Studio: international art (86.1923)

THE NEEDLEWORKS IN THE
LADY LEVER ART GALLERY, PORT
SUNLIGHT. 0000

AMONG the many treasures of the
Lady Lever Art Gallery—the imposing
Taj Mahal of the Mersey—one section is
most perfect in the fundamental expression
of the artists' minds, and the medium is—
the little feminine needle. In our near-
sighted age needlework has come to suggest
something sweetly nice and nicely insipid.
A needle, it is assumed, is no match for a
brush. Is this certain i a 0 0

Either in political propaganda or in pure
art essence, the Jacobean ladies show
aesthetic faculties lacking in pigmentary
performances by nineteenth century art
lords in the Gallery. For example. Sir
W. Q. Orchardson painted (excellently)
The Young Duke, being toasted by his

associates, in full-bottomed wigs. Mistress
Damaris Pearse, who died in 1679, aged
20, worked Pharaoh Crossing the Red Sea
(also in full-bottomed wig and technically
perfect). But a sense of aesthetic—that
“face value" of things — led Mistress
Pearse to give variety and vitality to her
figures (notably a mermaid, sewed proper,
vert, rampant, with hand-mirror argent),
and to desert the brush lord in the matter
of noses. The long row of The Young
Duke’s follower's noses has not the obvious
nasal symphony appearance seen in Assy-
rian or Maya sculpture, but a mournful
monotony born of accident. Fate placed
these be-wigged masterpieces in the same
gallery to demonstrate the need for
imagination and a sense of humour in
art. 000000
In draughtsmanship the needleworks
are naively brilliant. The highly-modelled

CHARLES I STOMP
WORK PANEL
(Lady Lever Art Gallery)

135