Art
THE MEMORIAL EXHIBITION OF MR. W. P. DANA'S PICTURES.]
MR. WM. P. DANA, who died last month in London, and whose pictures are now being shown at the Gieves Galleries in Old Bond Street, went to sea before the mast on an American vessel some eighty-five years ago, as his cousin Richard Dana the writer had done before him.
More than fifty years ago Mr. Dana, then a painter of established repute in Paris, was consulted as to whether a boy called John Sargent showed enough talent to justify his becoming an art student—and advised that he did.
Mr. Dana, though he left. the sea early, never dissociated himself from it ; his repute, which half a century ago was considerable, both in America and Paris, rested on his painting of marine subjects ; and little else is shown in this memorial gathering of his works. The most important canvas repre- sents Dutch fishing boats creeping out to sea under a light air by moonlight ; the full spread sails make a fine pattern, though the colour here, as elsewhere, is sombre and lifeless. Then there are barges on the lower Thames, one strong
clumsy craft hanging in the wind. as she goes about, a picture racy of rough longshore. seafaring. Much more recent (only twenty years old) is the study in chalk, touched over with oil, of storm, at Hastings ; it shows a white chalky tumble of water reaching out three wave-lengths—that is one wave- length beyond the end of the pier. One seldom sees so exact a study of water in movement.
LEMON GREY.
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