Studio: international art (55.1912)

Sir George Reid's Portraits

To achieve a purely decorative scheme would, we
are convinced, deter much from the ambition
aimed at by Sir George Reid, which is to allow
nothing to detract from the directness and force
and character of the portrait, even at the expense
of mere stylistic effects. There is no self-conscious
artistry in his work, no decorative fantasies, no
running riot in bold juxtapositions of pigment.

Sir George Reid, with Mr. Lorimer and Mr.
Robert Gibb, may be called the last of the Old
Guard who still continued in active and honour-
able service after the Scottish citadel was cap-
tured by the revolutionaries. At first the contrast
between the two schools was striking. The early
portraits of such men as Lavery, Henry, Walton, and
Roche (Guthrie from the first was more than a
mere colourist) made no pretence of digging into
character. The sitter was merely part of a scheme
of decoration, occasionally a mere clothes-horse for
attractive drapery. The mental and
moral capacities of the model were
discarded or sacrificed for the
merely tonal and decorative aims
of the painter. It was not till later
that the new men became heirs to
the national instinct for character,
which enabled them to present
personality along with consciously
balanced and decorative effects.

During the stages of this movement
from colour up to colour and
character Sir George Reid went, as
before, straight to the sitter and
demanded more from him than
from his environment, keeping to
his preference for the essentials ol
the subject rather than the decora-
tive possibilities of his surroundings.

Having fought many tough battles,
the new men emerged victorious
and became the vogue, and it is
noteworthy that when the flood of
sympathy was flowing in their
direction a man like Sir George
Reid was never stranded on the
mud. His unfaltering, trenchant
manipulation in his forceful pre-
sentation of the human face, his
very indifference to the new re-
ligion of art, attracted the admira-
tion even of his antagonists, who
were compelled to admit that of all
Scottish painters he gave the impres-
sion of handling the surest brush.

*74

There never was anything experimental or tenta-
tive in the canvases of Sir George Reid. Whatever
their limitations, they were always authoritative,
definite, full of a sense of power. The preference
which the younger men showed for low tone,
though given to fullness of pitch and truth in
values, and their tendencies to greyish, often
apparently colourless harmonies, made the older
men, with their strong colour and richness of sur-
face, appear, by contrast, rather crude and sometimes
garish; but when the eye had become accustomed
to the contrast, and when the future of the paint
was considered as well as the present, there were
those—there are still those—who “put their money”
on the older men, and these latter, though they may
not paint poetry, yet know full well the value of
inspired prose, and who is to say which is on the
higher plane of art? Two such men as Sir James
Guthrie and Sir George Reid are great in different

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PROF. JOHN STUART BLACKIE BY SIR GEORGE REID

(National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh)