DOI Heft:
No. 265 (April 1915)
DOI Artikel:Reddie, Arthur: Water-colours and oil paintings by S. J. Lamorna Birch, R.W.S.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21212#0182
Water-Colours and Paintings by S. J. Lamorna Birch
is flooded with sunlight and has an almost Italian
brilliancy of colour, reminding us that the phase
“Cornish Riviera,” familiar on the railway placards,
is no mere advertising clap-trap. Especially is this
drawing noteworthy for the atmospheric effect
obtained by the use of blues giving a kind of
haze to the shadows, contrasting with the rich
greens under the illumination of the intense sun-
light ; an impression of heat lies over the whole
scene, and a little acidity is given characteristically
to the sweetness of the harmonies of blue and
green by the introduction of notes of red.
Of the two works reproduced in colour, the
oil-painting, The View, with its fine sky and
the clear pale sunlight streaming down between
the banks of cloud over the expanse of rolling
landscape, is an admirable composition, full of
light and air, and painted with a great feeling or
style allied to the utmost modernity of treatment.
This is a characteristic in Mr. Birch’s work to which
one responds with great pleasure—this alliance of
a sense of style, of a manner that makes us think
of him as one whose aesthetic sensibilities are at-
tuned to a veneration for all that Constable revealed
in landscape, with a quality of paint and technical
methods which are entirely modern. Another work
similar to this oil-painting, is the large and import-
ant water-colour, A Cornish Landscape, which the
artist has deposited as his diploma work for the
Royal Society of Painters in Water-colours. This,
perhaps one of the best things Mr. Birch has done,
contains some delightful passages of colour, and
the far-stretching and expansive landscape is de-
picted with a sympathy and a sincerity revealing
gradually a charm at first unsuspected in the picture.
His Scotch Landscape, a beautiful impression
somewhat Turneresque in vision and in colour, is
painted in gouache in a manner a little reminiscent
of Brabazon. This belongs to a range of works in
which we find the artist giving freer rein to his
moods, and as this aspect of his work—and it is a
very attractive one—is more often revealed when
he treats subjects which are, so to speak, off his
regular beat, it would be interesting if some day
Mr. Birch would show us his impressions of a foreign
land. Not that we are tired of Cornwall—far
from it! but there is an abandon about these
works—which appear to have been done in a some-
what insouciant holiday mood—that whets our
appetite for more.
Lancaster Castle from, the Aqueduct I refer to
last, for in point of actual size as for other reasons
“THE RIVER LONE FROM THE AQUEDUCT, LANCASTER
176
WATER-COLOUR BY S. J. LAMORNA BIRCH, R.W.S.
is flooded with sunlight and has an almost Italian
brilliancy of colour, reminding us that the phase
“Cornish Riviera,” familiar on the railway placards,
is no mere advertising clap-trap. Especially is this
drawing noteworthy for the atmospheric effect
obtained by the use of blues giving a kind of
haze to the shadows, contrasting with the rich
greens under the illumination of the intense sun-
light ; an impression of heat lies over the whole
scene, and a little acidity is given characteristically
to the sweetness of the harmonies of blue and
green by the introduction of notes of red.
Of the two works reproduced in colour, the
oil-painting, The View, with its fine sky and
the clear pale sunlight streaming down between
the banks of cloud over the expanse of rolling
landscape, is an admirable composition, full of
light and air, and painted with a great feeling or
style allied to the utmost modernity of treatment.
This is a characteristic in Mr. Birch’s work to which
one responds with great pleasure—this alliance of
a sense of style, of a manner that makes us think
of him as one whose aesthetic sensibilities are at-
tuned to a veneration for all that Constable revealed
in landscape, with a quality of paint and technical
methods which are entirely modern. Another work
similar to this oil-painting, is the large and import-
ant water-colour, A Cornish Landscape, which the
artist has deposited as his diploma work for the
Royal Society of Painters in Water-colours. This,
perhaps one of the best things Mr. Birch has done,
contains some delightful passages of colour, and
the far-stretching and expansive landscape is de-
picted with a sympathy and a sincerity revealing
gradually a charm at first unsuspected in the picture.
His Scotch Landscape, a beautiful impression
somewhat Turneresque in vision and in colour, is
painted in gouache in a manner a little reminiscent
of Brabazon. This belongs to a range of works in
which we find the artist giving freer rein to his
moods, and as this aspect of his work—and it is a
very attractive one—is more often revealed when
he treats subjects which are, so to speak, off his
regular beat, it would be interesting if some day
Mr. Birch would show us his impressions of a foreign
land. Not that we are tired of Cornwall—far
from it! but there is an abandon about these
works—which appear to have been done in a some-
what insouciant holiday mood—that whets our
appetite for more.
Lancaster Castle from, the Aqueduct I refer to
last, for in point of actual size as for other reasons
“THE RIVER LONE FROM THE AQUEDUCT, LANCASTER
176
WATER-COLOUR BY S. J. LAMORNA BIRCH, R.W.S.