Studio: international art (90.1925)

THE ART OF ISABEL CODRINGTON

returned to her canvas, art had made huge Shop (1923) in the Municipal Gallery,

steps forward, and it is a tribute to the Hull, and such as The Canteen at Vitry-

theory that art is really a mental quality, le-Frangois, painted for the Imperial

not a mere case of manual dexterity, that War Museum ; The Fruit Seller, which

she revealed the amazing fact that her secured hon. mention in the Salon des

mind had kept pace with that evolution the Artistes Francais ; but she may be said

whole time. Indeed, both her outlook and to have found herself in portraiture, such

her technique have more than kept pace, as the picture of the old tramp, which is

for her pictures to-day reveal the work one of the features of the French Salon

of a pioneer and leader, but a leader who of 1925. a 0 0 0 0

has not out-distanced the schools merely It is probably only the fact that she

for the sake of differing from them. 0 has chosen for her subjects the features of

Her work, like her attitude, is as the worker and the sufferers and the

essentially masculine in its sincerity and indigent (who can never buy their por-

determination as the work of Brangwyn traits or " boom " the artist) that has

and Epstein ; but it is profoundly classic prevented her from ranking in the forefront

in its style—classic, that is to say, in its of English portrait painting. 0 0

carrying on of the tradition of all the She was one of those who made the

greatest of the masters such as Rembrandt " woman's art exhibition " at the Olympia

and Vandyck. a 0 0 0 possible, when it was organised by the

She is equally at home in compositions Daily Express, and was one of those

such as The Tavern (1919), The Blouse whose pictures were singled out by

"A SOUTHERN STILL LIFE "
BY ISABEL CODRINGTON

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