DOI Heft:
No.252 (April 1914)
DOI Artikel:Taylor, Ernest Archibald: The paintings of Augustus Koopman
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21209#0222
Augustus Koopmaiis Paintings
us, in viewing the work of any artist, are free from
the influence of outside opinions and irrelevant
associations, and praise or blame the work ac-
cordingly. The young painter with his pet theories
of technique, colour, and composition, is, after all,
sometimes not far off the Philistine with his truth to
nature, and the Baedeker enthusiast with his Old
Master comparisons, and one begins to admire the
casual "manin the street" who tells you he likes it or
he doesn't. It is not uncommon, too, to hear it
advocated that the artist is never a good judge of
his own productions. That may be true of a man
who is just a painter, but it is not, and never will
be, true of an artist; nevertheless, he may be so
carried away with his ideal that he will be disposed
to read more in his work than he has actually
achieved, and to try to achieve more than the sub-
ject demands, the usual result in such cases being
a failure from all points of view except execution.
Like all strongly temperamental artists Mr.
Koopman was a man of impulse; nature's sudden
•storm and sunshine and accidental dramatic effects,
fleeting as they are, produced in him and his work a
quick spontaneity, and while working at the full
pitch of his abundant and long-sustained energy the
work he produced had always artistic vitality and
individuality, these valuable qualities being con-
spicuously evident in his monotypes and other
methods of expression, which though sometimes
accidental, demand spontaneity and quickness of
treatment. But all his work is of such a nature that
one feels most strongly the man in relation to
dramatic sentiment—and in the history of art and of
nations that only is great and lasting which has ex-
hibited the worker's relation to the world, though
perhaps this relation is chiefly notable in the non-
representative arts such as architecture and design.
Amongst the accompanying illustrations from
Koopman's larger oil paintings, Launching the
Boat, With Alight and Main, and After the Storm
perhaps exhibit most clearly the artist's indi-
vidualism. Turning to other subjects one finds the
most animated are those in which the first painting
of the passing effects has been retained and those
"THE PARTING WORD " BY AUGUSTUS KOOPMAN:
(Theproperty of Edwd. Greenhalgh, Esq., Bolton, Lancashire)
216
us, in viewing the work of any artist, are free from
the influence of outside opinions and irrelevant
associations, and praise or blame the work ac-
cordingly. The young painter with his pet theories
of technique, colour, and composition, is, after all,
sometimes not far off the Philistine with his truth to
nature, and the Baedeker enthusiast with his Old
Master comparisons, and one begins to admire the
casual "manin the street" who tells you he likes it or
he doesn't. It is not uncommon, too, to hear it
advocated that the artist is never a good judge of
his own productions. That may be true of a man
who is just a painter, but it is not, and never will
be, true of an artist; nevertheless, he may be so
carried away with his ideal that he will be disposed
to read more in his work than he has actually
achieved, and to try to achieve more than the sub-
ject demands, the usual result in such cases being
a failure from all points of view except execution.
Like all strongly temperamental artists Mr.
Koopman was a man of impulse; nature's sudden
•storm and sunshine and accidental dramatic effects,
fleeting as they are, produced in him and his work a
quick spontaneity, and while working at the full
pitch of his abundant and long-sustained energy the
work he produced had always artistic vitality and
individuality, these valuable qualities being con-
spicuously evident in his monotypes and other
methods of expression, which though sometimes
accidental, demand spontaneity and quickness of
treatment. But all his work is of such a nature that
one feels most strongly the man in relation to
dramatic sentiment—and in the history of art and of
nations that only is great and lasting which has ex-
hibited the worker's relation to the world, though
perhaps this relation is chiefly notable in the non-
representative arts such as architecture and design.
Amongst the accompanying illustrations from
Koopman's larger oil paintings, Launching the
Boat, With Alight and Main, and After the Storm
perhaps exhibit most clearly the artist's indi-
vidualism. Turning to other subjects one finds the
most animated are those in which the first painting
of the passing effects has been retained and those
"THE PARTING WORD " BY AUGUSTUS KOOPMAN:
(Theproperty of Edwd. Greenhalgh, Esq., Bolton, Lancashire)
216