THE MODERN MOVEMENT IN PAINTING By T. W. Earp Even
a confirmed dislikes of coloured reproductions 'of all kinds can yet recommend the volume, The Modern Movement in Painting (Studio, 7s. 6d.) which forms.the special spring number of the Studio. It contains sixteen coloured re- productions of paintings produced in the last fifty years, and these reproductions give as good an-idea of-the originals as is possible on a 'small. scale arid with the- present limitations of Colour printing. In general, too, the works selected for re- production adequately, rePresent the schooli dealt with. We wonder slightly at the omission of Gauguin, and we should not ourselves- have included- a Chagall or a Pierre Roy, but that is mainly a matter of personal taste: Nor • should -we alway's htive chosen the particular examples of the different artists which appear here, but the editor has clearly been partly influenced by what -paintings are accessible in England or are in some way convenient for reproduction. Mr. -Earp con- tributes an introduction of forty pages in which he -sketches the history of painting from Impressionism to the beginnings of Super-realism. This sketch is written with clarity and sympathy, \ though at moments the style is perhaps a little highly coloured. In one detail we would 'disagree with Mr. Earp--namely, when he attributes to the Fauves the de- sertion'of the traditional idea that' " a thing must be beautiful in itself to admit of -beauty being produced from it" This idea had been gradually abandoned throughout the nineteenth century and to a contemporary of Courbet the matter of his paintings seems to have appeared as unattractive as the dead fish of Matisse or the clowns of Rouault. The unimportance of beauty in subject was confirmed by the Post-Impressionists (Ceianne in still life, Van Gogh in figure painting), and the Fauves needed only to carry -to its logical 'conclusion a ten- dency already well developed before their time. •
Previous page
