Studio: international art (65.1915)

The New English Art Club

“CORFU HARBOUR”

WATER-COLOUR BY DOUGLAS FOX PITT

Mr. Lucien Pissarro’s work on this occasion
hardly seemed as interesting as usual; and we
derived most pleasure from a little drawing, in a
mixture of water-colour and chalk, of Farnham.
A pleasant, cool landscape, of which we have
memories at last year’s Royal Academy, was Mr.
Bernhard Sickert’s The Parsonage Pond; and,
among other works to be remembered, were Miss
Alice Fanner’s bright and cheerful Spring in Hyde
Park; Goathland Moor, a charming little picture
showing an expanse of landscape with sunlight and
cloud shadows on the hills, by Tom Roberts; a
fresh luminous sketch La Cale, Dinard, by Miss
Marjorie Brend ; Mr. Alfred Hayward’s atmospheric
In Wales; Mr. Henry Rushbury’s finely and
carefully drawn Red Barge, making a happy contrast
of colour with the spring green of fields around;
an amusing scene in An Italian Police Court by
Miss Tony Cyriax; Mr. Gerard Chowne’s The
Sierra Nevada, Granada; a clever water-colour
Dolce Aqua, Ventimiglia, by Miss Vera Waddington ;
Miss Katharine Clausen’s well composed Group of
Flowers; The Castle in the Air, by Mrs. Edith
Wheatley; and Miss Ruth Doggett’s Fitzroy Square.

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Portraits are never very numerous at the New
English, and those seen there are always com-
mendably free from that air of “ look pleasant
please,” which is characteristic of so many modern
examples of this class of work. Interesting was
Mr. Francis Dodd’s portrait of The Dean of Balliol,
rather dryly painted, but with much character.
Mr. McEvoy’s largest contribution was the portrait
of a little girl, Virginia, daughter of Capt. Harry
Graham, which, while possessed of a certain charm,
seemed somehow not quite happily composed.
Other works of which one carried away a pleasant
recollection were Professor Brown’s sympathetically
painted An Octogenarian; Mr. W. Rothenstein’s
Eli the Thatcher, with a rugged dignity of face a
little out of tune with the rather “ aesthetic ”
colouring of the clothes; and Mr. F. H. S. Shepherd’s
somewhat hard, though cleverly painted, Family
Group at Hagley, in which the numerous portraits
hanging upon the walls of the interior seemed to over-
shadow in interest the occupants of the room. A
group of four heads La Grandmere, by the same
artist contained some beautiful passages of colour.
Two strongly marked portraits were those by Mr.