DOI Heft:
No. 325 (April 1920)
DOI Artikel:Studio-talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21360#0084
STUDIO-TALK
"FROGS AND GIRLS ”
(FOUNTAIN GROUP)
BY NANCY COONSMAN
(Pennsylvania Academy
for a spacious wintry perspective of sun
and snow across leagues of air ; A. Y.
Jackson's 44 Olympic ” in Halifax Harbour
is an interesting experiment in explicit de-
sign and detail on the part of one who has
78
wellnigh perfected himself in the art of
reticent interpretation, as in his deeply
satisfying Ships entering Halifax Harbour ;
here is shown a day of thawing snow among
mean shacks by the waterside with the
quiet procession of ships beyond, the real
Jackson. F. H. Varley's Prisoners is quite
worthy of being ranked with the two great
war pictures that he has already painted.
The bedraggled prisoners are seen stum-
bling listlessly past a row of broken and
rotting tree-stumps ; one cannot but think
it unlikely that the tragic, mutilated trees
of the Flanders front have been turned
to such account by any other artist.
Varley's extraordinary gain in rower is the
most striking single fact in Canadian art
at the present moment. 000
Portraiture was represented by E. Wyly
Grier, who has recently invaded Nova
Scotia with his palette, by H. Harris
Brown with studies of two Toronto
celebrities, and by Curtis Williamson, who
has not exhibited in Toronto for several
years. The two Williamsons were much
less fluent but incomparably more pene-
trating ; Williamson is a unique and iso-
lated figure in Canada, sardonic and un-
sparing in a country which knows little
of such qualities. 0000
There were several figure studies that
deserve mention, M. A. Suzor-Cote's
Vieux paysan canadien-frangais taking first
place among them with its luminous
colour and its beautiful sympathy, and
after him the work of Regina Seiden and
Emily Coonan. Nor must a smaller pic-
ture of E. H. Holgate's, Amiens Station,
be overlooked, in which a soldier with
wife and child is splendidly interpreted
by the simplest means. 000
There was less notable landscape than
usual, though much repetitive or deriva-
tive work, reasonably well done but without
particular meaning. The only work that
carried one forward was that of J. E. H.
Macdonald, whose tousled Beaver Dam
breathes of the Algoma district which local
artists have recently begun to tap, and of
Manly Macdonald, a younger artist of
considerable promise. Arthur Lismer was
a little sketchy this time, but spirited as
always, and Mabel May's outdoor studies
showed her usual admirable characteris-
tics. 0 0 0 B. F.
"FROGS AND GIRLS ”
(FOUNTAIN GROUP)
BY NANCY COONSMAN
(Pennsylvania Academy
for a spacious wintry perspective of sun
and snow across leagues of air ; A. Y.
Jackson's 44 Olympic ” in Halifax Harbour
is an interesting experiment in explicit de-
sign and detail on the part of one who has
78
wellnigh perfected himself in the art of
reticent interpretation, as in his deeply
satisfying Ships entering Halifax Harbour ;
here is shown a day of thawing snow among
mean shacks by the waterside with the
quiet procession of ships beyond, the real
Jackson. F. H. Varley's Prisoners is quite
worthy of being ranked with the two great
war pictures that he has already painted.
The bedraggled prisoners are seen stum-
bling listlessly past a row of broken and
rotting tree-stumps ; one cannot but think
it unlikely that the tragic, mutilated trees
of the Flanders front have been turned
to such account by any other artist.
Varley's extraordinary gain in rower is the
most striking single fact in Canadian art
at the present moment. 000
Portraiture was represented by E. Wyly
Grier, who has recently invaded Nova
Scotia with his palette, by H. Harris
Brown with studies of two Toronto
celebrities, and by Curtis Williamson, who
has not exhibited in Toronto for several
years. The two Williamsons were much
less fluent but incomparably more pene-
trating ; Williamson is a unique and iso-
lated figure in Canada, sardonic and un-
sparing in a country which knows little
of such qualities. 0000
There were several figure studies that
deserve mention, M. A. Suzor-Cote's
Vieux paysan canadien-frangais taking first
place among them with its luminous
colour and its beautiful sympathy, and
after him the work of Regina Seiden and
Emily Coonan. Nor must a smaller pic-
ture of E. H. Holgate's, Amiens Station,
be overlooked, in which a soldier with
wife and child is splendidly interpreted
by the simplest means. 000
There was less notable landscape than
usual, though much repetitive or deriva-
tive work, reasonably well done but without
particular meaning. The only work that
carried one forward was that of J. E. H.
Macdonald, whose tousled Beaver Dam
breathes of the Algoma district which local
artists have recently begun to tap, and of
Manly Macdonald, a younger artist of
considerable promise. Arthur Lismer was
a little sketchy this time, but spirited as
always, and Mabel May's outdoor studies
showed her usual admirable characteris-
tics. 0 0 0 B. F.