Studio: international art (65.1915)

Oswald Birley, R.O.I.

The paintings of Oswald

H. BIRLEY, R.O.I.

It is surely nopthe fact of his being, or not
being, acquainted with the sitter that makes for
the onlooker the difference between an interesting
portrait and a dull one; and as we are all capable
of enjoying the landscape-painter’s rendering of a
scene with which we are unfamiliar, provided that
it has been regarded with true artistic insight and
depicted in’a personal manner, so we may enjoy
the portrait of an unknown individual provided
that the artist has succeeded, by an intimate study
of his subject, in grasping in his conception some-
thing of the psychic as well as the physical
character of the sitter, and in capturing upon his
canvas a hint of that divine spark which is within
us all.

It was the eminent Italian criminologist, Cesare
Lombroso, who wrote in one of his
works, after a discussion of the physical,
psychic, functional and skeletal anom-
alies which he had identified as being
characteristic of the criminal type, the
following words (I quote from the
very interesting summary of Prof.

Lombroso’s investigations compiled
by his daughter) which are significant
as being the testimony of a famous
scientist to the accuracy and sub-
conscious analytical power of vision
of the trained artist: “Painters and
Poets, unhampered by false doctrines,
divined this type long before it became
the subject of a special branch of
study. The assassins, executioners
and devils painted by Mantegna,

Titian, and Ribera the Spagnoletto,
embody with marvellous exactitude the
characteristics of the born criminal;
and the descriptions of great writers—

Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and
Ibsen—are equally faithful representa-
tions, physically and psychically of
this morbid type.” Needs not for
me to say that it is a very far cry from
the devils and assassins of Mantegna
and Spagnoletto to the pleasant people
whose portraits accompany this article;
but it is interesting to note how the
artist, with an intuition almost
feminine, leaps at a single bound to
the comprehension of a truth which
science attains and confirms at the
t68

end of a long and many-staged roa-d of inductive
and deductive reasoning. Again on the other hand,
as exemplifying the beauty of soul and nobility of
character of which great portrait-painters have left
us a lasting memorial, can we look unmoved at
many of the portraits by Raeburn and go away
without a feeling that here are finely epitomised
all the sterling and rugged virtues inherent in the
natures of that hardy race to which the painter and
so many of his sitters belonged ?

The portrait-painter of to-day must find, however,
one would imagine, a task of ever-increasing diffi-
culty. The strain of modern civilisation and the
intermingling of class and race must be gradually
effacing types, and causing often the physiognomy
to become a concealing mask, rather than a reveal-
ing map of the underlying personality. More than
ever must the portrait-painter be a close and
sympathetic student of humanity, and, other things

“THE RAG SORTER” BY OSWALD BIRLEY