Studio: international art (83.1922)

THE ART OF WILLIAM SHACKLETON

“ SONG OF EVENING"
OIL PAINTING BY
W. SHACKLETON

days into doubtful by-paths, whipping him
where he should have been led. The
commonplace allegorical art of G. F,
Watts first attracted him, for the beginner
finds great difficulty in discriminating
between rhetorical grandeur and that true
spaciousness of conception which is at-
tained only by a deep and pervasive
imagination fed by knowledge. No
doubt, too, the self-conscious and heady
work of the pre-Raphaelites, particularly
the colour methods of Rossetti, influenced
him at this time, and he went to Italy fired
with an incoherent zest for the most
obvious mystery, and a greed for the most
accessible form, which are reminiscent

of the young Keats, when he “ stood
tiptoe upon a little hill,” a a a
In Italy the refining process began. One
by one his eagerly made and insular
theories, his provincial loves, were brought
into the light of the central traditions of
Italian art. He found, as we all find on
approaching the cor cordium, that his
heroes were but disciples, that his in-
spired conclusions were old, very old.
This is the critical hour in the life of the
creative artist—when the pride of the
novice is withered suddenly, and the
theatrical gesture of adolescence is made—
in the void ! So many then give up,
thinking there is nothing new under the

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