William Rothenstein
ROTHENSTEIN, as I have before had occasion to say, adds to the roles of painter and professor that of liaison officer for art with the eminent in literature, science, politics and society, using as introduction to the accessible or the recluse his practice of portrait drawing. Of this amiable activity his volumes, now three in number, are the record. A wit, a good talker, and ample correspondent himself, he has provoked an exchange from his sitters ; he has instigated friendly celebra- tions of genius and merit ; he has endeavoured, with occasional success, in the stodgily indifferent world of our rulers, educa- tion-mongers and wealthy Philistines, to obtain public employment for painters. A sympathetic observer of the human comedy and sedulous mourner over its tragic frustra- tions, he is too tolerant of susceptibilities to give full play to his native verve in description of character or criticism of current artistic follies. There is also some excess of polite letters from flattered recipients of encouragement, but there is enough report and speech of those intimately known and cordially admired to carry such top-hamper. An example of genuinely revealing letters is one from the young Stanley Spencer, and when a " Max " or a Yeats speaks the page lights up with a flash.
It would be temptingly easy for a reviewer to fill his space with quotation of such passages, but I will deny myself that indulgence so as to deal with another strain which runs through the book, one personal to the writer, the plaint of an imperfectly appreciated painter who has had few commissions and no fervid championship from either artists or critics. What are the reasons, good or bad, for this neglect?
So far as popular recognition goes, Rothenstein has fallen between two stools. From intelligible scruples he has shied away from candidature for the Royal Academy. The loss to that institution of his liberal intelligence and driving power has been even greater than that to his own interests. On the other side he has been left stranded by the fashionable currents in painting, and has had to forgo any attention from the literary band of critics who have followed so obediently the boycotts set up by Roger Fry. Fry had solicited Rothen- stein's support and detachment from old associates, but failed to secure it. He was written off as " not an artist," and an effective silence followed. A break in his friendship with Tonks, and a chilling. in relations with others of those old associates, along with a retirement to the Cotswolds, increased his isolation.
In spite of all this Rothenstein is secure of a place among the artists of his time, and I will endeavour to define it.
The masters of painting fall into two main groups. There are those who have in fullest measure the God-like power of invention ; with such comm- and in memory of the human structure in its varying postures and actions that they are free from constant reference to the fixed model and can fling those figures into effective combination and imposing design. We have no complete example of such powers among living painters, but in black-and-white satirical drawing is the shining genius of David Low.
The second group is 'that of painters who are dependent on the stationary model and' actual scene for figure, portrait, landscape or still-life. Their virtue is to distil from imme- diate nature an intermediate image, a translation of form, tone and colour ; peculiarly, in modern art, of the beauty which these last two yield when their fusion in aerial " values " is subtly seen. Of this ravishing art Wilson Steer is our lead- ing master, one whose high quality has a range in figure and landscape equalled by no contemporary, English or foreign.
By these high standards how are we to measure Rothen- stein? In the first group he does not compete; he depends on the actual scene or person present. As a brilliant youth he took his fling in care-free experiments, Whistlerian or other, and returned to London from Paris with the dazzle about him of what " Max " described as " gaucheries on the Rive gauche" ; a figure in Phil May's lampoon, The Parson and the Painter. But he quickly said goodbye to skittishness, determining, like Queen Victoria, to be " good." This meant, in painting, a serious application pushed beyond the easy limits of the sketch. There was an intermediate period, before conscience became too stiffening, of domestic scenes, pleasing in colour and fluent in paint. He also struck an original vein, too soon abandoned, of rabbinical groups in Whitechapel. But as time went on conscience became the enemy of impulse and charm: paint was overworked into heaviness and colour chilled. Aware, doubtless, of this, Rothenstein left London for Gloucestershire, and sought for a recovery of freshness in the practice of landscape. His painting has certainly gained in texture and general lightening from this experience, renewed in later years.
But in exhibitions we have seen too many large, exact por- traits of trees and buildings with no pictorial motive (see the church opposite p. 204), and marred by undigested greens. On the other hand, last year's exhibition at the Leicester Galleries contained an excellent painting, oddly enough in the line which Rothenstein gently reproaches Tonks and Steer for cultivating, that of the pretty girl sitting nude before her mirror, thorough in modelling, lucid in paint, and right in colour. I do not forget, in the landscape count, an impres- sive early design of a Bradford quarry, or certain War scenes, with emotion in their colour.
Over and above these and other successes in paint there is enough, and more than enough, for fame in the portrait
drawings. Rothenstein has not the absolute measuring eye of
a Muirhead Bone nor the eagle-swift synopsis of an Augustus John. He has come to establish or correct the place and size
of features by use of a scale attached to his drawing-board,
but he has not capitulated to the cameras, like Sicken, who is now content if he can preserve the happy quality of his paint, unvexed by research of drawing. The reward of the more patient artist is to be seen in heads like those of John and Lord Crawford in this volume, subtle in expression as well as secure in structure. His series of such portraits is a national gallery of his time, and their author will have his perpetual place with the draughtsman-historians of English faces from Holbein to Downrnan and Dighton, and in spirit with that worshipper of English greatness in an earlier genera-
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