Studio: international art (86.1923)

LONDON

MINIATURE BY MAR-
GARET E. WILSON

Mr. W. Egginton has brought together
in the galleries of the Fine Art Society a
collection of water - colours, On and
around Dartmoor, and Mr. J. G. Millais
a group of pictures of Wild Life in
many Lands, The great merit of Mr.
Egginton’s work is its frank directness ; it
is honest and unaffected, sound in its
interpretation of nature, and robustly
significant in its technical statement; he
paints atmospheric effects with much
charm of suggestion, and his skies are
excellent in construction and in rendering
of cloud forms. Mr. Millais succeeds as
an illustrator of natural history rather than
as a maker of pictures—he certainly shows
an intimate knowledge of the birds and
beasts which he has chosen as his subjects.
Another exhibition of wild life motives has
been arranged at the Greatorex Galleries
—Mr. Philip Rickman's Game Birds, which
claim appreciation as closely studied and
carefully realised records, 0 0 0

Mr. Russell Flint's oil paintings and
water-colours at the Fine Art Society’s
galleries deserve the sincerest commenda-
tion as brilliant achievements by an artist
330

who is almost without a rival to-day in
daintiness of fancy and in mastery over the
water-colour medium. His water-colours
in this show must be noted as possessing
in fullest measure the luminosity and fresh^
ness of effect, the charm of design, and the
supreme deftness of handling which always
distinguish his productions, and the two
oil paintings exhibited with them as
marked by real distinction of style, accom-
plished draughtsmanship, and an executive
decision which comparatively few modern
painters seem able to attain. There have
been hardly any exhibitions of late which
could show such consistency of attainment.

The most impressive of the three
hundred and ninety-nine works in the
Goupil Gallery Salon is certainly the
early Pieta, by Puvis de Chavannes, a
sombre and dignified composition severe
in line and sombre in tone ; but the ex-
hibition includes much besides that is
important and interesting. There is, for
example, a Boudin of the finest quality,
and there are canvases by Mr. W. W.
Russell, Mr. W. Nicholson, Mr. Harold
Knight, Mr. Alexander Jamieson, Mr.
Sheringham, Mr. Davis Richter, Sir John
Lavery, Mr. J. L. Henry and Mr. D. Y.
Cameron, which rise definitely above the
general level of the collection, and there
are, too, a couple of pictures by Degas,
which represent him admirably. In the
section devoted to water-colours and
drawings, the most noteworthy things
come from Mr. Borough Johnson, Mr.
Martin Hardie, Mr. Hanslip Fletcher, Mr.
Leonard Richmond. Mr. C. A. Hunt and
Miss Mary McCrossan. 000

As an example of intelligent departure
from the customary conventions of still-
life painting, the composition, Pinks, by
Mr. C. R. Mackintosh, reproduced here,
is most instructive, for it shows how, in
the hands of an accomplished designer,
actualities can be made, without distortion
or excess of convention, to serve a legiti-
mate decorative purpose. Mr. Mackintosh
has produced an ordered and considered
pattern, perfectly balanced in line and
colour, but in so doing he has not lost
touch with nature and he has not resorted
to a mechanical formula. Yet his arrange-
ment is as studied and deliberate as that
in the two Adoration of the Magi designs,