ART
ALEXANDER COZENS was a poetic painter who lived a century before his time. Dissatisfied with the smug classical landscape tradition which he inherited, he anticipated, gropingly, many aspects of Impressionism and even Post-Impressionism. In the unconven- tionality of his starch for a formal and emotive unity in his pictures there worked a yeast which was to leaven English landscape painting for many years to come. What might he not have achieved, one wonders, in the greater freedom allowed to later generations?
The important collection of Cozens' work which was arranged by Mr. Paul Oppe for exhibition at the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, has now, happily, come to the Tate, and Londoners may share this unrivalled opportunity to judge the first comprehensive showing of his output in all its vigour and virtuosity. I suppose the main interest will centre round the aquatints from his book, the New Method for Assisting the Invention in the Composition of Land- scape, which explained his famous blot technique. Though some, no doubt, will be disappointed to find that at no time were the blots really haphazard, the freedom and spontaneity of their execu- tion certainly give these doodles accents of astonishing modernity: By way of contrast, study the little oils, of which the last word has been said by Mr. Oppe in his invaluable introduction, where
they are described as "dextrous almost to excess." Of the drawings I which form the bulk of the exhibition, nearly all show a lively mind at work ; perhaps a dozen are masterpieces. Taken as a whole the sum total is so impressive that the obscurity into which Cozens pere fell seems now quite incomprehensible.
At the St. George's Gallery Mr. Waldemar Stabell, a young Norwegian-Canadian painter, is holding his first cne-man show in this country. The Scandinavian element in his work is evident, but direct influence seems to be absent. His pictures are charac- terised by obvious integrity, a direct technique, a lyrical use of 0.-lcur and an unforced freshness. To say that they are charming and pretty, in the best sense of the words, is perhaps to invite mis- understanding; for strength, as in the tomato and olive landscape, No. 19, for example, is not lacking. There is, however, a northern sweemess and simplicity about them which is rather moving. One sign of your real painter is that he does not have to look for "sub- jects," and Stabell's poetry is created from the simplest ingredients.
It is sometimes a wise move to restrict oneself to a medium the limitations of which disguise one's own. The few oils by Marc Saint-Saens which are on view at the Anglo-French Art Centre lead me to applaud his entry into the field of tapestry design. In this, and in fresco painting, he is in France an acknowledgcd leaden Of his frescoes I cannot speak (though one detects an affinity with Hans Feibusch, who has done so much mural decora- tion in this country), but the tapestries are pleasant enough. They are not up to Lurcat's standards—indeed, by the highest creative standards they are neither here nor there—but then, who are we to criticise?
The Leicester Galleries are staging one of their big lucky dips (not Fame and Promise at this time of Year but just New Yea: Exhibition) and a very good one it is too. Embracing as it does such diverse artists as Tissot, Chirico, Wyndham Lewis and Phil May, it defies analysis, but amongst others I remember with pleasure pictures by Alan Sorrell, Leonard Appelbee, William Scott and
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