DOI Heft:
No. 361 (April 1923)
DOI Artikel:Hannay, Howard: Water-colour drawings at Messrs. Agnew's
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21397#0204
WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS AT MESSRS. AGNEW'S
and Ophelia in this exhibition is actually-
cracked exactly like an oil painting ; but,
being rather insipid in its initial concep-
tion, it does not afford a very good example
for discussion. 0000
The majority of the Old Master draw-
ings were very much sketches and cannot
be judged by quite the same standard as
that which we apply to the completed
Blake designs. They were fragments
affording a faint though, in a sense, a
concentrated glimpse of the quality of the
artist's imagination—the gentle gravity
of Bartolommeo's Adoration, the sculp-
turesque forms of Pordenone's Group of
Two Prophets, the lustiness of Jordaens's
head of a woman (the drawing is in places
weak), the sensuousness of the negro’s head
by Veronese. On the other hand, Van-
dyck's drawing of Anne Cavendish, Lady
Rich, is more complete ; it is, in fact, a
Vandyck portrait in little. The silkiness
of the dress is rendered in a masterly
fashion. Of the French artists Boucher
was most effective with his Nude and his
charming Head of a Lady. 000
The designs by Blake to Milton's
“ Paradise Regained " were done in 1825
for the artist John Linnell. Blake was then
sixty-eight, but he had just finished the
illustrations to the Book of Job and was at
the height of his power. Some of the
designs are magnificent, while all have the
fascination of Blake's sense of swift,
ecstatic movement and gesture. So keen
and sure is the emotion which they arouse
that one reflects with amazement upon the
fact that in his lifetime Blake gained the
admiration only of a very few. How
poignant in its symmetrical arrangement is
the design Christ Ministered to by Angels !
With a little adaptation it would make a
very beautiful church window. There
were also two other drawings by Blake, one
inspired by Revelations, the other by
“ Paradise Lost." The former, entitled
The Great Red Dragon, gives full play to
Blake's unique power of fantastic pictorial
description. 00000
There is something curiously modern in
the work of Francis Towne, the recently-
discovered artist who was a contemporary
184
OFF NEWHAVEN”
BY COPLEY FIELDING
and Ophelia in this exhibition is actually-
cracked exactly like an oil painting ; but,
being rather insipid in its initial concep-
tion, it does not afford a very good example
for discussion. 0000
The majority of the Old Master draw-
ings were very much sketches and cannot
be judged by quite the same standard as
that which we apply to the completed
Blake designs. They were fragments
affording a faint though, in a sense, a
concentrated glimpse of the quality of the
artist's imagination—the gentle gravity
of Bartolommeo's Adoration, the sculp-
turesque forms of Pordenone's Group of
Two Prophets, the lustiness of Jordaens's
head of a woman (the drawing is in places
weak), the sensuousness of the negro’s head
by Veronese. On the other hand, Van-
dyck's drawing of Anne Cavendish, Lady
Rich, is more complete ; it is, in fact, a
Vandyck portrait in little. The silkiness
of the dress is rendered in a masterly
fashion. Of the French artists Boucher
was most effective with his Nude and his
charming Head of a Lady. 000
The designs by Blake to Milton's
“ Paradise Regained " were done in 1825
for the artist John Linnell. Blake was then
sixty-eight, but he had just finished the
illustrations to the Book of Job and was at
the height of his power. Some of the
designs are magnificent, while all have the
fascination of Blake's sense of swift,
ecstatic movement and gesture. So keen
and sure is the emotion which they arouse
that one reflects with amazement upon the
fact that in his lifetime Blake gained the
admiration only of a very few. How
poignant in its symmetrical arrangement is
the design Christ Ministered to by Angels !
With a little adaptation it would make a
very beautiful church window. There
were also two other drawings by Blake, one
inspired by Revelations, the other by
“ Paradise Lost." The former, entitled
The Great Red Dragon, gives full play to
Blake's unique power of fantastic pictorial
description. 00000
There is something curiously modern in
the work of Francis Towne, the recently-
discovered artist who was a contemporary
184
OFF NEWHAVEN”
BY COPLEY FIELDING