ART.
THE NEW GALLERY.
IT has often been the case of late years that an Exhibition has owed its chief attraction and distinction to the works of Mr. Sargent. This is true of the present collection of pictures at the New Gallery. It is not brilliant portraits of extraordinary cleverness that make an impression this time ; indeed, we might say that all of the five moderate-sized canvases shown here are the work of Mr. Sargent in his capacity of artist rather than of virtuoso. True admirers of the work of this remarkable man have sometimes to regret that he should too often choose to dazzle and astonish us. Ornate ladies, Dukes and Duchesses, or members of the haute finance may bring out the painter's wonderful command over his material, but they do not always give him an opportunity for showing his finest and most artistic qualities. Hence he has sustained some wrong, people having declared that he was remorseless In vision, and that only saints should sit to him, inasmuch as his penetration shakes the walls of identity only to reveal Hyde, Jekyll remaining unrecorded. This view of Mr. Sargent is only partly true; and in his picture of Padre Albera (No. 98) we can hail not only the consummate artist, but the interpreter of souls. The Padre is sitting in his little bedroom at his table strewn with wild flowers. He is evidently a botanist, and his gentle and spiritual face looks up at us detached and aloof from the litter of bedclothes and cassocks by which he is surrounded. When we have felt the charm of the personality, we can turn our attention to the extraordinary art which reveals it. We can note the harmony of the different blacks, and the warm colour of the wood of the end of the bed which carries on the flesh colour. We can admire, too, the way in which prominences emerge from shadow and catch the light, and in so doing reveal the structure, as in the case of the folds of the black coat on the shoulder. Of great technical mastery and insight into the living form is the sketch of Seymour Lucas, Esq., B.A. (No. 134). Brilliant light is opposed to dark without hardness, and the construction of the head shows the hand of a master. Quite different is Mr. Sargent's Syrian Study (No. 82). Here we have the painting of light in its most brilliant form. It is hard to imagine that the effect of luminosity could be pushed much further. Out of a tangle of touches emerges a flock of goats under a wall, the full blaze of the sunshine flooding the picture.
May we not hope that Mr. Sargent will devote more of his time to work of the kind he shows in the present Exhibition, and not bind his great powers too closely to commissioned portraits? The position of the artist is assured, and his fame acknowledged everywhere. To paint the great and the rich under the conditions of portraiture is to submit to limitations. To be expected to dazzle and surprise, although it may stimulate, may also deaden :—
" Blown harshly keeps the trumpet still its golden cry,
Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth."
Of the so-called ideal pictures in the present Exhibition the less said the better. Some painters are so much concerned with the soul that they forget the body. Sir Philip Burns- Jones's Cupid (No. 73) is to be commiserated on the shape of his arms and chest, for in no circumstances could such muscles do the work expected of them. Why Mr. Wontner's very solid lady should be supposed to be "in the Garden of Dreams" (No. 115) it is hard to tell. She appears to be a descendant of those uninteresting and elaborately draped persons whom Leighton used to paint, and whom there seems no good reason to perpetuate. At the same time, the picture is better than that of another lady of the same description hard by, who is clearly more fitted for the inside of a cigar-box than for the walls of a serious Exhibition. Perhaps the most distressing picture here is the portrait exhibited by Professor H. von Herkomer, C.V.O., R.A. (No. 216). The canvas is very large and tall, and the lady sits at the bottom of it. The arrange- ment has something to recommend it, because the lady is clad in eye-destroying blue; and had she filled the upper part of the picture, instead of the dark background, as well as the lower, the result would have been too terrible.
Mr. Brangwyn has evidently enjoyed his paint and revelled in its application in A Wine Shop (No. 167), and this is certainly to the good, for no picture can ever be satisfactory without evidence that the painter liked his material. Beyond this enjoyment there is not much to interest us in the work, which partakes largely of the nature of a still-life study, in which the pumpkins and onions are more interesting than the figures.
Mr. Hornel also paints with evident enjoyment in his own peculiar manner. In Burning Leaves (No. 199) we have a group of children's heads touched with fine feeling and true romance. The picture will no doubt be a stumbling-block to those who want to know exactly what is happening, and whose outlook upon Nature is that of a photographic lens. Those who can appreciate an unusual harmony of colour and refined drawing and modelling will enjoy the children's faces which emerge from the illusive shadows of the wood behind which the moon is rising. Another instance of sensitive and refined drawing is Mrs. Marianne Stokes's Madonna and Child (No. 225), The child and also the mother's hand are drawn with exquisite delicacy, and the colour harmony of the work is a very beautiful one, Mr, -Hughes-Stanton has painted an ambitions work in
his Sand Dunes (No. 221). There is a true realisation of space and air in the picture, and the disposition of the masses of light and dark is most skilfully managed. Mr. Bernard Gribble's sea piece, Drake's Island, Plymouth (No. 31), seems deserving of a better place, especially when we consider how many good positions have been reserved for vulgar and incompetent works which deface the Exhibition. Mr. Gribble's picture is full of light and vibrating colour, and he has not been afraid to make his composition a logical and rhythmic structure. The beautiful painting of the sea and sky and of the ship advancing under sail makes the work one of singular charm.
Mr. Alfred Parsons sends a picture, Flowers : March (No. 86), which seems like a welcome return to his older and broader manner. The rendering of form has all the accuracy without the pettiness of his later work, and the colour of the sky is very beautiful. Here is a piece of simple, natural work which, if a little un- inspired, is at least unaffected. Though entirely different in method, Mr. Logsdail's Trinity Quadrangle, Cambridge (No. 48), also has this unaffected quality, and but for a slight discord in the red of the geraniums the picture would have been a complete success. Mr. Tuke in his Signallers (No. 78) shows a brilliant little sketch of the deck of a ship. The work has not been carried far enough to lose the spontaneous feeling of moving light and colour. The life is here which is shown in a sketch, and which so often does not survive in a
Previous page
