The Leicester Galleries ART
IT is the fashion to admire Mr. Epstein's portrait busts more than his larger and more advertised works, but the present exhibition includes an imposing full-length study, Girl with the Gardenias, which is as interesting in form and emotion as any of the portraits and shows a more sustained accomplishment. It is not entirely
successful; especially in the relation of the head, which is another • portrait bust, to the body, which is idealised. But it is a serious
work which, even more than the excellent portraits here, deserves serious attention. A negative impression is left by Mr. J. B. Manson's paintings in the next room, not because he might, on the evidence of the pictures, be oblivious of (or inimical to) serious paintings since Impressionism, but because he shows so little genuine passion for his subjects.
Mr. John Craxton is a young painter to whose work, as he develops, almost anything might happen, though what does happen is fairly certain to be interesting, since he is obviously very in- telligent. There are two remarks of Cocteau's, derived in spirit from Baudelaire, which might conceivably be useful to him—though it should be said that now and again he shows signs of ,being perfectly aware of the truth of them : " A young man must not invest in safe securities " and " DO" not derive art from art." " Safe securities " for a young painter today are not the Royal Academy, the Prix de Rome and the Italian Masters, but Modern Art and cultivated patronage. The really risky securities are nature and one's own
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