16 JUNE 1933, Page 6

When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood first came jut being its members

made- a mistake they ought to have avoided. They were rash enough to exhibit their works, before they had prepared the way by expounding their theories. So they were rapped over the knuckles by an uncomprehending Times and other papers, and had to-persuade a respectable person like Ruskin, if I remember right, to come to their defence. Mr. Paul Nash, speaking for the group of eleven artists' who are to constitute " Unit One," is careful to "get in first," and informs au expectant world that just as P.R.B: came into being in Rossetti's time, so Unit One arrives in Mr. Nash's. In the works of its members Art will refuse to surrender control to Nature. There will be no swinging back with the tide of reaction. The, eleven will go forward from the point they have reached, even if they thereby isolate themselves from their contemporaries. But after all, that is what their contemporaries were doing ten years ago. -My- admiration must be, not for the newness, but the conservatism of Unit One. - * * * * •