ART.
ANDRg DUNOYER DE-SEGONZA41 TIIE INDEPENDENT GALLERY, 7A GRAFTON STREET.
ALTHOUGH the exhibition of paintings at the Leicester Galleries is the most positively valuable show yet opened this season, the work of M. de Segonzac at the Independent is more interesting to the English student of French art. His work has been little seen in this country and, therefore, less appreciated. He is, however, one of the most con- siderable of modern French artists. M. de Segonzac has an idiom very much of his own. There must, therefore, be some measure of familiarity before his work can be properly enjoyed. It is not showy, it does not "catch the eye" and then, like so much modern work, let it go again. On the contrary, the first feeling is usually one of mixed repulsion and fascination, but the fascination holds the eye to the picture until gradually tie true profundity and brilliant technique of the painter hold it there. Once the idiom of M. de Segonzac is mastered, his w3rk gives a feeling of weight and intensity which is overwhelming. To those who are already acquainted with it this exhibition must be what is called an event. The show is not a large one—sixteen paintings, nine drawings and twelve small etchings—but the quality throughout is extremely high. The visitor to whom M. de Segonzac does not appeal can be certain that it is not the fault of Mr. Turner, the proprietor of the gallery, whose taste in selection is almost invariably to be relied upon.
The gloomy, storm-romantic style of M. de Segonzac is superbly represented here, with its massive browns and blues and blacks. The tremendous play which he can make with these colours is epitomized dawn the right-hand side of Les Deux Ormes. It is a thunder of colours ; it is the mood of the storm scene in Lear ; it is Wuthering Heights. But all that purely in paint. M. de Segonzac is very little a literary painter. In La Ferule dans la Terre and the other 'landscapes hanging near to it he shows the same solidity In dealing with a placid, "home farm" atmosphere. Here, surely, M. de Seganzac is a modernist in the grand tradition. There are few painters whose material is so admirably confessed as his. There is no silly pretence. This is paint used as Michelangelo used stone, as the Gothic craftsmen used wood. M. de Segonzac's paint is lovable in itself, almost eatable. I remember that somewhere Mr. George Moore compares the paint of G. F. Watts to Stilton cheese. But if you did want to eat M. de Segonzac's paint it would not be because it is like Stilton cheese or any other food, but because he has made paint so attractive to all the senses. You want to feel it as you want to stroke a velvet cushion. How he must have enjoyed slabbing it on with the palette knife There is no canvas and scrape about M. de Segonzac's work. It is, as we used to say, scrumptious.
ANTHONY BERTRAM.
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