Studio: international art (64.1915)

Studio-Talk

their ~jsitters to the status of studio models. A
feature of the exhibition was the reappearance of
Mr. Glyn Phi-lpot’s La Zarzarrosa, a group of
three Spanish people, painted in the manner of
Manet, which some years ago practically announced
the “ arrival ” of this interesting artist. Mr. W. B.
E. Ranken’s Mrs. Kelsey was another work of im-
portance. The best of Mr. Fiddes Watt’s contri-
butions was Dr. Shadwell. This picture in its
increased refinement will do much for his reputation.
The fantastic little group of two children and a cat
on a sofa by Mr. Philip Connard, a non-member,
itself considerably strengthened the exhibition.
Mr. Gerald Kelly was most successfully represented
in A Mandalay Lady. The more direct in inten-
tion and the less he yields to after-thoughts the
finer this artist is.

The exhibition of the Friday Club, held at the
Alpine Club last month, was of interest, perhaps
more for its endeavour to pioneer post-impres-
sionism in England than for any artist’s outstand-
ing achievement. Certain theories were
to be seen applied here most con-
scientiously which have yet to justify
themselves to those interested in the
development of painting, logical and
attractive as they may seem in writing
when put forward by an able critic.

We found ourselves most in sympathy
with paintings, both in oil and water-
colour, of English landscape by Mrs. N.

Munro Summers and Mr. Walter F.

Burrows. Recognising the neighbour-
hood from which several of these were
taken, we were the' better able to ap-
preciate structure of hills and formation
of flat-land admirably adapted, with
preservation of essential character, to
landscape design. We have here an
art, not without pleasant topographical
sentiment, which recovers much of the
tradition of Paul Sandby and the Eng-
lish water-colourists; where a difference
is to be perceived is in the failure of the
modern artists to retain the peculiar
truth to English atmosphere which gave
spirituality to the effects of the early
masters. This fault seems to lie with a
choice of colouring, which aims rather
at introducing fresh elements to the
landscape palette, as used in this country
to-day, than at that most subtle of all
resemblances which it is in the power

138

of the poetically disposed landscape painter to
command. A gem-like interior piece by Mr. F. H.
S. Shepherd, a Study for Panel by Mr. C. L. Colyn
Thomson, the River Tweed by Mr. D. Muirhead,
the Decoration for Blue Room at 3 Sloane Court
by Mr. Harold Squire, and the hand-painted
pottery of Alfred H. and Louisa Powell were
interesting features of the exhibition.

LIVERPOOL.—The authorities of the Town
Hall at Liverpool have recently developed
a loyal ambition to have portraits of our
—4 monarchs on the walls, in continuation of
a series of full - length pictures by Lawrence,
Hoppner, Shee, and Phillips of George III,
George IV, William IV, and the Duke of York,
which have come down to them from the early
part of last century. Two or three years ago they
accepted against advice and because it was a gift a
portrait of King Edward VII, but it is not now on
view. Recently they acquired replicas of the por-
traits by Sir Luke Fildes and Mr. Llewellyn of the

“ DEVIL’S BRIDGE, ST. GOTHARD PASS.” FROM A CHARCOAL
DRAWING BY STELLA LANGDALE