Studio: international art (58.1913)

Frank Mura

could wish him to be in any respect other than
he is.

One thing that must be specially noted is his
complete mastery over the mediums he employs.
He has a very thorough acquaintance with technical
processes, and he manages the varied resources of
the painter's craft with the workmanlike dexterity
that comes only with years of practice and well-
considered experiment. There is a real brilliancy
of handling in everything he does, a notable freedom
and decisiveness of touch which, however, is not at
any time allowed to degenerate into showy clever-
ness. He uses his materials as a means of expres-
sion and not as a means by which to impress the
people who see his work with an idea of his
extraordinary executive skill. Mastery over his
medium is necessary, as he sees, to enable him to
convey to others the impression made upon him
by the subject with which he is dealing, because
without this mastery his attempt to induce any one
else to accept what he believes would become in
great measure ineffectual—he would be hampered
in his artistic intentions by any inefficiency in his
control of the mechanism of art. But he has also,
as every student of his work can perceive, a very
sane understanding of the way in which manual
facility should be applied and of the relation

between the matter of a picture and the manner of
its interpretation.

His oil paintings are remarkable for their frank-
ness of presentation and for largeness of generalisa-
tion rather than for any pedantic insistence upon
detail for detail's sake. In their breadth and
robustness can be seen plainly enough the extent
of his obligation to the Dutch painters among
whom he spent some of the most impressionable
years of his student life, and from whom he learned
that way of seeking out Nature's more expansive
aspects which has served him so well in all his later
production. But though in the spirit of his work
the influence of the Dutch school is apparent, in
the carrying out of it there is something which he
learned neither among the Dutchmen nor anywhere
else, but which he owes solely to his own intuitive
perception of what the artistic transcription of
Nature should be.

In his management of colour, for example, there
is none of the Dutch reserve and love of sombre
effects. His inclination is rather for gayer harmonies
and brighter arrangements than the modern Dutch-
men ordinarily affect. Indeed, his colour has a
particular sparkle and luminosity, and a very
pleasant lusciousness of quality which makes it
especially satisfying; and in his studies of sun-lit

"MILL AT BOCKING, ESSEX "

8

FROM A CHARCOAL DRAWING BY FRANK MURA