ART
" ART is either a plagiarist of a revolutionist," said Gauguin. There are at the moment exceptional opportunities for studying afresh the work of three English painters who were considered revolutionaries in their own land, but who, swept along in the wake of the Parisian whirlwind, undertook their fair share of plagiarism. Sicken, of course, is firmly entrenched in the history books as the link between French and English Impressionism and consequently, by definition, is assigned a minor and subsidiary role in European art. But he was also a born painter. He held the respect of other painters in his youth, in his prime and in his old age. Now, five years after his death, his standing is probably higher than ever. Indeed, more wall-space in the London galleries seems to be given to Sicken this month than any other two or three painted together. Apart from the Tate, there are large and representative exhibitions at the Mayor Gallery, the da Vinci Gallery and at Messrs. Agnew's—the latter from the Emmons collection. Personally, I am allergic to the later decorations. Sickert's real contribution to posterity, I am sure, lies in his feeling for the poetry of the fading light of evening, the glimmer of the dusk, the evanescent moment. Inside in Camden Town, out- side in Venice and Dieppe, he caught it and held it with an unerring tonality, rich sonority of colour and a sensuous delicacy of paint.
So sure and professional a painter could turn anything into a picture ; the technique was ancillary. For Nevinson, however, as revealed by the memorial exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, technique was a sheet-anchor. For a short period the catalyst of war fused his own emotional responses to his surroundings with the superficial mannerisms of Cubism which he borrowed, and he produced pictures which, if derivative, were nevertheless grimly authentic expressions of the time. But Nevinson's plagiarism only served to cover up his own uncertainties, and when the formula was discarded one realises all too dearly just how unsure he was.
The third English eclectic is Christopher Wood, a large exhibition of whose work is to be seen at the Redfern Gallery. Like Nevinson, he was an erratic romantic to whom technique was important ; like Sicken, he was a born painter. Unlike either, he promised to progress from the ranks of the plagiarists into the ranks of the revolutionaries. What-might-have-been has played a large part in the Kit Wood legend, but even in the last short years he assured himself of a lasting place in English art. His subjects may have been French, the manner Parisian, but his pictures remain as English as a poem by Rupert Brooke or a song by Purcell. His sweet, clear colour, his gentle, childlike lyricism, even his feeling for boats and the sea,
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