DOI Heft:
No. 337 (April 1921)
DOI Artikel:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The water-colours of Mr. Stafford Leake
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21392#0159
WATER-COLOURS BY STAFFORD LEAKE
" SPECTATORS AT A TRAGIC
PLAY." BY JOHN COPLEY
(Senefelder Club)
THE WATER-COLOURS OF MR.
STAFFORD LEAKE. BY MALCOLM
C. SALAMAN. 0 a 0 0
WHEN a picture hanging on a gallery
wall with other exhibits distinguishes
itself from its neighbours, and seems to
say to us, " Rest here with me awhile, I
have something to say to you," one feels
instinctively responsive to the appeal, for
the mental restlessness invariably in-
duced by a heterogeneous collection of
pictures has been suddenly arrested by
a mood of artistic tranquillity. Now, the
water-colour drawings of Mr. Stafford
Leake usually have this effect. Their
content may be the environing landscape
or old buildings of the storied towns of
Northern or Southern France ; they may
afford the spectator's eye a remoter and
stranger experience among the native
habitations of East Africa ; but the artistic
message will be beauty implicit in the
harmonious compact of simple design
and glowing or reticent colour which the
pictorial essentials of the scene offer to
the painter's imaginative vision. That
vision is always individual, and if, in its
intuition of the structural elements of
a scene that lend themselves to breadth
and dignity of design, it suggests at times
happy reminiscence of Cotman's noble
pictorial way, the emotional impulse of
Mr. Leake's colour - vision reveals a
temperament artistically susceptible to
romantic glamour rather than to the
actual effect of natural light. This would
seem to explain a special fondness for
certain blues that he is not always able
to keep under harmonious control, though
" SPECTATORS AT A TRAGIC
PLAY." BY JOHN COPLEY
(Senefelder Club)
THE WATER-COLOURS OF MR.
STAFFORD LEAKE. BY MALCOLM
C. SALAMAN. 0 a 0 0
WHEN a picture hanging on a gallery
wall with other exhibits distinguishes
itself from its neighbours, and seems to
say to us, " Rest here with me awhile, I
have something to say to you," one feels
instinctively responsive to the appeal, for
the mental restlessness invariably in-
duced by a heterogeneous collection of
pictures has been suddenly arrested by
a mood of artistic tranquillity. Now, the
water-colour drawings of Mr. Stafford
Leake usually have this effect. Their
content may be the environing landscape
or old buildings of the storied towns of
Northern or Southern France ; they may
afford the spectator's eye a remoter and
stranger experience among the native
habitations of East Africa ; but the artistic
message will be beauty implicit in the
harmonious compact of simple design
and glowing or reticent colour which the
pictorial essentials of the scene offer to
the painter's imaginative vision. That
vision is always individual, and if, in its
intuition of the structural elements of
a scene that lend themselves to breadth
and dignity of design, it suggests at times
happy reminiscence of Cotman's noble
pictorial way, the emotional impulse of
Mr. Leake's colour - vision reveals a
temperament artistically susceptible to
romantic glamour rather than to the
actual effect of natural light. This would
seem to explain a special fondness for
certain blues that he is not always able
to keep under harmonious control, though