Studio: international art (74.1918)

The Landscape Element in Thomas Rowlandsoris Art

haunt of his. With London and its suburbs is always full of force and spirit. The colour

he had the most intimate acquaintance, and it reproduction of The Horse Fair, a superb and

figures much in the great mass of his work. characteristic drawing belonging to Captain

Rowlandson's technical method, which was Desmond Coke, demonstrates this better than

simple and direct enough, seems to have been words can describe. It is a work that shows

derived from the Dutch masters of the seven- his wonderful power in depicting a crowd,

teenth century, who used a full palette of water- In The Stile he cannot, one sees, resist his

colour in combination with pen work. For liking for a humoristic touch. Even when

instance, Philip de Koninck employed it in his he uses monochrome, as he does in the Land-

landscape drawings, and Ostade made pen scape with Figures and Cattle—two drawings

drawings of figure subjects which he tinted with which remind one of Gainsborough—he sug-

washes of colour. This practice spread to gests light and atmosphere wonderfully well.

France and England in the eighteenth century, In Mr. Marsh's Deer under a Tree, who could

and it is Rowlandson who has achieved more express so well and with such subtlety the

artistic results with the process than any artist alert, watchful attitude of the deer and the

before or since. In his colouring he wisely sturdiness of a majestic tree ? If the talent

limited himself to a few simple tints, which he of Rowlandson in his figure work was varied

used with great judgment as accessories to his and able enough, his vision and outlook on

bold and masterly outline. The colour adds a landscape and his mode of expressing it in his

singular charm to the pen-line, which in itself art were not the least part of his genius.

"THE STILE" WATER-COLOUR BY THOMAS ROWLANDSON

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