Studio: international art (82.1921)

STUDIO-TALK

11 *• . •

"PROCESSION OF THE MAOLUD, TANGIER "
WATER-COLOUR BY ROMILLY FEDDEN

(Walker Gallery)

artistic expression of arresting beauty—
albeit one feels in the vivid touch the in-
fluence of that original master water-
colourist, Arthur Melville. The Procession
of the Maolad, reproduced here, is a
characteristic example, admirable in com-
position, with the groups of veiled women
in white on the walls kneeling as each
father rides by with his little son. Another
procession, The Marriage Feast, is a
picture of mysterious beauty; but The
Port Gate, Tangier, is, of all these drawings,
the most distinguished. 000
A critic, reviewing the exhibition of
War pictures at the Royal Academy two
years ago, differentiated between the
artists who had been concerned to make
a faithful record of the material event—-
the great majority of those represented
on that occasion—and the artists who had
wrestled with the expression of the event
in the mind, forming a very small minority;

and regarding the former he expressed
his opinion that as a truthful record of
war Mr. Siegfried Sassoon's poems were
worth the whole five hundred of them—
an opinion which is probably shared by
a good many others. It is in the other
category that Mr. Percy Smith must
certainly be placed. Relinquishing his
vocation as an artist and art teacher, he
took part in the campaign on the Western
Front and came face to face with warfare
in all its hideous aspects. The deep im-
pression left on his mind by his experiences
in this campaign is expressed in two re-
markable series of prints, to which the
two we reproduce belong. One is a set
of etchings called " The Dance of Death,
1914—1918," and, as Mr. Campbell
Dodgson says in the current number
of " The Print Collector's Quarterly," it
is "one of the most serious and memorable
works of art inspired by the War . . .

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