Studio: international art (70.1917)

Graphic Arts Exhibition at the Royal Academy

of Graver-Painters in Colour, and the Society of
Twelve, to assist in promoting an exhibition of
British graphic art at Burlington House, the
Royal Academy has shown itself wise and
gracious in its generation. The days have long
gone by when the English engraver and etcher
used his art almost exclusively to reproductive
or interpretative purpose, albeit effecting that
purpose with often magnificent results, as the
Retrospective Section will show; and it was
high time that the wider public should have
an opportunity of seeing that the original artist
upon the copper-plate, the stone, and the wood-
block, the expressive draughtsman with pen,
pencil, and chalk, can produce to-day works
that may be no less artistically important than
the painted pictures and the sculptured figures
which, in the popular mind, comprehend the
whole of art.

Let us, then, give a cordial welcome to this
first exhibition of Graphic Art at the Royal
Academy. That it errs on the side of excessive
hospitality may be set down as a fault of gene-
rosity, due perhaps to a notion that, since the
exhibition is in aid of those noble associations
of merciful purpose, the Red Cross and St. John
Ambulance, the quality of mercy is not strained
by admitting the work of the mediocre, if
clever, artist for whom, perhaps, the struggle

for life, especially in these days of stress, must
dull the joy of artistic effort. One could have
wished, of course, to see the exhibition more
artistically selective while yet more thoroughly
representative of the best modern work, but,
from one cause or another, there are regrettably
several distinguished absentees. Yet the great
thing is, we have a first attempt to bring the
graphic arts together in a comprehensive ex-
hibition under the popular aegis of the Royal
Academy, and, despite important absences and
unimportant presences, this should be warmly
encouraged, for, beyond question, it comprises
much fine and interesting work, and shows that
the graphic arts in this country are in a very
healthy and promising condition. So extensive
is the exhibition that to describe its various
sections in anything approaching to detail would
indeed require a number of Studio articles.
Many, perhaps most, of the prints have, of
course, been seen before in the exhibitions of
the various societies ; many are already familiar
in reproduction to readers of our pages, for,
considering the pressure of the times, and the
fact that so many of our younger artists are
on active service, a great deal of important
new work was hardly to be expected.

The section devoted to Etching and Dry-
point is certainly the most numerous. Although

“ GERONA, SPAIN ”

64

ETCHING BY THE LATE PERCY F. GETHIN