ART
Upon what principle does the picture-going public base a visit to any particular exhibition? Is it a monthly or fortnightly or weekly routine, a matter of habit only, or is it a highly selective process? Does the same psychological twist which makes a theatre audience leave by the same doors through which it variously entered, here operate to return people again and again to one Particular gallery, or are there adventurous souls who tramp Bond Street in addition to the interminable rooms of the societies' exhibitions and the galleries of the multiple store? These and similar questions obtrude them- selves as one studies the list of current shows. Excluding the national collections and tangential displays of arts and crafts, I estimate that the Londoner is confronted, at any given moment, with some thirty to forty exhibitions of painting and sculpture. Since some of these last no more than a week, and the great majority for less than a month, who, one wonders, save the professional critic and a handful of others, can afford the time fully to survey so profuse an array? Yet, though it would be idle to pretend that all these exhibitions are of equal aesthetic consequence, there are often exciting dis- coveries to be made if we extend our usual round.
Space forbids reference to more than a few of these multitudinous shows. I can recommend a visit to the Leger Galleries, where there is a lively collection of (more or less) contemporary watercolours and gouaches, including an admirable Sickert drawing of the Venice period, two rather impressive pictures by Jankel Adler, and a host of interesting things from John Minton, Ceri Richards, Anna Meyerson, Eileen Agar, Michael Rothenstein, Charles Murray and many others. Another mixed show is to be seen at Messrs. Heal's- few big names, but some very pleasant works. Clifford Frith's blue landscape' at night is full of tricks, but not without a quality of its own ; William Scott's still-life is as excellent as usual ; Vera Brookman's Windibanks Farm suggests that she would be an acquisition to any future topographical teams ;' Constance Morton's restrained and pearly4Figure on a Bed is very accomplished. Heal's are also showing a selection of their early English watercolours, from Girtin to Greenaway (Kate) as are the Fine Art Society in their autumn exhibition. I confess I was unable myself to appreciate the large group here of pictures by John White Abbott, but there are others of great charm and beauty by Palmer, Francis Towne, Bon- nington, Cotman and dear old Edward Lear.
The Anglo-French Art Centre are showing recent paintings by Francois Desnoyer who, with rich primary colours and an un- systematic cubism, produces a sort of angular Fauvism which contrives to look just a trifle passé. Llewellyn Petley-Jones at the St. George's Gallery slims a free and natural 'talent which is as yet not fully formed. Eileen Mayo, Muriel Pemberton and Hadley Rowe are to be seen at Messrs. Batsford's—Mr. Rowe, in particular, showing watercolours of an engaging fluency and ease. At the R.B.A. Galleries in Suffolk Street, in addition to the ninety-ninth exhibition of those refcrmed revolutionaries, the New English Art Club—a quiet and competent show in their now accepted manner— may be found a selection of " Portraits of an Industry," an exhibition sponsored by the Central Institute of Art and Design of some of the work used by Imperial Chemical Industries in their advertising. It may be questioned whether the reproduction by half-tone of an oil painting in colour is the most happy way of using the artist in this field—Mr. McKnight Kauffer or Mr. Eric Fraser or Mr. Barnett Freedman, for example, have produced work of equal value by methods more suitable for reproduction—but for the general policy here revealed there can be nothing but praise.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
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