Art
Miscellany SEARCH the galleries in and round Bond Street at the kesent Moment and you are unlikely to find any work 'of art of the first importance. YOu will, on the 'other find a singularly large Variety of paintings 'Whieh• will 'satisfy one Or another of the -possible aesthetic' 'cravings.. If you 'feel like being soothed and provided With an even level of pleasure Without any severe shoeks'elther way, gO to AgneW's: There You will see an adrnirable said Miscellaneous collection of diawings and water-coldurs ranging from the fifteenth century to the 'present daY. The Small group of old masters drawings is less distinguished than that representing the EngliSh eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most covetable are the Townes, particularly the sepia, Yilla Malini (114) and the coloured Ludlow Caitle (140); though I would' inyself be, well content to possess-Girtin's Roman Ruins (127), an unusually picturesque composition for that artist, with a combination of classical ruins copied from _Marco Ricci and Gothic ruins Which might be designed_ by Batty Langley. An exquisitely delicate Renoir sketch of two figures.(69) and a monumental and presumably late Degas (79) lead us to the contemporaries. Here Keith. Baynes-shoWs up to betfer advantage than with his oils, but Robert Darwin alone, in his two landscapes (38 and 44), seems to understand the full possibilities of water- colours as a medium.
Forain, at Tooth's, satisfies quite different appetites, and the exhibition should if possible be visited in a mood of hatred for humanity in general. It will then be found highly sympathetic, for there is 'no satirist more skilful or more concentrated than Forain. He is most completely at ease in scenes from the French law courts, which feature largely in the present exhibition, for here his satire finds ample excuse. He is less successful when he is less savage. In a peinture de moeurs, like Au skating (31), in which he is only commenting, there is none of the liveliness which Toulouse-Lautrec would have put into such a subject. When he is mainly interested in formal and not satirical problems, he is capable of breaking down almost completely.
Utrillo, whose paintings are on view at Wildenstein's, satisfies by his very direct renderings of Parisian and provincial scenes our liking for streets and white walls and trees.,! ,In his early works he did more than this and was very, nearly a great .landscape painter, but it is at any rate :satisfactory to see that he is abandoning the coloured postcard, crudity of his 1926 paintings, and two gouaches in the present exhibition ,(22 and 23) show that he can still produce good _things. In. the lower gallery at Wildenstein's are paintings by Mane-Katz, mainly vivid renderings of Jewish scenes, with some portraits, slightly aggressive by being over life size, and some subtly painted landscapes. .
At the Lefevre Gallery is to be seen .a good . crass-section of that . part of contemporary English painting .:which !is neither very advanced nor very. reactionary. ! A. superb early Sickert, Bathers, Dieppe (16), which shows a real under- standing of Impressionist audacity of composition ; two portraits by William Roberts (10 and . 12), _proving that mastery can be achieved. by sheer honesty of method and intention ; Evening and Cut Melons, by Frances Hodgkins (58 and 60), with effects depending on a subtle sensibility to colour ; . these are; some of the best examples in an exhibition which shows how varied even a fragment of the English school can be.
At the Mayor Gallery the.painfully realistic -coloured photo- graphs of Curtis Moffat show that death awaits photography just as much as painting when once it plunges down the primrose path of unreflecting imitation of nature. At the other extreme of the visual arts are Quentin Bell's Collages at the same gallery in which the artist has :adapted the methods invented by. the early Cubists in their experimental period, by which pieces of paper with patterns or lettering were incorporated into their painted compositions. . Instead of the rather austere effects to which this technique was originally applied Quentin Bell has aimed at discovering what can be done in a more purely decorative manner and in a much gayer key. His Collages are, in fact, witty and agreeable, rather than considered and mature.
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