Studio: international art (58.1913)

Studio- Talk

This, I think, is exemplified in the paintings by
Carl Oscar Borg. Whether his pictures are large
or small, whether sketches made with a few strokes
of the brush, or large canvases, the same character
of freedom and nobility of composition pervades
them all and it is evident that Nature has been
the only teacher at his elbow.

Borg's art aims less to depict nature in its every-
day aspect of vulgarity and pettiness than to grasp
and hold it in its more majestic and mysterious
moods. He is a dreamer perhaps, but a dreamer
of light as well as of shadows; his are the dreams
of a philosopher and thinker as well as those of an
artist and observer. The attractive scenery of the
southern part of California has furnished most of
the subjects for his brush. During the last two

years Borg has, however, travelled in Spain, Italy,
France and Egypt and apparently with much benefit
to his art.

A communion with European art and a study
of its great masters have without doubt to some
extent influenced Borg in his recent productions,
without, however, leading him to adopt methods
and conceptions not strictly his own. His views
have been enlarged but not changed, and he has
continued to work out his own system and his own
appreciation of nature as he conceived it long ago.
It can be said with truth that Borg's expression of
art is both noble and pure, and it does not require
any protracted study of his work to realise that
the qualities which have combined in their pro-
duction are not those of a mere craftsman but those
of a thinker and a poet, of a man who has set out

"THE GOLDEN HOUR" BY CARL OSCAR BORG

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