Studio: international art (55.1912)

Edward Stott, A.R.A.

the success of the last two pictures heartened the
painter into seeking some permanent resting-
ground on native soil. In his wanderings he
happened into Sussex, and seeing Amberley has
remained there for over a quarter of a century.
Primrose Day was the first canvas tackled in
the new environment, and was exhibited in
Piccadilly in 1885. The year 1885, then, may
be said to have been the decisive turning-point in
Mr. Stott’s life. So sensitive an artist needed a
restful atmosphere, and in the pure Saxon popula-
tion of rustic Sussex he found exactly what he
craved for.

To enumerate the output of Mr. Edward Stott is
not possible within the slender limits of one article.
Yet the picture called The Ferry, exhibited in 1887,
and purchased by the Oldham Corporation, the
two canvases, Gleaners and In an Orchard, seen at
the New Gallery in 1892, Milking Time—Early
Morning, shown at the New English Art Club,
1894, The White Cow, and Noonday—Boys Bathing,'
all belong to the artist’s
best period. But space
presses. Only roughly and
in a cursory way can be
mentioned Bathers, exhi-
bited at the Royal Academy
in 1890; Home by the Ferry,

Snowstorm, and Nature's
Mirror, seen on the same
walls in 189T; Red Roses
(1892), Black Horse and
Ploughboy (1896), The Little
Violinist (1888), The Har-
vester's Return (1899), The
River Bank (1901), Peaceful
Rest and Youth and Age
(1902), The Gleaners and
Echo (t903), The Old Barge
(1904), The Shepherd {1905),

Lambing Time (1906), The
Reaper and the Maid and
Belated (1907), The Kiss
(reproduced in these pages),

The Flamingoes, and The
Cloisonnt Sky (r9o8), The
Flight (1909), The Good
Samaritan and There was
no Room in the Inn (1910),

Her thoughts were her
Children, and—perhaps one
of the most tender and trans-
lucent of all his canvases—

Hagar and Ishmael.

The mention of The Good Samaritan (another
picture already seen in the pages of the Studio)
reminds me of the latest phase of Mr. Stott’s art.
I mean his religious art. Was it not M. de
Goncourt who once spoke of a virgin’s forehead
bombi dlinnocence ? The chief difficulty of the
modern artist is to find models expressing the
detachment, the subservience, the acceptance that
we find writ large on the face of every saint and
angel portrayed by the early masters. Now is it
that the innocence or the artist has departed in
the tortured “ prickly ” age in which we live ? The
genius of Mr. Edward Stott gives us the answer.
For though he treats his religious subjects, for the
most part, from their simple human side, he sees
with the inner eye as well as the outward. And
in this sense again he brings us harmony, the
harmony with which he would envelop and en-
compass the world. M. H. D.

[An illustration of Mr. Stott’s picture, The Ferry,