Studio: international art (72.1918)

Frank Huddlestone Potter

FRANK HUDDLESTONE POTTER,

1845-1887.

IF Frank Potter had survived until the
present time he would have felt gratified
that among the comparatively few works
from the Tate Collection which are now
temporarily housed in the National Gallery,
one of his pictures, Little Dormouse, had been
chosen for exhibition. It is regrettable, how-
ever, that in making the selection the au-
thorities did not give the preference to the
much more important Music Lesson, which was
purchased for the Tate Gallery out of the Clarke
Fund ten years ago, for that is one of Potter’s
most successful pictures, and the only one in
which his practice of painting single figures
(nearly always girls ranging from five to twenty
years) is departed from. But the almost
fantastically conscientious worker, worn out by
the long-continued struggle against ill-health
and unkind fortune, found rest and peace more
than thirty years ago, and was thus denied the
gratification which the belated recognition of
his indisputable abilities would have caused.

Since his death his artistic merit has been rather
fitfully recognized by connoisseurs and critics,
but he has never achieved popularity in the
ordinary sense of the term. His output was
somewhat small, even when allowance is made
for the fact that it was covered by a period of
less than twenty years, and that during fully
half that time he was in more or less straitened
circumstances ; but he was always a very slow
worker, not because he lacked either inspiration
or industry, but because he took infinite pains
to fulfil his ideals, and not infrequently, at
least partially, failed in his purpose by over-
elaboration and his inability to leave well alone.
He was an excellent draughtsman and a brilliant
colourist, and his pictures are invariably instinct
with restraint and refinement. He was not a
little influenced by the Dutch and Flemish
masters, but his art is more nearly akin to that
of the great Belgian painter Alfred Stevens
than to any other model.

Frank Huddlestone Potter was the youngest
of the twelve children of George W. K. Potter,
a well-known solicitor of his time, who for half
a century occupied the position of Secondary

(Tate Gallerv)

BY FRANK H. POTTER

“THE MUSIC I.ESSON”