Studio: international art (85.1923)

“ HERMIONE.” OIL
PAINTING BY GERALD
L. BROCKHURST

GERALD BROCKHURST'S PAINT-
INGS AND DRAWINGS. BY

ALEXANDER J. FINBERG. a a

IT is now some three or four years since
my attention was drawn to the works
of Mr. Gerald L. Brockhurst, whose draw-
ings, etchings and paintings aroused my
interest and admiration in quite an unusual
way. For Mr. Brockhurst was very young,
and at that time I had come to dread the
sight of a young artist's work. Having lost
that proud and confident faith in progress
with which, like all good little nineteenth-
century boys, I had been born, I could not
believe that every youngster's work was of
LXXXV. No. 362.—May 1923.

necessity better than it seemed. I was
heartily sick of the nineteenth century, and
all the young artists seemed glad and
proud to be in bondage to its conventions.
Youth can surely be too docile, and when I
found the rising generation of artists all
tamely submissive to the exploded dogmas
and tiresome conventionalities of a bygone
age I began to wonder whether art was
alive or dying. Conventional art is dead or
moribund, and conventionality seemed to
have become the besetting sin of the
young. It was therefore singularly refresh-
ing to discover a young artist who had
dared to think for himself; who had
realised that a mindless and slavish imitation

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