Studio: international art (81.1921)

WATER-COLOURS AT MESSRS.
AGNEW'S. 00000

MESSRS. AGNEW have held many
spring exhibitions of water-colour
drawings in aid of the Artists' Benevolent
Fund, but perhaps there has never been
one with unfamiliar masterpieces in such a
number and such even distribution over
the range of the English art, as the exhibi-
tion which has just closed. There have
been rows of even more resplendent
Turners, but this year, too, he has the
predominant place, as is his due for his
overwhelming fertility and the exuberance
of his effect. De Wint ran Turner close
even in size and richness of colour, and,
though Cotman was absent, more than the
usual space was given to Girtin. But the
principal novelty was the greater share of
importance allowed to the predecessors of
Girtin and Turner, and after the interest
aroused by the recent show of the earlier

men at Cambridge it is not dangerous to
prophesy that they will loom more and
more largely in such exhibitions as time
goes on, and it becomes recognised that
they are not mere precursors but had a
distinctive and valuable art of their own. 0
Of these earlier men John Cozens holds
the foremost place. He was magnificently
represented. There was two years ago a
fine series of his smaller works, but nothing
of the monumental quality of the four prin-
cipal drawings by him in this year's exhibi-
tion—the Villa Frascati, the Lake Albano,
The Goat-herd, and the so-called Moun-
tains of Elba. There were also an Italian
lake, one of his slighter, coloured sketches
and two of the direct monochrome studies
from Nature which he made in Switzerland
in 1776. The Frascati and the Albano are
full of varied but subdued colour. The
Elba and The Goat-herd, contemporary
drawings, are in deliberately cool grey
tones. It is in these that his extraordinary

LXXXI. No. 337.—April 1921

" LAKE ALBANO " [ALSO CALLED
"LAKENEMl"]. BY J. r. COZENS
129