ART
IN a few lines nothing can be said about the Albertina drawings at South Kensington which is neither superficial nor trite. There are five great collections of drawings in Europe, of which we are fortunate enough to possess one. Here in London for a few weeks before moving on to Leeds and Edinburgh, are 120 picked examples from another. Since twenty-two Diirers form the largest single group, let Ddrer's comment on painting suffice for this exhibition ; it has great joys indeed. Perhaps, however, one may take the opportunity to enquire whether London is also to be afforded a sight of the Viennese paintings which have been touring the capitals of western
Europe before they are finally shipped off to America, it is said for some three years.
* * • At the Whitechapel Art Gallery (tube to Aldgate East) is a centenary anthology of Pre-Raphaelites, smaller than the Birmingham exhibition of last year but balanced and comprehensive enough adequately to mark the occasion. Of especial interest, as a foil to the charged, hot-house, ivy-covered intensity of the first phase of the movement, is a group of ten studies for the Perseus series by Burne-Jones—at once a bridge to the aestheticism of the 'nineties and the surrealism of the 'twenties. * * At the St. George's Gallery Leonard Rosoman is holding his second one-man show. Two years ago we saw him still in thefl grip of the Sutherland influence which was running through the next generation like a prairie fire. Since then he has progressed, first to a free, distorted naturalism with something of Bonnard and Renoir in it, and now, more latterly, to a more formalised manner that perhaps owes something to Burra Colquhoun and Klee. What remains constant is Rosoman's rater whimsical humour and his delicately lush paint. He is one of those born painters incapable of putting a brush-stroke to canvas which is not felicitous and delightful. His sense of colour is exquisite and, if you have a sweet tooth, his candy pinks are a dream. Yet there is something elusive about these paintings, something detached, something which upon study does not quite fulfil one's expectations. The orientalised Victoriana, the slight eccentricities of vision, of humour, of drama, are not always strong enough to sustain the work, so that the formalisation remains a refinement at the decorative level. Much of course remains of the greatest interest, however, in works like The Tragedy and if we must still await that major, considered statement which will announce Rosoman's final maturity, he is certainly one of the younger painters who matter and who have to be watched.
* * * A natural feeling for his medium is shown by another young painter, Adrian Ryan at the Redfern. To an equally sweet colour he brings a greater weight of pigment and a French expressionist vision. Confidently and joyfully he has constructed some admirable pictures—I liked the big, simple Ray as much as any—but as yet he has added nothing, I think, to what Soutine told us years ago. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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