DOI Heft:
No. 183 (February 1925)
DOI Artikel:Old buildings: drawings by Margaret Delisle Burns
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21402#0091
OLD BUILDINGS
working at some portraits, for her interest not simply transferred on to the paper or
is not limited to what old buildings can the canvas by the artist. Art is not repro-
tell. She has not, however, found it neces- duction but creation. The unity of a
sary to victimise " famous " men and good drawing is a new unity, and that not
women in order to find her subjects for the unity of a scheme or a plan but of a
portraiture. Some of her portraits are in process. The light in a painting of an
pastel and some in oil, but the majority old farm by Matthew Maris or the
are in the method used for her drawings " atmosphere " of a Jacob Maris comes
of old buildings. a a a a into existence as the painter finds, through
In such work as that here illustrated, his brush, a way to express what he feels ;
the atmosphere is what may be called they are not first seen and then put down
" realist." There is no theory being worked upon the canvas. 0000
into practice, nor any doctrine of repre- It may, therefore, be interesting to
sentationism or symbolism. But faith- find traces of the older traditions in the
fulness to the line and colour of the world drawings here illustrated. No doubt a
of the ordinary man does not involve theory could be made by a critic after the
photography. The exactness of the pre- work is done ; but with that the artist is
Raphaelites, though true to the separate not concerned. The method adopted in
detail, was false to the coherence of facts ; these drawings is, as it were, dictated by
they made catalogues not pictures, and the necessity which the artist feels. The
failed because they did not express the life of the past surviving in old buildings
sense of unity or the relation between survives also in the emotions of the artist
things. There is such a unity in a drawing and this, surely, is what we mean by
by Girtin or a water-colour by Cotman or tradition. The mere knowledge of an old
Daniel. But the unity in the real world is technique is of minor importance. a
' CAPO DI MONTE, JUDGE'S
WALK." WATER-COLOUR
BY MRS. M. DELISLE BURNS
85
working at some portraits, for her interest not simply transferred on to the paper or
is not limited to what old buildings can the canvas by the artist. Art is not repro-
tell. She has not, however, found it neces- duction but creation. The unity of a
sary to victimise " famous " men and good drawing is a new unity, and that not
women in order to find her subjects for the unity of a scheme or a plan but of a
portraiture. Some of her portraits are in process. The light in a painting of an
pastel and some in oil, but the majority old farm by Matthew Maris or the
are in the method used for her drawings " atmosphere " of a Jacob Maris comes
of old buildings. a a a a into existence as the painter finds, through
In such work as that here illustrated, his brush, a way to express what he feels ;
the atmosphere is what may be called they are not first seen and then put down
" realist." There is no theory being worked upon the canvas. 0000
into practice, nor any doctrine of repre- It may, therefore, be interesting to
sentationism or symbolism. But faith- find traces of the older traditions in the
fulness to the line and colour of the world drawings here illustrated. No doubt a
of the ordinary man does not involve theory could be made by a critic after the
photography. The exactness of the pre- work is done ; but with that the artist is
Raphaelites, though true to the separate not concerned. The method adopted in
detail, was false to the coherence of facts ; these drawings is, as it were, dictated by
they made catalogues not pictures, and the necessity which the artist feels. The
failed because they did not express the life of the past surviving in old buildings
sense of unity or the relation between survives also in the emotions of the artist
things. There is such a unity in a drawing and this, surely, is what we mean by
by Girtin or a water-colour by Cotman or tradition. The mere knowledge of an old
Daniel. But the unity in the real world is technique is of minor importance. a
' CAPO DI MONTE, JUDGE'S
WALK." WATER-COLOUR
BY MRS. M. DELISLE BURNS
85