Art

THE NEW WALL PAINTINGS IN ST. STEPHEN'S HALL.]

THERE is no place where His Majesty's lieges are more liable to be kept impatiently waiting than in the antechamber to the Houses of Parliament ; and so it would be very wrong to tax Parliament with vain expense for trying to make the time spent in St. Stephen's Hall less purgatorial. All the more wrong because Parliament is not paying. The Duke of Devonshire, Lord Devonport, Lord Burnham, the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzalan, Lord Derby, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Younger are the respective donors of eight mural panels forming a historical series, which now decorate the space once occupied by the House of Commons. The paintings are ranged on each side, behind the benches where the lieges sit (patient or impatient) awaiting their admission to a debate or to interview some member : they complete the work begun by Mr. Arming Bell's mosaics above the great folding doors at either end of the hall.

In carrying out such a scheme, some co-ordinating authority was necessary, and Sir D. Y. Cameron, R.A., in concert with the Speaker and a small committee, imposed general unity upon the individual designs. In the choice of artists, noble "opportunity was given to young men. Three of the eight are, indeed, Royal Academicians, and Mr. William Rothenstein is, in more ways than one, of academic standing ; but of the other four Mr. Colin Gill ranks with the moderns, Mr. Vivian Forbes is certainly not very venerable, while Mr. A. K. Lawrence and Mr. W. J. Monnin,' gton are quite recent winners of the Prix de Rome (one from South Kensington, the other from! the Slade School). Mr. Monnington's panel is still incomplete, but in the whole series no piece of drapery is more admirable in design and colour than the woman's figure on the right of his canvas, and as for Mr. Lawrence, no one has fulfilled the conditions of the work more successfully. The whole series has the merit of enlarging, not cramping, the hall ; it achieves this by airiness, lightness and coolness of colour : and of the eight Mr. Lawrence gives the airiest design. Through a skilful use of upright lines he has got much of the starkness presumably sought after by those who represent the human figure by a grouping of stove pipes ; yet Queen Elizabeth and Walter Raleigh are constructed on patterns reconcilable with common anatomy. His colour also is light and joyous. Mr. Rothenstein, next to him, has had a difficult task, presenting the interview between James I.'s, envoy and the Great Mogul : for he needed to suggest Oriental colour and design in contrast with the Western, and at the same time must reconcile these hot yellows and intricate patternings with the breadth of treatment and the cool tints sought after throughout the series.

Many will be attracted by the couple of white Borzois which Mr. Lawrence has put in attendance on Queen Elizabeth —quite unhistorically ; historically they could have been Irish wolfhounds, but his colour scheme needed the white. Yet the most popular picture is likely to be Mr. Clausen's group of English people gathering to hear Wyclirs Bible read. It has scarcely the quality of a mural painting ; it is too personal and too intimate. A mother and child are painted with exquisite tenderness and the same caress lingers

over a glimpse of quintessential English landscape in the Thames valley. The panel is composed in two parts, only held together by the strange but gracious pose of a woman on the left of the right-hand group.

Mr. Colin Gill's picture of a fight between Danes and King Alfred's men suggests that it was painted by one striving against nature to be bloody-minded ; but axe and bow are in play, and one of Alfred's men is in a position which recalls the Viking's laconism as he received the thrust : " These broad spears are coming greatly into fashion."

It should be noted that this is only one step, though a great one, in the process of beautifying Parliament. The last five years have added also Professor Tristram's reproductions from the records of decorations of the Painted Chamber, and from those discovered in St. Stephen's Hall itself during the enlargements after the Irish Act of Union. The lobby leading from the Members' Staircase to the Terrace is now a delight. One may hope that this pious work may be yet further ex- tended.

[Mn. • SIXE AND HIS SKETCH BOOKS.] MR. S. H. SINE is two things—a philosopher and a painter : and those who have arranged this exhibition exhibit the philosopher also in the Foreword—described as " An Open Letter from the Artist " :-

" Why a Foreword ? it is futile to discuss one Art in the terms of another : you have read the programme notes to music at a concert. I beg your pardon, of course you have not. . . "

" I do not hope to acquire merit or any kind of high-top-ness by the pursuit of my aptitudes—being quite certain that I like to make these things, and if anything else matters tell it to me. If a piece of work seems good, what is there to add or says if it seems bad why bother to say so ? "

This seems to justify one in discussing the philosopher rather than the drawings and caricatures here shown. It is not indiscreet to mention that Mr. Sime spent several years of his youth in a coalmine, till the bumpy-headed Yorkshire collier's boy wanting to paint (whatever put the desire in him ?) struck out for the nearest town which had an art school, a thing not to be forgotten when the value of such institutions is questioned. After adventures (but I must not discuss what is documented only by legend) Mr. Sime came to London and ultimately became a legend himself. But first, in the days when J. K. Jerome was editing the Idler, Mr. Sime's con- versation was the most admired philosophy in Bohemia—

and his caricatures were only rivalled by Max's. Some of them are in this show—George Robey, a champagne-bottle outline but infinitely pliable : Forbes-Robertson, distinguished but a little too squarely and primly angular as Hamlet ; Wilson Barrett, majestic, with the tendency to protuberance which dogs majesty. The catalogue enables us to compare Sime by himself with Max on Sime. Both representations show a stupendous cranium, densely thatched with black ; both indicate a beard recalling Carlyle's Wormwood Scrubs ; and both put Mr. Sime in evening clothes. The philosopher of to-day has discarded beard and evening dress, and has departed from London, thus becoming a legend : he dwells among the gentilities of Surrey and from beneath the bumpiest forehead ever given to man (see both Max and Sime in evidence) observes his world. On the walls of the St. George's gallery hang those of Mr. Sime's neighbours who interest him, seen as de Morgan saw Joseph Vance.

But there are other things. Artists have been known to call Sime the greatest of all illustrators and here are sketches for illustration. Wild Beast Wood, for instance—black cats, big as wolves, stiffly on the prowl with green eyes glinting ; everything in the picture is tense, the trees on tip-toe. Trees may be seen as normal permanent parts of the landscape, or as growths shot up like mushrooms, asserting their separate existence, and that is how Mr. Sime often sees them. In

his Shoreham Hill the bushes are detached skirmishers in advance of the main body of wood behind. Elsewhere he shows us merfolk that move according to the rules of fish- motion ; and their streamline is lovely.

But there are also here studies for the pictures in which this artist has again and again created a mystical beauty.

One recalls the vision of sleeping swans on a moonlit lake— to me the most haunting of modern pictures. It has been part of Mr. Sime's philosophy not to exhibit ; but three years ago the St. George's Gallery brought together a roomful of his larger works and many people then realized that we had a painter living with imagination like Blake's, but with a painter's gift that Blake never approached. In this exhibition of sketches ant e.rawings are included three or four oil studies of flowers, one of which I would choose to live with before any flower picture I ever saw. It is not naturalistic ; the blooms are detached, centring about a big Japanese lily-blossom ; but all the petals are more alive than nature, they seem to emit light.

In short, anyone who goes to St. George's Gallery will make acquaintance with an artist who does not limit himself to representation, even of armchairs and other such exciting objects, hitt whose mind produces strange and wonderful shapes ; yet who at the same time can observe and record

trivialities with a most genial humour. LEMON GREY.