ART.
MR. JOHN IRREVERENTLY COMPARED.
Mx. Joni is like those boxers who depend on an early knock- out rather than the building up of points. This disinclination to fight on at top form, if his work is troublesome in the first rounds, is his major imperfectioa. Some critics have empha- sized the evidence of this weakness in the exhibition now open at the Alpine Club Galleries, Mill Street, Conduit Street. They forget that it is the almost inevitable result of two of his best qualities, spontaneity and fertility. They label him an artist whose métier is the sketch. But surely in Symphonic Espagnole Mr. John shows that he can, if he
wants to, " carry through." The iridescent colouring, elusive as that of oil spilt in a puddle, belongs to a visionary world that we might have thought foreign to Mr. John. The composition is mystical and strange, aspiring, swaying, agitated, yet perfectly contained and organized, and nicely balanced by the delicate nude in the foreground—a figure that is perhaps a little " pretty." It is, of course, a confessed essay on El Greco ; but it is a new and expressive language for Mr. John. We believe this to be a great painting. The already celebrated Madame Suggia is not altogether successful. The construction is finely conceived, but too obvious ; the quality of paint in the dress is unpleasant. The exhibition as a whole again demonstrates Mr. John's rapid and masterly draughtsmanship and feeling for oolour. Nant-ddu is a particularly beautiful little work, with all the virtues of Mr. John's cleanest and quickest effects.
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