Studio: international art (70.1917)

Maxwell Armfield, Painter and Decorative Artist

Mr. William Nicholson too; while occasionally
in the Exhibitions of the Senefelder Club one
of the members, Mr. Spencer Pryse, for instance,
will show a coloured lithograph. Yet in a
modest way there is a school of colour-litho-
graphy growing, and this is due to the teaching
of that sound master of lithographic technique,

Mr. F. Ernest Jackson, at the Central School of
Arts and Crafts. There he rightly teaches his
pupils to work direct upon the stone, and to
print their own stones. Strenuous work this,
with many intricacies and vagaries to master,
but so extremely interesting that Miss Katharine
Richardson, for one, cannot imagine any
genuine lithographer confiding the printing
of his stones to a trade printer. Miss Richard-
son has done several prints artistically in the
true spirit of lithography. Two of the most
interesting of Mr. Jackson’s pupils are Miss
Louise Jacobs and Miss Dora McLaren, both
of whom, not afraid of delicate colour, use the
medium legitimately for
their effects. Miss Dorothy
Hutton has a sensitive
vision and much litho-
graphic skill, and she has
been especially successful
in The Turnip Fields and
in The Thames at Chelsea,
with her subtle treatment
of the tender tones of twi-
light upon the river. Very
different from any of these
is clever Miss Margarite
Janes, with her fantastic
designs in frankly decora-
tive schemes of colour in
flat tones. But there is
a great deal yet to be
done with colour - litho-
graphy if only the artists
will be true to the
spirit of the medium, and
take care not to aim at
effects which are attained
more legitimately with
painters’ methods. The art
of the colour-print lends
itself sympathetically to the
modern decorative spirit,
whether the expression calls
for the medium of wood,

metal, or stone. “the call” by maxwell armfield

114

MAXWELL ARMFIELD, PAINTER
AND DECORATIVE ARTIST. BY
GEOFFREY WHITWORTH.

IT is a good maxim in art that the achieve-
ment of any artist may be measured to
some extent by his power of assimilating
the work of other artists. As a man is
known by his friends, so, according to this theory,
is the painter known by the masters of his adop-
tion. And on the same principle the youthful
productions of great painters become a pecu-
liarly fruitful source of study, since they preserve
for us that period of imitation which can reveal
as nothing else the natural affinities between
the spirit of one artist and that of another.
Not thus do we seek to limit the need of a
unique personal inspiration. Sensitiveness to
the style of others does not carry with it any
such disastrous implication. On the contrary,
the greatest artists have often been the most