Studio: international art (85.1923)

THE PAINTINGS OF PHILIP
CONNARD, A.R.A. 000

THERE are some artists who do not so
much reproduce Nature in their pic-
tures as make Nature, when subsequently-
seen, reproduce their pictures. When,
after looking at Mr. Philip Connard's pic-
tures, we go forth to find Connard trees,
Connard women and Connard little girls,
long legged and smiling, meeting us every-
where, it seems that an art so insistent,
if it were morbid instead of sane, might
be responsible for stratagems and crimes.
Being, as it is, under the governance
of a virile and reason-girt intellect, it
must be broadcasting very freely a mascu-
line and fine way of seeing. The mind-sight
of the artist makes his work's value, and

when we see “ Connard " things we have
a sign of the power of the artist's mind over
ours—a part of the psychology of any real
art. Mr. Connard must, first, have seen
little girls with an immensely clear vision,
that we may, later, see little girls as Con-
nards. Art, poor suffering maiden, has been
so robbed by the fierce creature, known to
modernity as the aesthete, of any human
use, that one fears to assign to her the
vestige of a mission. But if she has any
remnant of connection left with life, it
may be that of teaching man to see (though
not too much—just a slight sensuous
emotional seeing, a pleasantly superior
titillation). Mr. Connard's forceful aesthetic
is more akin to that of older generations.
He is insufficiently dilettante to please all
our “ highbrows," too entirely aesthetic to

"THE FARMYARD.” OIL PAINTING
BY PHILIP CONNARD, A.R.A.

303

LXXXV. No. 363.—June 1923.