Studio: international art (56.1912)

Glyn IV. Philpot

granted, which cannot feel that a thing is right
merely because everybody does it. Success met
him more than half way.

That he ever avowed the intention of becoming
a portrait-painter is unlikely. That he should
have been led in that direction was almost in-
evitable. His particular qualities so eminently
fitted him for portraiture of a fashionable kind,
where a pleasing presentation, elegantly and
superbly rendered, is in greater demand than ex-
position of character and fundamental realisation
of a complete human entity—a “ simple separate
person.” His feeling for attractive arrangement,
his fondness for grace and charm, especially for
what was piquant and unusual, soon ensured him
success in a society where those qualities are
valued above most others.

Moreover, his discretion and nice sense of artistic
propriety could be trusted to curb any exuberant
fondness for richness of material and colour and
for bizarrerie of effect. However, it is not as a
painter of portraits that he is most interesting.
Among his figure compositions, with their some-
what angular arrangements and with the facilities
they offered for decorative groupings of fine stuffs
and for colour harmonies and contrasts, are to be
found some of his best works. Roughly speaking,
his use of paint is in the manner of the schools, or
is founded on those methods—not the most in-
spired or most valuable—common in the schools.
But these methods have become modified and
extended by his personal tastes and unusual degree
of skilfulness ; and it is by his own finer develop-
ment of these methods that he is enabled to obtain
qualities of surface extremely subtle and attractive.

The interest of Philpot’s art, then, lies mainly in
its manner. He would appear to have less love
for the thing to be expressed for its own sake—in
the manner of the realists—than regard for its
capability of fitting in with his rather fixed ideas ot
what is suitable for art production.

Broken colour, division and separation of tones,
and other discoveries of modern art so indispensable
to the expression of life, have left him untouched.

Had nature and the love of the reality of it been
the mainsprings of his art, it would have been
otherwise \ but he lives—so far as his art life is
concerned, though the two ought not to be
separable—in a world of dreams of beautiful colour
harmonies ; and he renders them with the methods
ready to his hands, methods admirably suited to the
purpose.

For a short time he studied in Paris under Jean
Paul Laurens, but the experience cannot be said

to have influenced him one way or another. On
his return to London he settled in Chelsea.

For the most part he has painted people—or
more properly he has used people for his schemes,
for, almost invariably, he is found regarding them
from the aesthetic point of view, seldom, if ever,
from that of humanity. The infinite variety of
delicate flesh tones, and the subtlety of the sur-
face of flesh, offered him full opportunity for the
exercise of his highly trained and sensitive craft.

With the exception of some very early paint-
ings he has left landscape practically untouched ;
although he has painted a few weird and haunting
effects which were originally inspired by moods of
nature. But in these, again, nature has been used
as a medium for the expression of entirely sub-
jective feelings—for the evoking of some dream
in his inner consciousness.

Philpot’s work has become very well known to
visitors to the New English Art Club, the Inter-
national Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers,
the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Modern
Society of Portrait Painters, and the National Por-
trait Society, of which last three he is a member.
His most notable portraits date from 1908, in
which year he showed the Girl at her Toilet at
the Institute, and Miss Miles at the Old Society of
Portrait Painters. These were followed in 1909
by Boy with a i?«/and Self-Portrait at the Modern
Portrait Painters, Mrs. Douglas Coghill at the
International Society, A Musician and The Wave
at the Institute. In the following year Manolito,
the Circus Boy, now the property of the Fine Art
Society, A Sculptor, The Stage Boy, and Lord Glamis,
appeared at the Modern Society, Mrs. Basil Fother-
gill and her Daughters, The Death Blow, at the
Institute, and The Man in Black at the New
English Art Club. Last year and this year he has
shown increasingly brilliant work, including The
Hon. Mrs. Edward Pache, Man with a Yellow
Scarf, Boy in a Sealskin Cap, at the International
Society, La Zarzarrosa, Mrs. Langton Douglas, and
Denis Cohen, Esq., at the Modern Society, and
Lena Ashwell and Lady in Black at the National
Portrait Society. _ J. B. M.

The Oldham Corporation has acquired for its
permanent collection several works which figured
in the recent spring exhibition at the Municipal
Art Gallery, including oil paintings by Mr. Walter
W. Russell, Mr. Patrick Adam, R.S.A., and Franz
Grassel; three water-colours by Mr. William Wells,
and others by Mr. Francis Dodd, Mr. Moffat
Lindner, and Miss Annie French.

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