Studio: international art (89.1925)

MR. EDMUND BLAMPIED'S NEW DRAWINGS

" MARKET DAY, ST. JEAN DE LUZ '
FEN AND WASH DRAWING
BY EDMUND BLAMPIED, R.E.

any interval in the loading of the cart.
This quaint pen and ink drawing, with
its fine balance of line and tone, as well
as another somewhat similar in motive,
In a Basque Farm, St. Jean de Luz, seems
to call to Mr. Blampied's vigorous dry-
point for translation to the copper. a

St. Jean de Luz—the name has an
historic ring about it; important hap-
penings have been here in the distant
past. Did not Louis XIV. with all his
Court come here to marry the daughter
of Philip IV. i Was it not here, among
other places, that Wellington fought Soult
and won a battle i Yet, look at the quiet
old place with the hot sunshine on its
whitewashed houses, as Mr. Blampied
shows it to us in two masterly drawings
reproduced, using line and wash with
such exquisite artistic economy that every
touch has its expressive effect in the
simple rhythm of the design. The cen-
turies may still be dreaming here in the

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shadows, but where that bullock-cart with
the cage stands between those two trees,
the likeliest happening one fancies would
be for Don Quixote to be carried to it
under the illusion of enchantment for
conveyance to his home, for surely it
was just such a cart as Don Fernando and
his friends hired for the purpose. And
who can imagine any trading activity in
the hot indolent atmosphere of this
Market Day, St. Jean de Luz, with the
bullocks and carts as idle as the folk, while
" the very houses seem asleep i " a a
For his landscape moods Mr. Blam-
pied turns naturally to water-colours.
Pictorial aspects of the Basque coast he
records with conception invariably struc-
tural, while his frankness of statement
misses no subtlety of light and atmo-
sphere playing over watery inlets, the
rocky shore, and the distant hills. These
same qualities may be seen in A Paris
Bridge, a a a a a a