DOI issue:
No. 166 (May 1915)
DOI article:Wood, T. Martin: The Edmund Davis collection, [2]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21212#0238
The Edmund Davis Collection—II
It is seldom enough that a modern picture secures
this transcendental result, but in that direction lies
the secret of the enchantment of costume as de-
picted in ancient art.
From the point of view of strict criticism of
painting it may seem, at first, somewhat absurd to
suggest that just a little additional glamour, valuable
to the picture itself, may lie with the difference
between the use of the fanciful title Les Mar?tiitons
and its plebeian translation. The more fanciful
sounding French is in agreement with the qualities
of the picture, for there is relationship between the
imagery that words evoke and forms made tangible
in painting. Indeed a poem and a picture may be
related in a sense in which two paintings are not,
and to overlook relationships of this abstract kind
between the arts is to lose the key to everything
temperamental; in criticism it is to knock at closed
doors, and come away only with a'report on the
varnish.
The title of a picture counts for something; it
may induce the very mood
in which the picture should
be approached. In the
case of this picture we
feel we should be able to
identify the children with
some romance, but find it
impossible to remember a
story in connection with
them. They have the
character of visitants, but
they do not come from
another world.
In addition to the above
work of Shannon’s there are
the Mother and Child, the
Wood Nymph (a small ver-
sion of a subject he has
repeated), the companion
portraits of Ricketts and
himself, called respectively
The Man in the Black
Coat and The Man in the
Black Shirt; a painting
Tibullus in the House of
Delia, and a small study in
colour for Les Marmitons,
in which the figures are
altered in pose. This last
is very pleasant and light
in execution, and exqui-
sitely fresh in colour, and
its spontaneity gives it a “girl in white”
232
quality all its own. But we may say of the finished
version that it is almost impossible to think of
another modem canvas in which a quality of paint
that Whistler identified with work direct from
nature is employed imaginatively with only an
indirect reference to actuality.
The collection contains one of Charles Ricketts’s
most important pictures, The Death of Cleopatra.
In a lofty hall Cleopatra falls, pressing the asp to
her breast, while two women hasten to support
her. The scene is removed from actuality—but
not to “ the stage ”; it is represented in a place
of shadows, where the Queen’s uncovered flesh
already seems to glow with supernatural light.
In the art of both Ricketts and Shannon we find
truth to nature reverenced chiefly because of the
mind’s dependence on nature for its imagery. But
their paintings show pictorial logic. The experience
they reveal is more than visual, many impressions
meet in them almost mystically received.
Besides the room decorated by the late Charles
BY J. E. BLANCHE
It is seldom enough that a modern picture secures
this transcendental result, but in that direction lies
the secret of the enchantment of costume as de-
picted in ancient art.
From the point of view of strict criticism of
painting it may seem, at first, somewhat absurd to
suggest that just a little additional glamour, valuable
to the picture itself, may lie with the difference
between the use of the fanciful title Les Mar?tiitons
and its plebeian translation. The more fanciful
sounding French is in agreement with the qualities
of the picture, for there is relationship between the
imagery that words evoke and forms made tangible
in painting. Indeed a poem and a picture may be
related in a sense in which two paintings are not,
and to overlook relationships of this abstract kind
between the arts is to lose the key to everything
temperamental; in criticism it is to knock at closed
doors, and come away only with a'report on the
varnish.
The title of a picture counts for something; it
may induce the very mood
in which the picture should
be approached. In the
case of this picture we
feel we should be able to
identify the children with
some romance, but find it
impossible to remember a
story in connection with
them. They have the
character of visitants, but
they do not come from
another world.
In addition to the above
work of Shannon’s there are
the Mother and Child, the
Wood Nymph (a small ver-
sion of a subject he has
repeated), the companion
portraits of Ricketts and
himself, called respectively
The Man in the Black
Coat and The Man in the
Black Shirt; a painting
Tibullus in the House of
Delia, and a small study in
colour for Les Marmitons,
in which the figures are
altered in pose. This last
is very pleasant and light
in execution, and exqui-
sitely fresh in colour, and
its spontaneity gives it a “girl in white”
232
quality all its own. But we may say of the finished
version that it is almost impossible to think of
another modem canvas in which a quality of paint
that Whistler identified with work direct from
nature is employed imaginatively with only an
indirect reference to actuality.
The collection contains one of Charles Ricketts’s
most important pictures, The Death of Cleopatra.
In a lofty hall Cleopatra falls, pressing the asp to
her breast, while two women hasten to support
her. The scene is removed from actuality—but
not to “ the stage ”; it is represented in a place
of shadows, where the Queen’s uncovered flesh
already seems to glow with supernatural light.
In the art of both Ricketts and Shannon we find
truth to nature reverenced chiefly because of the
mind’s dependence on nature for its imagery. But
their paintings show pictorial logic. The experience
they reveal is more than visual, many impressions
meet in them almost mystically received.
Besides the room decorated by the late Charles
BY J. E. BLANCHE