Studio: international art (63.1914/15)

Gerald Festus Kelly

character." It is through his absorption in this Spaniard is nearer to us than that of the Oriental,
that he gets those qualities of entertainment and and here again he has shown a rare originality, for
emotion which seem to me the essentials of art. Andalusia has meant to the painter, as to the super-
(I may make myself clearer by explaining that the ficial traveller, a land of song and light laughter, of
peculiar form of entertainment which a picture dancing and castanets. It was Theophile Gautier
offers is decoration.) Mr. Kelly has painted por- who described the country in these terms, and the
traits, he has painted in Spain, and he has painted world at large has been content to see it through
in Burmah; but his interest in character makes a his eyes. It is a vulgar Spain of the Paris exhi-
whole of work which at first sight looks as if it bition, a Spain at Earl's Court, which fills the
might be divided into three parts between which imagination of the traveller who visits that country,
there is no great connection. His Spanish work, and since most men take from their journeys only
his Burmese work, shows no less an absorption in what they bring to them, often enough he comes
character than do his portraits of Captain Reeves, home again with his impressions unaltered ; often,
R.N., or of Lady Clarke illustrated in this article; too, finding little of what he expected, he brings
but it is an absorption in the character of a people back only disillusion. If you look at the pictures
rather than in that of individuals. We who which illustrate these pages, Joaquina, The Black
practise the arts know only our own country, and Shawl, Rosa Maria, On the Rocks, you will see
when we paint or describe other peoples' can tell that Mr. Kelly has seen Spain very differently,
not the truth about them, but the impression they He has painted Andalusia, for it is Andalusia that
make on us. This art can with difficulty be other he has painted in the portraits of these different
than quaint or curious and at the best tell us only women just as much as if he had painted street
how a particular generation regarded a civilisation scenes in Seville or the crowd at a bull-fight, with

other than its own. The French
painters of the eighteenth century
who painted the East—there was
an exhibition of their work at the

Louvre a year or two ago—looked
upon it as a masquerade and offered

us an Orient in powder and patch ;

and the French romantics painted

the East of the Byronic attitude :

our own generation has been chiefly

impressed by the mystery of the

East, and it is this which Mr. Kelly

has painted. His Burmese dancers

—there is a long series of them,

painted with boldness and great

vigour—have a strange impenetra-
bility, their gestures are enigmatic

and yet significant, they are charm-
ing, and yet there is something

curiously hieratic in theii manner;

with a sure instinct, and with a more

definite feeling for decoration than

is possible in a portrait, Mr. Kelly

has given us the character of the

East as we of our generation see it.

It needed a peculiar sensitiveness ;

and the same sensitiveness has

served him in painting Andalusia.

Here again it is the character of a

race that he has painted, more in-
timately than when he painted the

Burmese, because the soul of the " this black shawl" oil painting by gerald festus kelly

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