Art
THE GOTJPIL GALLERY : MR. ELLIOTT SEABROOKE AND MISS MARY ADSHEAD.
Mn. ELLIorr SEABROOKE'S new paintings arc as uncom- promising as ever. Very few modern painters, more particularly English painters, make so few concessions to the people who frequent picture galleries. Mr. Seabrooke more than any of his contemporaries in this country, is whole- hearted in his admiration of Cezanne, and he keeps to that tradition with unswerving fidelity. Frequently he employs the materials with which Cezanne first fluttered the timorous dovecotes of academic painting, and his pictures often look extraordinarily like those of Cezanne. To him, landscape and still life, espeeially landscape, are not only primarily but completely a matter of design. Design, far more than colour, is essential. This has been a characteristic of Seabrooke from his early days, and his preoccupation with design; has increased, as the design itself has become more and more complicated. It is, however, done extremely well, so well that at times one is inclined to suspect that he must paint to a carefully-worked-out formula. He is a very consistent painter, and for years past has known precisely what he has been setting out to accomplish. All his experi- ment has been made consciously and deliberately in the direction of this knowledge, and he has never allowed himself to be side-tracked into the by-ways of casual experimentation. The present exhibition shows him with his face still set for his goal. His pictures have become distinctly more difficult. Sometimes one feels that his point has been missed—that somehow, in spite of all this excellent painting, the picture does not succeed. There is something—and it is very difficult to lay one's finger precisely on what it is—missing. Still, there are enough pictures that do come off to make a visit very well worth while. One curious fact is that the design and the subject of the painting do not synchronize. Oddly enough, there seem to be two pictures, one super- imposed on the other. One is the subject that the painter saw, and the other is the design. They seem to bear little relation to one another. Practically all the paintings are of Martigues and the neighbourhood, and it is very interesting to compare Mr. Seabrooke's interpretation of the landscape of the South of France with those of his contemporaries.
Miss Mary Adshead's exhibition of paintings, drawings and decorations are at the same gallery. Miss Adshead possesses an extraordinarily fertile and witty imagination, and her decorations are both lively and delightful. She has a leaning towards Victorian and " period " pieces, but she can make as prosaic an objec.t as a telephone appear as strange and
fantastic as the creations of her imagination. Of her paintings, the best is " Saddle the Pony," or A-Picnic in the West," a fantastic file champetre of the West of Ireland : " Huntsman passing through a Glade " and " The Lap of Luxury " arc equally delightful fantasies of her wit. Of course, they are primarily decorations. Miss Adshead's talent is, like Mr. Rex Whistler's, mainly decorative, and she loses part of her effect as long as she is confined to small surfaces. How good she can be is illustrated by the model of a painted dining-room, " A Tropical Fantasy," which she executed for Professor C. H. Riley. Another model shows a design for a painted room for a country house. The subject of this, " Going to the -Races," would occupy the whole area of the walls. Miss Adshead's exhibition is one of the wittiest and most delightful extravaganzas that have been seen for a long time.
Previous page
