English Painting. By R. H. Wilenski. (Faber. 30s.)
An Outline of English Painting. By R. H. Wilenski. (Faber.
2s.)
A Short Account of British Painting. By Charles Johnson.
(Bell. 3s. 6d.)
British Painting. By C. H. Collins-Baker and M. R. James. (Medici Society. 30s.) MR. WILENSKI has produced two books about English painting. The larger of them has many of the outward and visible signs of grace. Its plates are many, well chosen, clearly repro- duced, though somewhat obscurely arranged. The bio- graphies are separated from the analyses of the paintings and are often clear and relevant. And yet Mr. Wilenski is not -really writing about English painting at all. He is pursuing
his old crusade on his old hobby-horse, now rather broken- winded. Mr. Wilenski's great grievance is that the public at the present day, instead of buying works by the " right
kind " of modern artist, either buys old masters or, almost worse, modern works which are merely pastiches of them.
This he regards as the result of a widespread conspiracy. In the case of sculpture it is due to a league between the Academicians and the classical professors, who decided that Greek art is the only art. In the case of painting it seems to be due to a league between the dealers and the upper classes who have decided to stifle all progressive art, and it is now particularly against them that Mr. Wilenski's grape-shot is directed. Naturally these opinions come between the writer and his subject, and it is enough, for instance, that Claude's paintings should have been bought by the English nobility in the eighteenth century for Mr. Wilenski to condemn them as furniture pieces." Mr. Wilenski's general proposition— itself not unconnected with his principal grievance—is that ancient painting can only be rightly understood by means of the study of modern painting, a principle which the author is often forced to abandon when it comes to the point, and which has little success when he does apply it, as in his comparison between Gainsborough and McEvoy.
The first chapters of Mr. Wilenski's book are devoted to one of his many Good Deeds. He has some Amazing Revelations to make about the way in which the British public has been bamboozled over English art in the mediaeval and Tudor periods. He delivers a vigorous attack on those scholars (we are not allowed even to know their names) who pretend to give a complete history of the painting of the period, and, by ignoring some of the evidence and always assuming that every hypothesis is necessarily wrong, he reaches the great conclusion that nothing worth knowing is known about English mediaeval and Tudor painting. Practically all sur- viving mediaeval paintings are disallowed as evidence on the grounds that they have been repainted, but in the later parts of the book it never seems to occur to Mr. Wilenski to enquire whether the same disaster has not overtaken the Gainsboroughs and Reynolds of which he speaks with such confidence.
In his Short Account of British Painting, Mr. Johnson displays all the qualities which are lacking in Mr. Wilenski's book : sound, unpretentious knowledge, balanced judgement and a keen sense of keeping to the point. It is a book which will not often startle the reader by novelty of opinion, but which will lead him gently through the history of English painting, pointing out clearly and simply the salient qualities of each artist. Only towards the end of the book does Mr. Johnson ever get excited, particularly over Turner, for whom he puts up an enthusiastic and well-reasoned defence.
If the exhibition of English art at Burlington House had done nothing more than serve as the excuse for the publication of Mr. Collins-Baker's and Dr. James' book it would have justified its existence. Dr. James, in speaking of mediaeval art, and Mr. Collins-Baker, in carrying on the story from Tudor times till the present century, have pursued similar methods. They have collected together into convenient form all the available evidence about the more obscure periods and all the most important evidence for the periods about which more is known. This has been achieved partly by a careful study of material already existing in scattered articles and pamphlets, but also by considerable original research, the results Of which appear in the extensive lists of works to which the authors refer in the text. It appears also in the illustrations, of which it will be enough to- say that about half the paintings by Reynolds and Gainsborongh illustrated in the book have never been reproduced before. Nor does this mean that Mr. Collins- Baker has gone out of his way to choose obscure examples. On the contrary, he seems to have aimed only at giving the most representative group possible. Like most scholarly histories, the present work does not make light reading, but as a contribution to a serious knowledge of English painting it is of the first importance. In fact, there is almost nothing to regret about it except its few coloured plates, which are in merit much below, its half-tone illustrations.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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