DOI Heft:
No. 330 (September 1920)
DOI Artikel:Mairet, Philippe: The landscape paintings of C. M. Gere and H. A. Payne
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21401#0064
THE LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS OF C. M. GERE AND H. A. PAYNE
"EVENING." WATER-COLOUR
BY HENRY A. PAYNE, A.R.W.S.
ever he can find the time. They are very
tender and sensitive in colouring, and the
drawing can best be called affectionate, for
they are essentially the works, not of
ambition, but of pure affection. Perhaps
it is not uncommon that, in the hours of
his relaxation, something comes out of a
man which he feels to be better than his
greatest efforts or his most coveted com-
missions. Some of the beauties of these
little landscapes are hardly reproducible :
they are of the greatest delicacy. 0 0
I think, personally, that Mr. Payne has
done stained glass equal to almost any in
modern times; but, when I was looking
at some cartoons of previous work of this
kind, he pointed to the top of one of the
drawings, where a glimpse of landscape
was designed to show above the aureoled
heads of the saints. That, he thought, was
the best thing he had ever done in glass,
that little vista of trees and hills. Such a
confession comes from the heart, and is of
more authority than any criticism. It
indicates the inspiration of landscape, I
believe, to artists not specially painters of
48
it. It occurs to a man, while finishing his
altar-piece, how much rather he would be
out watching the colours of the sky or the
shadows of the trees, making little pictures
of them to please no one but himself : and
yet it is chiefly that rarely gratified desire
that makes him an artist, and the altar-
piece what it is. 0 0 0 0
That is as it may be : but certainly Mr.
Payne's landscape studies are the genuine
expressions of a lover, unpremeditated and
direct. I have dwelt upon this one charac-
teristic of his art because we are only dis-
cussing landscape work at the moment,
and this is how it appealed to me. There
are other valuable qualities in it, some of
which may be seen by simply looking at
these reproductions. For the artists who
paint in the Cotswolds do not require a
special school of criticism to interpret their
work, and their common spirit, which Mr.
Payne so simply expresses, is an easily
comprehensible one—the love of a lovely
country of green hills and stone buildings,
brooded over by a sense of ancient pros-
perity and greatness. Philippe Mairet.
"EVENING." WATER-COLOUR
BY HENRY A. PAYNE, A.R.W.S.
ever he can find the time. They are very
tender and sensitive in colouring, and the
drawing can best be called affectionate, for
they are essentially the works, not of
ambition, but of pure affection. Perhaps
it is not uncommon that, in the hours of
his relaxation, something comes out of a
man which he feels to be better than his
greatest efforts or his most coveted com-
missions. Some of the beauties of these
little landscapes are hardly reproducible :
they are of the greatest delicacy. 0 0
I think, personally, that Mr. Payne has
done stained glass equal to almost any in
modern times; but, when I was looking
at some cartoons of previous work of this
kind, he pointed to the top of one of the
drawings, where a glimpse of landscape
was designed to show above the aureoled
heads of the saints. That, he thought, was
the best thing he had ever done in glass,
that little vista of trees and hills. Such a
confession comes from the heart, and is of
more authority than any criticism. It
indicates the inspiration of landscape, I
believe, to artists not specially painters of
48
it. It occurs to a man, while finishing his
altar-piece, how much rather he would be
out watching the colours of the sky or the
shadows of the trees, making little pictures
of them to please no one but himself : and
yet it is chiefly that rarely gratified desire
that makes him an artist, and the altar-
piece what it is. 0 0 0 0
That is as it may be : but certainly Mr.
Payne's landscape studies are the genuine
expressions of a lover, unpremeditated and
direct. I have dwelt upon this one charac-
teristic of his art because we are only dis-
cussing landscape work at the moment,
and this is how it appealed to me. There
are other valuable qualities in it, some of
which may be seen by simply looking at
these reproductions. For the artists who
paint in the Cotswolds do not require a
special school of criticism to interpret their
work, and their common spirit, which Mr.
Payne so simply expresses, is an easily
comprehensible one—the love of a lovely
country of green hills and stone buildings,
brooded over by a sense of ancient pros-
perity and greatness. Philippe Mairet.