Studio: international art (55.1912)

Sir George Reid's Portraits

directions—one by the subtle insights into high
moments of spiritualisation, wedded to an un-
erring capacity of presenting delicate tonal har-
monies ; the other by his vice-like grip of the more
evident likeness of the sitter, combined with a power
and a mastery of his medium, which names him as
one of the greatest constructive draughtsmen that
Scotland has ever produced.

Of modern portraiture that counts we find
varied tendencies. There is the purely decorative
painter who is scarcely troubled at all with the
problems presented by the character of the sitter,
but is content if he can produce an attractive
colour-scheme with a note of distinction. The
late Robert Brough, in most of the phases of his
brilliant art, was one of these, and it is expressed
markedly by many of the young men of to-day,
notably Mr. Glyn Philpot. Mr. J. J. Shannon,
Mr. George Henry, and Mr. John Lavery, keenly
alive to decorative qualities, are ahead of Mr.
Philpot in their attempt to blend decoration

with character-drawing, which unity reaches its
highest expression in Sir James Guthrie, more
subtle, if less daring and determined in tech-
nique, than Mr. Sargent. For delicate shades of
character, indeed, Guthrie is at the apotheosis.
Mr. Orpen, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr. John, more
virile than either Mr. Shannon or Mr. Lavery,
though lacking their occasional graces, never
attempt that minute analysis of spiritualisation
which is characteristic of Sir James Guthrie,
yet never leave us unsatisfied by an over-
emphasis of the merely decorative side of their
art. Sir George Reid, on the other hand, is never
closely analytical, Meredithian, soul-searching. He
is content to make his man appear a man, to
leave the essential feminine which exists in most
refined natures alone, and to confine himself to
the necessary qualities which make a man a man.
Occasionally in doing so he approaches to crude-
ness, to hard and unsympathetic drawing. But in
all men corruptio optimi pessima, and Sir George
Reid’s comparative failures have
always sprung from the virtue
within him. Living in an age
when art is seething with revolu-
tion, he has remained a consti-
tutionalist and has worked out his
ideals despite the vogue and the
coterie, and has never for one
moment lost status or caste. To
some minds he may appear an
anachronism. To make a literary
parallel, he is of the school of
Walter Scott more than that of
George Meredith. He sees man
as a thing of sinew, not a thing of
introspection. In dealing with
faces, sometimes his colour is harsh,
his lighting forced, the drawing
hard—super-definitive. But, as

we said before, to be lacking in
defects is to be lacking in origin-
ality. And though he is sometimes
over-vigorous, he is never violent.
If simple truth, sincerity, and good
faith are the characteristics ot
eternal works, then his position is
assured, despite those who find
nothing but philistinism in noble
attributes.

For there is something which
comes to us from a portrait by Sir
George Reid which we are philistine
enough to name by the word

177

TOM MORRIS BY SIR GEORGE REID