DOI issue:
Nr. 353 (August 1922)
DOI article:Salaman, Malcolm C.: Mr. William Walcott's colour notes
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21396#0111
MR. W. WALCOT'S COLOUR NOTES
" THE THAMES AT GREENWICH ''
OIL SKETCH BY WILLIAM
WALCOT, R.E., F.R.I.B.A.
distinction. And these honours are con-
ferred upon him by the architects not
because of any great buildings he has
designed, but because he has been widely
recognised as the pictorial interpreter of
architecture par excellence, with a special
genius for the imaginative reconstruction
of buildings of the past. His wonderful
series of etchings, known as The Roman
Compositions, in which he has revivified
Imperial Rome, have given Mr. Walcot
a unique place among contemporary
etchers, while not even Piranesi's great
plates of Rome's noble ruins have quite
the same value for architectural students.
But though for many architects, art-lovers
and print collectors Mr. Walcot's etchings
of Ancient Rome and Egypt are his most
important work, there are other facets
of his artistic personality which are of an
interest necessary to the understanding
and appreciation of the whole of him.
Show him a ruin, however fragmentary,
which as a complete edifice the Caesars
or Hadrian may have looked upon, or
Horace, Cicero and Pliny may have known,
familiarly, his architectural imagination will
picture for us on the copper-plate exactly
how that structure must have looked in
its perfection. But, on the other hand, let
Mr. Walcot find himself in a London street
with all its traffic, or by the Thames-side
with the barges sailing by, or among the
colleges of Oxford or Cambridge, in Paris
or Venice or Brittany, in Edinburgh,
Liverpool or Newcastle, and his vivacious
pictorial perceptions will be artistically
alert, and, exchanging his Roman toga,
as it were, for the tweed suit of to-day, he
will interpret the spirit of place with
the vivid modernity of a true expressionist.
Mr. Walcot had practised five years as
91
" THE THAMES AT GREENWICH ''
OIL SKETCH BY WILLIAM
WALCOT, R.E., F.R.I.B.A.
distinction. And these honours are con-
ferred upon him by the architects not
because of any great buildings he has
designed, but because he has been widely
recognised as the pictorial interpreter of
architecture par excellence, with a special
genius for the imaginative reconstruction
of buildings of the past. His wonderful
series of etchings, known as The Roman
Compositions, in which he has revivified
Imperial Rome, have given Mr. Walcot
a unique place among contemporary
etchers, while not even Piranesi's great
plates of Rome's noble ruins have quite
the same value for architectural students.
But though for many architects, art-lovers
and print collectors Mr. Walcot's etchings
of Ancient Rome and Egypt are his most
important work, there are other facets
of his artistic personality which are of an
interest necessary to the understanding
and appreciation of the whole of him.
Show him a ruin, however fragmentary,
which as a complete edifice the Caesars
or Hadrian may have looked upon, or
Horace, Cicero and Pliny may have known,
familiarly, his architectural imagination will
picture for us on the copper-plate exactly
how that structure must have looked in
its perfection. But, on the other hand, let
Mr. Walcot find himself in a London street
with all its traffic, or by the Thames-side
with the barges sailing by, or among the
colleges of Oxford or Cambridge, in Paris
or Venice or Brittany, in Edinburgh,
Liverpool or Newcastle, and his vivacious
pictorial perceptions will be artistically
alert, and, exchanging his Roman toga,
as it were, for the tweed suit of to-day, he
will interpret the spirit of place with
the vivid modernity of a true expressionist.
Mr. Walcot had practised five years as
91