ART.
THE INTERNATIONAL AT THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. A merest. of the International Society would certainly be an interesting thing, but the justification of the Society must be the real representation of Continental artists. The present Exhibition is far too much a gathering together of samples of the ordinary run of present-day art, such as we find at the Academy, the New English Art Club, and elsewhere. The trouble, too, is that so many of the artiste have sent their best pictures to the other Galleries, so that it is impossible not to be haunted by the feeling that this is a collection of remainders. We look in vain for anything remarkable in the way of foreign art ; the contribution to the Gallery of artists other than English is small in quantity and poor in quality.
Mrs. Swymierton always raises hopes, for her work is in- variably interesting, but in her large portrait group, July (No. 45), she is not at her beat. We are tempted to feel that the after- thought which added the upper part to the canvas was not a happy one, and only increases the confusion of the composition. The standing figure of the little girl in white is beautifully painted and shines with light and colour, but she attracts us in spite of her surroundings, which is a fatal defect in a picture that should be a whole. Mr. McEvoy sets himself out to attract rich and gaily attired sitters with all the glitter of virtuosity and, the brightest colours of the paint-box. Mere daylight is not enough for him or his ladies, and coloured lights are turned on, as in the portrait of Mrs. B. McCalmont and Daughter (No. 32), while the same sort of adornment in greater or leas degree is em- ployed in Lady Tredegar (No. 23) and the group of water-colour portraits (Nos. 187, 189, and 193). Of course these works aro very clever and show great sensitiveness of temperament, but in them all there is a latent vulgarity, which makes us remember with regret the beautiful things the painter used to do before he began exploiting the fashionable world. There are a number of portraits here in which painter and sitter seem to conspire together to produce terrible results. Mr. Ranken's Mrs. Griffiths and Children (No. 98) and Countess 'Beauchamp (No. 198) are among the most prominent examples, and make one fly for comfort to so honest a thing as Mr. Wyn George's slight study of a child's head in paetel (No. 202). Mr. T. Derrick's Carnival (No. 279) is charming for its neatness of drawing and delicious sense of movement. It is so simplified that each dancing figure is expressed as an individual, but so rhythmic that they are all in harmony.
Perhaps the wisest thing for the visitor in search of art, and not for fashions in paint, would be to stay chiefly in the passage where the water-colours and drawings are hung, for there he will find many pleasant unobtrusive things. Mr. P. Lancaster's Cornfield (No. 425) and Mr. Holding's In the Arun V alley (No. 494) are both charming in their clear and simple way of using water- colour founded on the great tradition of that art ; and Miss Stella Langdale's small colour etchings (Nos. 414, 418, 419) are all good, especially the flint, which is of a Venetian canal. In other places, too, it is possible hero and there to find things worth looking at, like Mr. Sherringham's decorative Japanese Anemones (No. 339), Mr. Witcombe's Morning (No. 345), and Kr. C. A. Hunt's In Southern Italy (No. 392). H. S.
Previous page
