DOI Heft:
No. 294 (September 1917)
DOI Artikel:Marriott, Charles: The work of Arnesby Brown, R. A.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21263#0148
The Recent Work of Arnesby Brown, R.A.
in them. And if you pass a series oi his pictures
in review you will see that his constant effort is
to relate the parts more perfectly to the whole,
even at the apparent sacrifice of individual
character.
This, I think, accounts for his frequent
repetition of the same or similar subjects. It
is not so much the desire to paint the same
subject better in detail, or even to show the
same elements under different conditions, as to
give a more perfect translation of the whole
architecture of a day, with its weighty founda-
tions below and its lofty vault above, in still
more characteristic terms of painting. That
the day should be at the top of the year, with
none of the sentimental associations of spring
or autumn, gives a wider and more virile scope
to his ambition. The boldly architectural
conception of the scene, particularly of space,
marks him off from such a painter as Monet, as
the disinclination to use formal expedients in
emphasizing volumes distinguishes him from
Cezanne, with whom otherwise he would seem
to have a good deal in common, at any rate in
the general aim of giving solidity to Impres-
sionism.
Reference to Monet and Cezanne and to
Impressionism helps to place Mr. Arnesby Brown
amongst his contemporaries. Better than any
other living painter he represents the native
development of the Impressionism which derives
from Constable. Most of our landscape painters
have got it back from France; inevitably
prejudiced by the theoretical character which
marked its reception and cultivation by the
Latin temperament. They might be said to
paint English landscape with a French accent.
The work of Mr. Brown resumes exactly the
same developments, from Constable to the
brink of Post-Impressionism, that appeared
successively in certain of the Barbizon painters
—Daubigny and Troyon, for examples—in the
Monet group and in Cezanne; but it resumes
them in a purely English way. Not that Mr.
' the river edge '
132
(National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) drawing by arnesby brown, r.a.
in them. And if you pass a series oi his pictures
in review you will see that his constant effort is
to relate the parts more perfectly to the whole,
even at the apparent sacrifice of individual
character.
This, I think, accounts for his frequent
repetition of the same or similar subjects. It
is not so much the desire to paint the same
subject better in detail, or even to show the
same elements under different conditions, as to
give a more perfect translation of the whole
architecture of a day, with its weighty founda-
tions below and its lofty vault above, in still
more characteristic terms of painting. That
the day should be at the top of the year, with
none of the sentimental associations of spring
or autumn, gives a wider and more virile scope
to his ambition. The boldly architectural
conception of the scene, particularly of space,
marks him off from such a painter as Monet, as
the disinclination to use formal expedients in
emphasizing volumes distinguishes him from
Cezanne, with whom otherwise he would seem
to have a good deal in common, at any rate in
the general aim of giving solidity to Impres-
sionism.
Reference to Monet and Cezanne and to
Impressionism helps to place Mr. Arnesby Brown
amongst his contemporaries. Better than any
other living painter he represents the native
development of the Impressionism which derives
from Constable. Most of our landscape painters
have got it back from France; inevitably
prejudiced by the theoretical character which
marked its reception and cultivation by the
Latin temperament. They might be said to
paint English landscape with a French accent.
The work of Mr. Brown resumes exactly the
same developments, from Constable to the
brink of Post-Impressionism, that appeared
successively in certain of the Barbizon painters
—Daubigny and Troyon, for examples—in the
Monet group and in Cezanne; but it resumes
them in a purely English way. Not that Mr.
' the river edge '
132
(National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) drawing by arnesby brown, r.a.