DOI Heft:
No. 231 (June 1912)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: The paintings of Wilfrid G. von Glehn
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21157#0031
IV. G. von Glehn
“ BLUE AND GOLD
FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY W. G. VON GLEHN
this review, it is this aspect of Mr. von Glehn’s
work, the number of canvases in which the sense
of the movement of Nature and of light has been
uppermost, that has up to the present been perhaps
his most individual contribution to contemporary
art. It is here that he employs a method that has
been a constant stumbling-block to younger painters
with an enviable certainty, painting with an ease
that seems light-hearted the particular kind of
complex effect that has brought despair so often to
ambitious painters. In many respects painting to-
day is a more difficult art than it ever was before,
for it has attempted to embrace many more truths
at one time; and the consequence is that every-
where in the modern exhibition there is plentiful
evidence of failure, and those half-successes which
go down with the shilling public as complete
successes.
Perhaps we have said enough to define Mr. von
Glehn’s position, as one using the most difficult
convention of his time and succeeding with it,
exhibiting a long line of canvases in which nothing
has been shirked, and which hold up a mirror to
Nature in her most capricious moods. This art,
too, has a delightful sort of pantheism about it—
people among the trees besmattered with splashes
of sunlight, moving there even in all their modern
costume as if they belonged to the scenes, dryads
and children of Nature in the spirit of their love for
her and their pleasure in the sun.
When we find an artist turning to the art of
designing stained-glass windows, with its Gothic
and therefore half-sorrowful tradition, an artist who
has put forward so much in the way of an out-of-
door, summer-day art, we are confronted with a
puzzle. But it is true that designing in stained glass
has latterly represented an important phase of Mr.
von Glehn’s work, and every sign is given that in
the future it will occupy a much larger proportion of
his time. His interest in glass revolves very much
round the sensation of the patches of luminous
colour possible in it. He therefore works along
9
“ BLUE AND GOLD
FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY W. G. VON GLEHN
this review, it is this aspect of Mr. von Glehn’s
work, the number of canvases in which the sense
of the movement of Nature and of light has been
uppermost, that has up to the present been perhaps
his most individual contribution to contemporary
art. It is here that he employs a method that has
been a constant stumbling-block to younger painters
with an enviable certainty, painting with an ease
that seems light-hearted the particular kind of
complex effect that has brought despair so often to
ambitious painters. In many respects painting to-
day is a more difficult art than it ever was before,
for it has attempted to embrace many more truths
at one time; and the consequence is that every-
where in the modern exhibition there is plentiful
evidence of failure, and those half-successes which
go down with the shilling public as complete
successes.
Perhaps we have said enough to define Mr. von
Glehn’s position, as one using the most difficult
convention of his time and succeeding with it,
exhibiting a long line of canvases in which nothing
has been shirked, and which hold up a mirror to
Nature in her most capricious moods. This art,
too, has a delightful sort of pantheism about it—
people among the trees besmattered with splashes
of sunlight, moving there even in all their modern
costume as if they belonged to the scenes, dryads
and children of Nature in the spirit of their love for
her and their pleasure in the sun.
When we find an artist turning to the art of
designing stained-glass windows, with its Gothic
and therefore half-sorrowful tradition, an artist who
has put forward so much in the way of an out-of-
door, summer-day art, we are confronted with a
puzzle. But it is true that designing in stained glass
has latterly represented an important phase of Mr.
von Glehn’s work, and every sign is given that in
the future it will occupy a much larger proportion of
his time. His interest in glass revolves very much
round the sensation of the patches of luminous
colour possible in it. He therefore works along
9