Studio: international art (64.1915)

The Paintings of Leonard Campbell Taylor

ness in art with dimensions. The Italian Govern-
ment^ too, purchased one of our artist’s larger
canvases, his, especially in its “corrected” version,
delightful Bedtime* for the Gallery in Rome.
Nevertheless, one is a little inclined to complain
of tant de bruit (with due apologies to the mother
and nurse for associating the dear little baby with
the proverbial omelette). I hope Mr. Taylor will
forgive me for finding fault—an unusual thing in a
monographic article, which is generally reserved
for fulsome praise, the critic having vented his
venom whilst the pictures are still on the walls of
their first exhibition. Nothing that our artist
paints could be devoid of charm : he is far too
serious and accomplished an artist, but in these
two pictures it is just a question of handling as
compared with the scale.

One can imagine that it gave the jury of the
Paris Salon especial delight to award Mr. Taylor
a gold medal for his picture, The Lady of the
Castle, which also figured in the Royal _ Academy
exhibition of 1910 and was
reproduced in these pages
at the time. The reserved
English type of beauty of
the lady in question, the
calm, subdued tonality of
the painting, its agreeable
pattern, must have come as
a relief to eyes tired with
the violent shocks they are
apt to receive in a Paris
exhibition.

This brings us to the
question of technique.

Campbell Taylor has never
studied in Paris. He has
thus never been tempted
to paint in order to exhibit
his cleverness, or to adver-
tise his originality, or to
exasperate the Philistine;
on the other hand, he has
not acquired, perhaps, the
facile manner of draughts-
manship. But he shows
in all his work that he has
absorbed the principles of
so-called “impressionist”
visioning, which came to us
through France from Velas-
quez. Even his highly

finished work, he has told me, “grows.” “ I keep
the canvas going at about equal stages, all over.”
The reader will appreciate the particular difficulty
where highly finished work is concerned. In paint-
ing an individual object in detail, detail is apt to
assert itself to the detriment of the object, and the
object itself to impose itself on the surroundings, so
that the composition, viewed as a whole, becomes
“ jumpy ” and out of tone. Campbell Taylor
therefore prefers to eliminate obvious realisms and
to cultivate a certain flatness of masses. He thus
avoids what R. A. M. Stevenson called “a burial
of beauty in niggling.” As a matter of fact, how-
ever, Mr. Taylor cultivates two distinct manners—
the one rather smooth and highly finished, though
Whistlerian and unified in tonality; the other
broad with short, alert touches, Le Sidaner-like in
appearance. The subjects he chooses for the latter
“ technique ” are as a rule outdoor scenes and still-
life interiors—as, for instance, the Interior and
Waiting for the Aeroplane. The degree of brilliance

* Reproduced in The Studio,

June 1909, p. 43. “patience” by l. Campbell taylor

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