ART
War Paintings at the National Gallery THE English are a nation of illustrators, a fact to which the last three generations of art-critics never succeeded in reconciling themselves. For us " art for art's sake," " significant form," &c., are far less potent and productive slogans than " every picture tells a story "; all our best artists, or nearly all (Rowlandson, Hogarth and frequently Sickest) are raconteurs. And as war, whatever its inconveniences, seldom fails to be a first-class story, we can always look forward with some degree of confidence to a recurrent Renaissance as soon as the guns go off.
However, one should not assume that the National Gallery has filled up with masterpieces over night. All that has happened is that a number of painters who have hitherto been wandering aimlessly between Fitzroy Street and ProvenCe, constantly haunted by the fear of being thought " literary," have at least been freed from their inhibitions and enabled to settle down and become, if not great artists, at least competent illustrators. The modern painters' pathetic appeal, once so pithily expressed by Mr. Piper as " Wanted, an object," has at length been answered. Future generations may not find that the present war has pro- duced many Goyas, but it seems at least quite probable that it may have revealed a considerable number of Callots.
Before discussing the Callon, it would be as well firmly to state that there are two exhibitors at the National Gallery who ale potentially of the Goya calibre—John Piper and Paul Nash. The former's " Coventry " in the big room is a staggering pro- duction, a crackling, molten tour-de-force which, I am convinced, could have been produced by no other living artist ; while the latter's big oil painting of the crashed bomber has all the calm and certainlY of really great art. The same artist's series of water-colours in the next room, despite the occasionally rather „tiresome persistence of the buff ground, may be said to have one for aeronautics what Degas did for ballet-dancing.
Of the Callots, the one with the most immediate appeal is
undoubtedly Mr. Ardizzone. On second thoughts, it may occur to the unbiassed observer that the robust old English tradition is here perhaps being carried on with rather too self-conscious a fruitiness, but in the little picture of the two girls in black called " East End," and in " Shelter Entrance," this artist does display a personal and true, if limited, vision. In the old-fashioned bird's-eye-view-Van der Meulen tradition of battle-piece Mr. Eurich scores another popular success with his " Air Battle at Portland," and it is no disparagement to say, both of this picture and his earlier "Dunkirk," now no longer here, that one would probably like them even more as steel engravings. Eric Ravilious has produced nothing new, but his faithful, controlled records of the various aspects of Naval warfare, personal and owing nothing to any past tradition of martial-art, are as refreshing and, what is more important, as informative as anything here. Frank Dobson is represented by a quite extraordinarily vivid water-colour of a fire at Bristol, which makes most of its neighbours appear very small beer; a not altogether welcome development as one of them is Vivian Pitchforth, who is rapidly becoming very good indeed. For the rest, the usual cohorts of over-life-sized chunky airmen by Mr. Kennington still stare down at one, gaining by contrast with Mr. Eves' muddy military notables, but not by contrast with anything else. Mr. Freedman's pictures get larger and larger, and Mr. Cundall gets more small figures into any given area of canvas than anyone else. Indeed, in his version of the French refugee-ships arriving at Falmouth, close inspection would pro- bably reveal that he had managed to include every journalist who claimed to have come out on the last boat, Auntie Genevieve Tabouis and all—an achievement which makes Tintoretto's "Last Judgment " look like a landscape with figures.
OSBERT LANCASTER.
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