ART
London Exhibitions
WILLIAM Scon, whose pictures have appeared recently in ones and twos at mixed exhibitions and have been noticed by the eagle-eyed, is holding a one-man show at the Leger Gallery. He worked in France before the war, has a lively feeling for colour and obviously knows very well what he is about. His influences are the orthodox ones of the 'twenties and 'thirties, but his originality of vision makes him bear them with a decent grace. A personal view is that many of the pictures are too large for their content—so that human limbs, table-tops, background-walls and so on lack the interest per square inch that would carry the whole thing through to excitement. It is a respectable fault, and when the scale is right and the manner not too mannered he produces very pleasing pictures, as in Breton Woman, Still Life (No. To), Mary and Ivy Leaves.
Next door but one (or two), at 15 Old Bond Street, is an imposing ' show of one hundred and seventy-seven works given by artists and collectors for sale, on October 9th, in aid of the Red Cross. The range is wide—Matisse to Sir Frank Short, or in another direction W. G. Steggles to Orovida. Among the oils the Sickerts stand out, but Steer and C,onder, Nicholson and John are also respectably represented, and foreign artists have by no means been barred. There are for instance, things by Bauchant, Picasso and Segonzac. This is the best of several mixed exhibitions in London at present. A word of thanks should be passed to Miss Browse for the good hanging and to the printers for the beautifully printed, though war-time standard, catalogue. (Gauguin, however, is not spelt " Gaugain.")
The second edition of "Artists of Fame and Promise" at the Leicester Galleries shows Morland Lewis, Kenneth Martin, Claude Rogers, Mary Potter and others to advantage. With the best will in the world it is hard to recommend the drawing by Ford Madox Brown, good as it is to see it here. Four new gouaches by Frances Hodgkins, three of them with Corfe Castle as a background, are of great beauty. Smaller works that might be missed with subsequent !egret by a casual visitor are the water-colours by Rosemary Ellis and Kenneth Green.
The contemporary British paintings at the Lefevre include a large and recent Edward Wadsworth, Pastorale, Chailey, Sussex, that displays a huddle of derelict traction engines. It is well in the Wadsworth tradition of unremitting labour ; pleasurable if not, at this date, surprising. A highly successful flower piece by Ivon Hitchens and a landscape (with industrial appurtenances) by Geoffrey Tibble should not go unnoticed. But the whole exhibition is lowered and vaguely dated by an overplus of academic surrealism. Drawings by Georges Loukomski of architecture in Russia by Charles Cameron (fellow-countryman and contemporary of the Adam brothers) are of topographical interest.
Another mixed show at the Redfern Gallery indicates few dis- coveries, but no germ of decay. Constable and Rouault, Nevinson and Passmore are on the boundaries ; John Tunnard and Leslie Hurry two outposts.
Two painters, Henryk Gotlib and Merck Zulawski, and a sculptor, Tadeusz Koper, show together at Agnew's. Gotlib is the most sensitive, and the most obviously influenced. Sometimes his colour is as thoughtful and as pleasing, though not as original, as Bonnard's. His draped forms are reminiscent of Munch. He is a painter of some interest. Zulawski's Evening—Warwick Avenue, shows a quiet and appreciative reaction to local conditions ; but in general he leans too often on both respectability and rhetoric.
JOHN PIPER.
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