Art
Laura Knight, Nevinson, and Others
THE three exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries provide considerable interest and variety. Dame Laura Knight is represented by a series of new water-colours and studies, mainly of circus types and ballet and fair subjects to which are added, as might be expected, a few Cornish landscapes. Dame Laura Knight is always at her best when she leaves the elaborate picture for the simpler record which is a statement of facts of general interest, and in these water-colours and studies her extremely competent technical ability pulls its Tull 'weight. Blackpool, Three Trick Riders, Ginger Beer Stall, Corps de Ballet and Hampstead Heath are excellent examples of the 'kind of thing which Dante Laura Knight can do supremely well.
Mr. ,C. R. W. Nevinson's water colours are worth close consideration. As an artist he is consummately ingenious and hais :fortunate enough to possess a remarkably selective mind.... No living artist is able to express so succinctly the feeling. of modern life, the curious individual character of great .cities either in repose or pulsating with energy. Deep .within him, too, there remains that ineradicable affection for the' earth' whieh is part of the inheritance of all those who cotnebfkaglistreOuntry stock. In the present exhibition From- Adelphi,Terraec, The Changing City, New York from Hoboken, Les Bibliophiles, London Fug from the Savoy and Notre Dane from Quai des Grand Augustin illustrate Mr. Nevinson's flair for the interpretation of cities. His love of the quiet beauty of England, to which he might well give freer rein, is brilliantly stated in Sow in Derbyshire, Moonrise, Kentish Copses and Landscape on the Downs. But these are not the end of Mr. Nevinson's variety. In a series of glowing watercolours, we find him as the interpreter of the canals and lagoons of Venice. Here, too, he is just as sure, just as selective, and just as happy.
The third exhibition is one of English oil paintings which range from Battersea Reach, by the late Walter Greaves, to contemporary works. Among the more interesting pictures are Battersea Reach, by J. D. Innes, The Alhambra, by Spencer Gore, Grand Rue, Dieppe, by Richard Sickert, Chiswick, by Lucien Pissarro, anti Berries and Laurel, by Miss Frances Hodgkins.
DAVID FINCITAM.
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