ART
At the National Gallery
A Whistler and Early Twentieth-Century Oils supplies a middl distance for the earlier show of British Painting Since Whistler but it is not so large or so well-balanced, and it has seriou gaps. Gilman, Gore and others of the Camden Town Group had not stopped painting in the early twentieth century, though they might have done for all this show tells us. Conder is under- represented and so is Shannon, and in general there are n enough ideas and discoveries. But the show is worth while fo the Sickens and the Steers. The blues and golds of Sicken' Horses of St. Mark's, painted in 1901, are unforgettable, and th Front at Brighton (second version of a famous work) seems contain half the experiences of an age. 1906 was about th year when Steer first realised the English landscape as a yin region of wildness and wet, and the young joys of his experienc are registered in the Shropshire landscapes Near Ludlow and The Valley of the Terne. The nearest 'things to surprises are the small Italianate Sims called Epilogue and the Gwen John Self-Portrait.
In another room the show of Six Water-colour Painters 0 Today is bright and lively. Twenty-four works by Paul Nas show him developing through as many years and show how has always used water-colour to draw with rather than to Pa with, and what a good thing (for him) that is to do. A monster a haystack by moonlight, a grotto, a blue pool—a lot of his " objects " are here. The Empty Room (037) begins to like a stray. His work explored the most profitable alleys surrealism long before it was called surrealism, and the acadenn main street only diverted him. John Nash and David Jon show two very different and very good ways of oniamentin paper—John Nash with precise fragments, David Jones emotional ones. Ethel Walker's single figures of the nervous and the pale colour are as fresh as ever, but the bigger fi groups look somehow too worthy: like studies, or echoes., achievement. Edna Clarke Hall is a spasmodic genius. 11 flowers and children are always what is called (too rudely) lob but only sometimes are they felt as well as seen. The cats! says : " Is well known for her many series of illustrations Wuthering Heights." She is rightly so, and there are reflect' of them here. Frances Hodgkins fills the bill. She u astonishing colours that astonish more as you look at th because they grow real, and forms that are sizzless because the/ are the only right size. Ten of her works are not enough—though
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