Studio: international art (75.1918)

The Flower Paintings of Herbert Davis Richter, R.O.I.

cretion. The richness and
strength of his arrange-
ments only accentuate
the harmony he has de-
signed, they do not carry
him into any injudicious
exaggeration of the
beauties which he is
striving to make other
people see as he himself
has seen them. With all
its freedom and with all
its sumptuousness, his
work is thoroughly re-
strained and fully in
accordance with sane
tradition.

And it owes, too, some-
thing of its success to
the executive method he
has adopted. To labour
his handling or to aim at

ANEMONES OIL PAINTING by h. DAVIS RICHTER, R.O.I.

because in it his temperament was
unaffectedly expressed.

Certainly, this sentiment gives
value and significance to his work,
and accounts clearly for most of
its qualities. In his pictures the
thing that is evident first and last
is that they have been painted in
a sort of frenzy of colour worship,
but a frenzy disciplined and con-
trolled by a well-trained taste.
That deliberate and scientific cal-
culation which spoils so much
pictorial effort ■— sometimes it
leads to laborious elaboration, at
others to empty and unmeaning
simplification—never appears as
a defect in his painting : he thinks
deeply, and he sees acutely, but
his thoughts are guided by honest
enthusiasm and his sight is quick-
ened by a colour appreciation
which never goes astray. The
one great danger which always
confronts the man who attempts
to realize Nature's riot and pro-
fusion of colour—the danger of
becoming rank or vulgarly showy
—he avoids with admirable dis- "roses" oil painting by h. davis richter, r.o.i.

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