DOI issue:
No. 345 (December 1921)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21393#0293
STUDIO-TALK
"THE SHERIF SHAKIR "
BY ERIC KENNINGTON
(Leicester Galleries)
had we been a wiser nation our existence
would not have been so sorely menaced
by the Prussianism he admired, a 0
The exhibition of Mr. Eric Kennington's
Arab portraits at the Leicester Galleries in
October was a brilliant success, not merely
because practically all the drawings found
purchasers, but more especially because
these drawings revealed a rare power of
characterization. How the painter of The
Kensingtons, which has so deservedly found
a place in the national collection at Mill-
bank, came to go out to the East to do these
portraits, the difficulties he experienced,
and the kind of beings he portrayed, are
told in a preface to the catalogue by CoL
Lawrence, of Hedjaz fame. Most of his
sitters were men of the desert, " rank
individualists who cling to their barren
country that they may owe nothing to any
man, and be owed nothing in return," and
they proved very difficult sitters. For all
that some of them were fine specimens of
humanity—the Sherif Shakir, for example,
who is a descendant of the prophet, the
finest horseman in Arabia, " and one of its
bravest and richest and most beloved men."
The connection between the two illus-
277
"THE SHERIF SHAKIR "
BY ERIC KENNINGTON
(Leicester Galleries)
had we been a wiser nation our existence
would not have been so sorely menaced
by the Prussianism he admired, a 0
The exhibition of Mr. Eric Kennington's
Arab portraits at the Leicester Galleries in
October was a brilliant success, not merely
because practically all the drawings found
purchasers, but more especially because
these drawings revealed a rare power of
characterization. How the painter of The
Kensingtons, which has so deservedly found
a place in the national collection at Mill-
bank, came to go out to the East to do these
portraits, the difficulties he experienced,
and the kind of beings he portrayed, are
told in a preface to the catalogue by CoL
Lawrence, of Hedjaz fame. Most of his
sitters were men of the desert, " rank
individualists who cling to their barren
country that they may owe nothing to any
man, and be owed nothing in return," and
they proved very difficult sitters. For all
that some of them were fine specimens of
humanity—the Sherif Shakir, for example,
who is a descendant of the prophet, the
finest horseman in Arabia, " and one of its
bravest and richest and most beloved men."
The connection between the two illus-
277