworth: Edward Stott: an Appreciation
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21156#0024
Edward Stott, A.R.A.
School, and afterwards to King’s School, Ely, solely
with the view of his following a business career.
Five dreary years of Manchester and an office
stool were the result. That the lad suffered, even
as Holman Hunt under precisely similar circum-
stances suffered, goes without saying. Indeed,
desultory studies pursued at the local art school in
Manchester and drawings made at moments
snatched from the routine of office work only
fortified his determination to seek a scientific
artistic training. But where to find it ? Help at
the moment seemed far to seek. Luckily even in
these untutored days a certain originality asserted
itself in the lad’s work. An admirer,
all but unknown to the student, sud-
denly came to his aid, and generously
put within his grasp the unlooked-for
means of starting on a student’s career
in Paris. We are told by the most
distinguished of Mr. Stott’s biographers
that the news of the artist’s good for-
tune was looked upon coldly by his
family. If he was suffered to cross
the Channel he had nothing warmer
than passive disapproval as a send-off.
Happily more congenial conditions
awaited him abroad. For the career
of Mr. Stott as a student in Paris was
brilliant in the extreme. His record
shows that at a moment when every
atelier was teeming with talent inspired
by the plein-air movement, Mr. Stott
stood a head and shoulders above his
fellows. There were even friends (have
we not all of us such friends ?) ready to
prognosticate that the student’s ability
would prove his undoing. They saw
in his very dexterity the herald of an
adroit mannerist. That these critics
had gauged neither the temperament
nor the tenaciousness of the artist they
attempted to estimate goes without
saying. For if in the course of his
career under Carolus Duran the new-
comer appeared to be more Parisian
than the Parisians in his methods, there
were latent forces in his character which
made it impossible for him to be a
blind imitator of any artist or any
school. Thus he passed in turn through
the hands of Carolus and Cabanel
practically untouched by the more
blatant of modern artistic methods.
The most cunning facility delighted
4
him not, mere bravura was anathema to him. Not
here in the brazen light of Parisian ateliers was
the artist to come into his own. Searching, seek-
ing, studying, in leaving school Mr. Stott put
himself to school. And at the feet of the. Old
Masters, and presently under the benign auspices
of the Barbizon group of painters, he gradually
found his true metier.
He became “ the painter of the field and the
twilight ”—to use Mr. Laurence Housman’s beauti-
ful appellation—and in bringing so passionate
a love to the simplest things lifted them to the
plane of poetry. Not that Mr. Stott lost his modern
PASTEL STUDY FOR “A COTTAGE MADONNA”
BY EDWARD STOTT, A.R.A.
School, and afterwards to King’s School, Ely, solely
with the view of his following a business career.
Five dreary years of Manchester and an office
stool were the result. That the lad suffered, even
as Holman Hunt under precisely similar circum-
stances suffered, goes without saying. Indeed,
desultory studies pursued at the local art school in
Manchester and drawings made at moments
snatched from the routine of office work only
fortified his determination to seek a scientific
artistic training. But where to find it ? Help at
the moment seemed far to seek. Luckily even in
these untutored days a certain originality asserted
itself in the lad’s work. An admirer,
all but unknown to the student, sud-
denly came to his aid, and generously
put within his grasp the unlooked-for
means of starting on a student’s career
in Paris. We are told by the most
distinguished of Mr. Stott’s biographers
that the news of the artist’s good for-
tune was looked upon coldly by his
family. If he was suffered to cross
the Channel he had nothing warmer
than passive disapproval as a send-off.
Happily more congenial conditions
awaited him abroad. For the career
of Mr. Stott as a student in Paris was
brilliant in the extreme. His record
shows that at a moment when every
atelier was teeming with talent inspired
by the plein-air movement, Mr. Stott
stood a head and shoulders above his
fellows. There were even friends (have
we not all of us such friends ?) ready to
prognosticate that the student’s ability
would prove his undoing. They saw
in his very dexterity the herald of an
adroit mannerist. That these critics
had gauged neither the temperament
nor the tenaciousness of the artist they
attempted to estimate goes without
saying. For if in the course of his
career under Carolus Duran the new-
comer appeared to be more Parisian
than the Parisians in his methods, there
were latent forces in his character which
made it impossible for him to be a
blind imitator of any artist or any
school. Thus he passed in turn through
the hands of Carolus and Cabanel
practically untouched by the more
blatant of modern artistic methods.
The most cunning facility delighted
4
him not, mere bravura was anathema to him. Not
here in the brazen light of Parisian ateliers was
the artist to come into his own. Searching, seek-
ing, studying, in leaving school Mr. Stott put
himself to school. And at the feet of the. Old
Masters, and presently under the benign auspices
of the Barbizon group of painters, he gradually
found his true metier.
He became “ the painter of the field and the
twilight ”—to use Mr. Laurence Housman’s beauti-
ful appellation—and in bringing so passionate
a love to the simplest things lifted them to the
plane of poetry. Not that Mr. Stott lost his modern
PASTEL STUDY FOR “A COTTAGE MADONNA”
BY EDWARD STOTT, A.R.A.