THE ALPINE GALLERY, MILL STREET.]
Louise Pickard, whose 'memorial exhibition is now being held at the Alpine Gallery, died in June this year, and her work, outside her circle in the New English Art Club, was little known. She was born in Hull in 1865, and reached the age of thirty before she was able to get to London to study. She spent two years at the Slade and a shorter time in Paris, but poverty and family ties prevented her talents having unlimited scope, and. there were years when she painted little. Her retiring nature kept her always in the background. In this exhibition there are a large proportion of still-life pictures, due to Miss Pickard's inability to afford models, and Still Life, No. 66, wine-glasses and decanters on a polished table, shows what wonderful use she made of such material. Gloucestershire, with its receding distance and wonderful sky, Autumn Hedgerow and Sospel No. 49 are proof that she could paint landscape when the chance came her way. The first-named picture is one of the most beautiful in the exhibition. Summer Flowers and Marigolds and Lupins, both blazing with light and colour, stand out among her flower subjects. That work of the quality shown in this exhibition should have remained unknown is strange, that it did not free its author from the shackles of poverty is tragic.
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