THE GOITPIL GALLERY.
T FIB pictures by Mr. Walter Greaves should be seen by those who are interested in the problems of authorship which occupy students of the old masters. Not that this is their only interest, for many of them are beautiful in themselves, such as The Plumbago Factory, Battersea (30), Battersea (45), with its lovely pale green blue sky and water, and warm dark houses, and other river pieces and nocturnes. What will interest the student is the remarkable way in which Mr. Greaves managed to assimilate not only the general style of his master, Whistler, but also his touch and quality of paint. In numbers of the pic- tures it is possible to find portions which, if considered by themselves, seem to be the subtleties of the application of the paint to the canvas of Whistler himself, which are wont to be regarded as the handiwork of the master. We are set wondering what would be the result if some higher critic were to try to construct the true Whistler from his works if those works had been mixed up with the productions of his pupil and were scattered over the galleries of the world. Mr. Greaves had a real aptitude for painting, which is plainly shown in the picture, Boat Race Day, Hammersmith Bridge (68), painted at the age of sixteen, and before he knew Whistler. Here a natural talent seems to aim at many of the effects perfected by Whistler. The flat, pale tones and the absence of roundness given by light and shade, together with that sense of pattern which now we should call Japanese, are strongly marked. This exhibition raises the question whether it is not better for men of lesser talent to work in the school of a master than to try to steer an original CORM.
H. S.
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