DOI issue:
No. 261 (December 1914)
DOI article:Reddie, Arthur: The landscapes of David Murray Smith, R.B.A.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21211#0176
David Murray Smith, R.B.A.
contemplation of all her manifold glories knows that, covered by, and distilled from, his own personal study
contrive he never so cunningly, his most ambitious of Nature. Have not many of the great landscape
attempt to imitate that loveliness is as naught in com- painters revealed to us in their art some phase of
parison with the beauty and perfection of even the natural beauty which, unnoted before, now widens
very least of those creations of the Almighty which our horizon and lends a new enchantment to our
he seeks to depict. For the artist it is to study and to walks abroad ?
worship at this shrine of abundant beauty, so that In the landscapes of Mr. Murray Smith one
at length by a selection, intelligently careful and recognises that a personal point of view is here
sympathetic, from that vast storehouse of artistic presented; one feels the artist to be possessed of
raw material, he may draw the threads which he can an individual outlook, and one is conscious of
weave in accordance with his conscious artistic sincerity and of a lofty aim. There is a nobility
aspirations into a production which shall enshrine and an austerity in these landscapes whose frames
with sincerity and in a beautiful manner the emotion form, as it were, an open window through which we
which the ever changing panorama of Nature arouses gaze out upon a new country. There is in all his
in him. A landscape is capable of communicating work a restraint in the use of colour, and a certain
this emotion to the onlooker in proportion as the formality in the arrangement of his compositions,
painter has assimilated the characteristics of the revealing him as the master of his subject and not
scene he depicts, has co-ordinated his own sensa- subservient to it.
tions and selected such facts as he feels will interpret Born in Edinburgh, Mr. Murray Smith studied
—not imitate—with due regard for the possibilities painting at the Edinburgh School of Art and,
and the necessary limitations of the medium he subsequently, at the Royal Scottish Academy,
employs, those salient characteristics of Nature. Over twenty years ago he came south and settled
The function of the artist is to create, and, since he in London, and in 1905 he was elected a member
cannot hope to rival the beauty of the works of God, of the Royal Society of British Artists, his regular
he must strive to reveal upon canvas anew beauty dis- contributions being among the best things to bj
'THE CHALK CLIFF OIL PAINTING BY D. MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
172
contemplation of all her manifold glories knows that, covered by, and distilled from, his own personal study
contrive he never so cunningly, his most ambitious of Nature. Have not many of the great landscape
attempt to imitate that loveliness is as naught in com- painters revealed to us in their art some phase of
parison with the beauty and perfection of even the natural beauty which, unnoted before, now widens
very least of those creations of the Almighty which our horizon and lends a new enchantment to our
he seeks to depict. For the artist it is to study and to walks abroad ?
worship at this shrine of abundant beauty, so that In the landscapes of Mr. Murray Smith one
at length by a selection, intelligently careful and recognises that a personal point of view is here
sympathetic, from that vast storehouse of artistic presented; one feels the artist to be possessed of
raw material, he may draw the threads which he can an individual outlook, and one is conscious of
weave in accordance with his conscious artistic sincerity and of a lofty aim. There is a nobility
aspirations into a production which shall enshrine and an austerity in these landscapes whose frames
with sincerity and in a beautiful manner the emotion form, as it were, an open window through which we
which the ever changing panorama of Nature arouses gaze out upon a new country. There is in all his
in him. A landscape is capable of communicating work a restraint in the use of colour, and a certain
this emotion to the onlooker in proportion as the formality in the arrangement of his compositions,
painter has assimilated the characteristics of the revealing him as the master of his subject and not
scene he depicts, has co-ordinated his own sensa- subservient to it.
tions and selected such facts as he feels will interpret Born in Edinburgh, Mr. Murray Smith studied
—not imitate—with due regard for the possibilities painting at the Edinburgh School of Art and,
and the necessary limitations of the medium he subsequently, at the Royal Scottish Academy,
employs, those salient characteristics of Nature. Over twenty years ago he came south and settled
The function of the artist is to create, and, since he in London, and in 1905 he was elected a member
cannot hope to rival the beauty of the works of God, of the Royal Society of British Artists, his regular
he must strive to reveal upon canvas anew beauty dis- contributions being among the best things to bj
'THE CHALK CLIFF OIL PAINTING BY D. MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
172