Studio: international art (55.1912)

Edward Stott, A.R.A.

note of realism in so doing. The sentimental, the
merely pretty, is vigorously excluded from his work.
If his draughtsmanship is more synthetic than
what is called “bold,” his unfailing sense of
structure makes his canvases both restful and
satisfying. Not that labour and pain and travail are
excluded from his horizon, but the rustics Mr. Stott
presents us with have that note of sturdy endurance,
that almost sublime resignation to nature’s order
that makes them subservient to and one with their
surroundings. In truth if I were asked to express
in a single word the paramount attribute of Mr.
Edward Stott’s genius, I should say it lay in his
sense of harmony. Now by harmony I do not
mean only the obvious felicity of his colour-
schemes. We all know he is a colourist. Nor do
I include the harmony which is part and parcel of
the equipment of the stylist. We know Mr. Stott
is above everything else a stylist. The sense of
harmony I wish to indicate is somdthipg more than
either style or colour. It
lies neither in his fine sense
of tone nor in a flair for
excluding the unessential.

Mr. Stott’s harmony is
emotional, it is tempera-
mental. It is the artist’s
vision of nature ; his inter-
pretation of the world as he,
as a sentient being, con-
ceives it.

Is it necessary to say that
Mr. Stott’s interpretation of
the world is that of a wholly
congruous world? Take
any canvas of his at hazard :

Two Mothers, The Fold, The
Village Street (now in the
Bradford Art Gallery), A
Sunday Night, The Cottage
Madonna (both the first and
last of these pictures have
been reproduced in The
Studio); always the same ex-
quisite congruity, the same
rare consistency is to be ob-
served. It would appear
that the artist gives us
nothing but what has been
laboured and assimilated in
his own soul. He has, it
would seem, been tenderly
solicitous, watchfully intimate
with the very least of his rustic
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subjects. He has brooded over them in summer
and in winter, has let them lie in the back of his
mind, so that when they are at last presented to us
on canvas they seem ruminative, reflective, steeped
in mystery, yet withal set down with the power and
a reserve which approaches the monumental.

Returning to Mr. Stott’s student days, when
he lived in the Rue de la Seine and first came
under the influence of Jean Frangois Millet,
is to touch on his Sturm und Drang period.
For the youngster’s three years’ probation had
come to an end and life had soon to be faced
under chillier skies and sterner surroundings.
Hampered for means, a thousand hindrances
retarded the beginner’s progress. But all was not
gloom and disappointment. His first venture, A
French Kitchen Garden, was accepted and hung
at Burlington House, while Marie and A May
Flower were seen on the same walls not long after.
The outcome of a stay at Evesham, near Worcester,

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PASTEL STUDY

BY EDWARD STOTT, A.R.A.