27 AUGUST 1927, Page 11

Art

[THE SUMMER SALON.]

AT the Redfern Gallery, 27 Old Bond Street, the Summer Salon will be open till the end of September, admission free. It is small, but contains representative examples of some forty artists. Sir William Orpen and Mr. Augustus John show their interest in the venture by sending each of them an early drawing (and a lovely thing Mr. John's is) : but substantially this is an intelligently made selection of very modern art. One could contemplate the idea of living in the room with almost any of the paintings, and this is much to say about a collection of up-to-date work. Some would even be very pleasant to own : for instance, Orovida's water-colour study of two Siamese cats, which extracts a charming pattern from the queer profile of their bodies. Mr. Stanley Grimm's large painting which he calls simply " Flowers " is not a naturalistic rendering, but the thing in a room would have something like the decorative value of a great vase full of strongly coloured blossoms, and there is delicacy as well as brilliance in it. Mr. John Nash's oil painting of "The Farm Carts" and Mr. Ethelbert White's water colour of " The Barn " achieve curiously similar results with their differing mediums : light airy spaces, filled with luminous colour. Mr. Paul Nash has also a water colour. of Dymchurch Bay, which is a curious application of Cubism to the treatment of light and cloud shadow over a great stretch of rolling country.

Mr. Tom Nash, who has nothing in common with his two namesakes but a great deal with Mr. Stanley Spencer, is repre- sented by two pictures. His " Angels Appearing to the Shepherds " illustrates well the tendency of modern painteis to a primitive simplicity of statement, which troubles no More about perspective and the like than did the Middle Age craftsmen.

Miss Clara Klinghoffer is definitely one of the most talented among these exhibitors. Her study of a Javanese girl has both solidity and animation, as well as subtlety of colour : but probably more characteristic are the drawing (called Figure Study ") and the other in oil (called simply " Study ") which shows the sumptuous figure of a young woman with the nape of her neck contrasting against her hair and some rich stuff of the gown. One seemed to feel here the influence of Segonzac or Utrillo in the massive treatment and strong colour ; just as Mr. Ian Macnab's very capable picture of French washerwomen sends the mind instantly to Marchand. Yet Miss Klinghoffer's is certainly not mere derivative work ; Mr. Mienab does not yet convince one that he is seeing things entirely fcir himself.

It was curious to -observe how old-fashioned Mr. de Carteret's admirable little panel " Storm in Sussex " looked ; In the

i nineties, its breadth of treatment would have made it ultra- modern. LEMON GREY.