Studio: international art (86.1923)

LONDON

LONDON. — The Modern English
Water-Colour Society, which held its
first exhibition this summer in the St.
George’s Gallery, appears to be something
more than a fortuitous association of artists
for the purpose of exhibiting, and therefore
deserves rather closer attention than many
of the new societies which spring up from
day to day. Three water-colours from this
exhibition have been selected for repro-
duction in these pages, and they illustrate
at once the variety of style of each ex-
hibitor and a fundamental unity of prin-
ciple. This principle is a firm belief in the
necessity of probity of drawing as the
essential understructure of any water-
colour, and consequently we deduce that
the Society exists as a conscious or un-
conscious protest against the practice of
manufacturing water-colours by a con-
glomeration of “ inspired blobs ” of colour.

It is not the intention of the writer to
take sides in a controversy, to say whether

a water-colour should be a sketch or a
study, but it is pertinent to insist that the
water-colours by Messrs. Bevan, Ginner
and Ratcliffe—and, indeed also those by Mr.
Rushbury, Mr. Ethelbert White and all the
other exhibitors at the St. George’s Gallery
—are not sketches ,* they are studies, 0
Observe Mr. Ginner’s Downderry, near
Plymouth, and you will find evidence of
profound, even exhaustive study ; no work
of whatever siz;e, or in whatever medium,
could be more thorough in its workman-
ship. All the detail has been studied with a
delight in drawing for its own sake; the
design has been studied with an eye to
pattern and decorative effect, the colour,
the light-and-shade have been searched out
with nice discrimination and welded into
harmony. We have only to look at it to see
that whatever other qualities the artist may
or may not have, he is the possessor of
infinite patience, he has “ an infinite
capacity for taking pains.” Now an effective

“POLISH VILLAGE.” WATER-
COLOUR BY ROBERT BEVAN

(St. George’s Gallery)

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