THE LOVAT FRASER MEMORIAL EXHIBITION.
" Yet once more, oh, ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere . . ."
PERHAPS the most immediate thought of the visitor to the Leicester Galleries is this regret of Milton's that Lycidas should have left no peer.
Here are three rooms, full of work that is throbbingly alive, the result of Mr. Levet Fraser's less than three years of pro- ductivity. Everywhere is the note of promise. If we consider the dates of his designs and drawings, we find that they speak everywhere of development and of a mind and faculties pushing out on every side. Mr. Lovat Fraser leaves many followers and disciples, but he has only been able to lead them over a small part of the road which he was traversing. Any criticism that we may make of his work as it stands is at once answered by biographical facts. We have only to remember he was under thirty-one when ho did such or such piece of work, and that from the age of twenty-four to twenty-seven he was in the Army. We may say here or there that M. Leon Bakst would have put more richness into this ; Mr. Albert Rutherston would have drawn this better ; here Mr. Gordon Craig would have gripped the stage coup d'ceil more resolutely. But such comments would be not so m.uch criticism as expressions of impatience. Mr. Lovat Fraser lacked only the ripening and strengthening which time was bringing.
The general first impression at the Leicester Galleries—where his water-colours, designs for stage costumes and theatrical models and textiles arc displayed—is one of freshness and gaiety. Everywhere there is brilliant colour and a fantastic exaggeration of notion married to as fantastic a realism. Everything is spontaneous and expresses an extraordinary capacity for enjoy- ment and gaiety. But when we look a little closer we shall find that all this is the flower of a deep-rooted spirit. The humour is not the humour of frivolity, but the kind laughter which is the final bloom that graces a reflective turn of mind when it is united with a sense of proportion.
If we want evidence of seriousness wo can turn to Nos. 75 and 77, two beautiful designs for Greek dresses, one for Ulysses with a great plumed helmet and " a tragic dress " of purple and deep magenta. Or, if we take satire as evidence of reflection and a critical mind, there is the Mrs. Peachum (153), with whom we are familiar, at the Lyric ; (71) Mrs. Malaprop, of The Rirals ; (113) " Clara and Young " and " Lady Wish- forth " in Congreve's Way of the World.
Lately, Mr. Lovat Fraser had taken to highly imaginative work, for instance, the design for " A Strange Shape " for the masque in The Tempest (173), or that for "An African Fairy" (176) from Mr. de la Mare's Crossing. The latter shows a wonderful negro warrior holding a spear and wearing a richly decorated, towelled leopard skin, and with a fantastic head- dress of orange ostrich plumes. Or, again, there is the strange green Burmese figure of Klesh, from Lord Dunsany's play (179).
Directly we begin any attentive study of Mr. Levet Fraser's work we begin to notice his curious power of symbolic suggestion, the result, I suppose, partly of his association with Mr. Gordon Craig. By his easy employment of this method he seems to me to justify the apparently rather anomalous position of the illustrator, the artist whose subject, down to the very feeling which it should evoke in the onlooker, is specified for him, But Mr. Lovat Fraser's art always had a certain affinity with that of acting, in that it was so often an interpretative art. His sensibility was very great. He easily caught the half- expressed notion, the struggling thought, and at once put his own expressive vehicle at its service. He easily comprehended it and was ready almost affectionately to give it utterance. This quality is very well exemplified in his charming illustrations to Nursery Rhymes (published by Messrs. Jack). We can see it reflected in the minds of children if we show them the book. Children are, of course, exceptionally sensitive to symbolism, and seem to react instinctively to this book, poring over it for very much longer than they do over most picture-books.
'rite public should be most grateful to those who arranged the Leicester Galleries Exhibition, for enough of Mr. Lovat Fraser's work has been collected to enable the younger men w ho will, we hope, be duly influenced to see something of every side of his achievements. And here there emerges one consolatory fact. There was something in Mr. Lovat Fraser's personality and in the obvious good humour and honest intention of his work which made it at once accepted. He seems to have Leen that phoenix, an artist without a grain of ill-temper and
ithout enemies. Therefore nothing that he did give us is likely to be wasted, for in his case there was no prejudice and no opposition to meet, but only a willing receptivity. TARN.
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