Studio: international art (82.1921)

LORD LEVERHULME'S PICTURES

" LOVE STRONG AS DEATH IS
DEAD." BY BYAM SHAW

" modern " may be regarded as a mis-
leading term in association with pictures
which recall the days of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood's expressive activities, and
the Royal Academy Exhibitions in the
'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties ; but I
use the word for convenience to distinguish
the art of men still living, or of com-
paratively living memory, from that of the
older schools. Of the modern art spirit,
as we have seen it of late in its various
extreme manifestations, the picture galleries
at " The Hill " are entirely innocent.
Here no isms of artistic modernity are
found disturbing the serenity of the
pictorial traditions with dynamic ab-
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stractions expressed with plausibilities of
distorted form and complex pattern. But
here among these familiar pictures, old
friends remembered from almost forgotten
exhibitions, yet seen again now among
permanent home conditions, one cannot
deny a feeling of tranquillity ; and as one
looks at such a picture as Orchardson's
The Young Duke, with those qualities of
conception and execution which prove it
surely the work of a master, one is inclined
to question whether a picture by, say,
M. Piccas'so himself, could fill one with
quite the same sense of artistic satisfaction.
Orchardson has justly been called " our
greatest novelist in paint," but he was