Studio: international art (59.1913)

Charles M. Gere

practice of painting upon silk. On the contrary,
there is a considerable bulk of landscape painting
to his credit, executed in oil upon coarse canvas ;
but his style in general has determined his frequent
choice of the silk panel. It leans towards a soft
eloquence of colour and a very deliberate intention
to please the fancy by ingenuity of composition.

That we may be the better enabled to trace the
development of Mr. Gere’s art and understand the
many directions in which he has advanced, it will
be interesting to glance briefly at his career as an
artist.

Mr. Gere studied first under the late Mr. E. R.
Taylor at the Birmingham School of Art, and later
taught there for some years. Then he studied in
Italy and also had valuable training under William
Morris while doing some designs for the Kelmscott
Press. He began to exhibit in the New Gallery
during the last decade of the nineteenth century,
mostly figure work in the manner of The Mourning
of Demeter, which is reproduced among the accom-
panying illustrations, and The Finding of the Infant

St. George, in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool.
He did portraits, wood-engravings, stained glass
and other decorative church work, but always felt
a desire for landscape as his special work.

In 1904 he settled in Gloucestershire, and though
he still paints portraits and does a certain amount
of black-and-white work, such as his designs for
the Ashendene Press, he is able now to give most
of his time to landscape, working chiefly in the
picturesque Cotswold district and North Italy.
Edward Calvert and Samuel Palmer are the men
who have influenced him, he tells us. He finds in
them the essence of a certain English outlook
on nature, at once imaginative, reverent, and in-
timate, an outlook which he confesses he has never
been able to discover in the work of Continental
landscape painters. There is no reason, however,
he thinks, why this outlook should not be modified
and developed on the more decorative lines sug-
gested by Eastern work. Living in Italy made
him early acquainted with egg tempera as a
medium, and he uses it for most of his landscapes

“THE RAINBOW” (oil PAINTING)

(In the possession of Morris Httdson, Esq.)

BV CHARLES M. GERE