23 APRIL 1948, Page 14

ART

AT the Leicester Galleries Mr. Lawrence Gowing adjoins Mr. Charles Murray—the one aged twenty-nine, the other fifty-four. A stranger might be forgiven for reversing the dates in error. Against all the rules of the game it is the younger painter who is the academic. By as much as Murray's pictures have been con- cocted in the studio of his imagination, with less and less reference to the authority of the object, by so much they seem to me less successful than his last exhibition here. Gowing, on the other hand, - has in his chosen field grown in strength and assurance. It would be hard, I imagine, to find another painter of his age, his talent and his intelligence devoting his energies in 1948 to quite such academic ends, and it must be admitted that one or two of his smaller pochades are no more than the trivia found in the bottom drawer of any landscape painter. But in his big portraits—and Judith at 18 is surely one of his finest—there is an impressive integrity, maturity and even grandeur.

* * * *

Regretfully, I find it necessary to dissociate myself from all the other critics who have, I gather, fallen for Miss Barbara Hepworth's new look. I am unable to see in what way her training in abstract form (for her helicoids and conicoids I have long cherished a regard) has served to amplify her understanding of the human figure. Rather does it seem to me that in her new " realistic " drawings from the operating theatre, which are on view at the Lefevre Gallery, she has sidestepped all the real problems of form whenever they arose. By their emphasis- on eyes and hands, these drawings have caught something of the semi-religious atmosphere of the subject, 'the intensity, the gravity and the drama. Formally, however, they are many of them very shaky, and quite without the strength and power of Moore's shelter drawings with which they have been compared. Their interest lies largely in the re-emphasis of the current drift from pure abstraction to a more romantic vision. Of L. S. Lowry's consciously naive poetry I can say nothing that has not been better said before. The portraits in his show at the same gallery caused some momentary reservations, but his populous, Breughel-like landscapes of Lancashire disarm all criticism.

M. H. MIDDLETON.