Studio: international art (74.1918)

The Paintings of Niels M. Lund

clump of trees in the foreground, and in this
charming picture his quality of scenic ' poetry
has found happy expression. How often, one
wonders, since Turner showed the masterly way,
have artists essayed to interpret pictorially the
beauty of Chepstow Castle, as it stands, in all
its dignity? of ruin, on the cliffs that bank the
lovely waters of the Wye ? Yet it is doubtful
if any modern painter has given us a more
beautiful vision than this of Lund's, illustrated
here, with its warm glow of suffused sunlight.

Dignity of design became more and more a
guiding factor in Lund's landscape as he came
to a fuller pictorial understanding of the majestic
forces of Nature, but a natural graciousness is
never lacking. One recalls pleasantly the tender
grace of that very early picture of his, The Haunt
of the Roe Deer, with its lambent charm of
sunlight; and then one remembers, with no
less artistic satisfaction, the sadder beauty of
Departing Autumn, which Lund might have
painted under the stimulus of Shelley's " Ode
to the West Wind," so full is it of the
" breath of autumn's being." This was one of
the many diverse moods and aspects in which
he depicted his beloved Perthshire, for that
beautiful part of Scotland was certainly his

happiest pictorial hunting-ground. Here, especi-
ally in the neighbourhood of Killin, he found
the subjects in which his soul most delighted and
his art achieved its fullest and most individual
expression. Here, in his pictorial mastery of
the waters in their foaming tumult of torrent,
fall, and swirl, he showed his greatest accomplish-
ments as a painter. With extraordinary variety
of interest and rhythm his brush seemed to make
the waters live and move and roar. In. many
a picture of distinguished beauty he did this,
but even when he painted other views of the
same torrent he avoided anything in the nature
of sameness or repetition. The Falls of Dochart,
reproduced here, which was exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1914, is typical of the kind
of picture in which Niels Lund put forth all
his powers, and here he is certainly at his best.
But no less representative would be Winter in
the North, Spate in the Highlands, Falls of
Turnwell, Yidetide in Perthshire, The Pearl
Fisher, The Wilds of Rannoch, and Mid the Wild
Music of the Glen. Mezzotint and etching
Lund practised less, perhaps, for their own
intrinsic qualities of expression than for re-
producing with the charm of black and white
certain subjects of his painting.

' DEPARTING AUTUMN " (UNFINISHED) BY NIELS M. LUND

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