ART.
THE ACADEMY.
A BATTLE is being fought in the world of painters, and on one side are ranged the forces of Design and on the other those of Representation. Design uses the weapon of simplification, alike of form, light and shade, and colour. Representation, in its pursuit of natural effects, has to accept the complication. of Nature instead of reducing the intricate material world' to the subordinate position of the ordered parts of a design created by the aesthetic faculty of the painter. The naturalist, with astonishing executive skill, constructs a work which delights by its power of recalling beautiful aspects of the world about us rather than the production of a new beauty. One brings back again an emotion already felt, the other kindles the fire of a fresh creation.
This year, for the first time, the two schools join issue in the rooms of the Academy, for in the last room are hung many works which try, even if not successfully, to use aesthetic design as the chief means of expression. The general effect may be glaring even to violence, the colour crude and the form ungainly, and simplicity may degenerate into baldness, birt the strong protest of these pictures is against methods of the recent times when naturalism was rampant and led directly away from the greatest painting of the past. Go to the rooms: of the National Gallery where hang the pictures of the Renais- sance, Early or Late, and these, the masterpieces, show that the enormous impression they make on our emotions is not produced by realism, but by creative design. So if most of the works in Gallery No. 11 of the Academy make us say " Le dessin est sec, et la couleur mauvaise, et co n'est pas ainsi que point Paul Veronese," nevertheless these painters are trying to find the promised land; and are not merely recording stylistically, scientifically, or prettily the facts of the visible world about us.
In the room which has just been mentioned is a fine portrait sketch by Mr. John of. Mr. Bernard Shaw (675), well character- ized without caricature and highly agreeable in colour ; the same painter's portrait Viva (639), is remarkable chiefly for its exquisite tone of pink in the dress. Sir William Orpen's portraits are chiefly disappointments : the same red tone of leathery flesh against black backgrounds, which one has hoped so often in the past to be merely a passing phase is here again in full force, just as the same heavy-handed virtuosity appears in the clothes of the sitters. Indeed, taken as a whole, the portraits in the exhibition show a low level of attainment, and the three shown by Mr. Cadogan Cowper-564, 593 and 601—are among the very worst pictures to be seen here. From such vulgarity and pretence it is a great relief to turn to such a reticent work of dignified simplicity as Mr. Clausen's portrait of Henry Wilson, Esq. (481), or Mr. Meredith Frampton's Arthur Rackham., Esq. (369). Mr. Sargent has painted a vast group of twenty-two generals of the Great War (120), and the method he has adopted is the right one for so difficult a subject. The painter is much too good an artist to have carried out his work in the tableau vivant style : there is not any attempt to make each of the generals, as they stand in formal but easy row, look round and solid, and a general flatness and absence of modelling makes the whole into a group and not a collection of individuals, as these historic pictures generally end in becoming. At the same time, the characterization of the heads shows Mr. Sargent's power of portraiture and the architecture his knowledge of decorative effect.
There are several disappointments to be faced among the painters, who, one feels, ought to do better, and foremost among these is Mr. Sims. Two of the portraits he shows, 10 and 224, are astonishing as coming from so talented a man ; the second of the two can only be described as looking like &faithful repre- sentation of an exhibit in a waxwork show ; and the large portrait of The Countess of Rocksavage (177) sitting in a loggia with a child on her knee is marred by many faults of taste in the painting, though here one comes upon a. really beautiful bit of work, a blue vase with two pink flowers in it against the sky, which has the rare quality of an Italian primitive. Mr. Greiffenhagen's portrait of Mrs. Pettigrew (115) is finely planned, with largeness of style and deep rich colour., and looks extra- ordinarily well in its black and gold frame. In many places in the exhibition one can see how greatly the effect of individual pictures is enhanced by dark frames, and they also improve the general appearance of the walls by breaking the gaudy monotony of gold frames.
Mr. Munnings seems to be taking his undoubted powers or granted, and has formalized his vision and his touch to such an extent that after looking at one of hispictures here we have seen all, or at any rate we receive that impression. In his elaborate .Mrs. Rankin and Her Daughters (111) the figures and the ugly panorama of landscape refuse to mix as do oil and water. Nor is he more successful in his Drummer of the First Life Guards (665), who seems to be the last, though a highly ornamented, man in an empty world.
From these unsatisfactory and pretentious works it is. good to turn to so quiet and accomplished a painting as Mr. Glyn Philpot's Apres-midi Tunisian (274), with its cool, green•tiled alcove, in which sit two natives, whose figures are excellently contrasted and combined. There is a quality in this picture which is caressing to the eye after so many assaults from the walls around—peace, order, and quiet colour without sharp contrasts, but saved from monotony by a punctuation of black, and clear design and good taste making a satisfying harmony. A picture which stands apart from others by reason of its sensi- tiveness is The Faun (233), by Mrs. Swynnerton. There are no signposts of accessories to tell us what this little boy is, not even long ears, but the- expression of his face leaves no doubt. Mrs. Adrian Stokes has returned• to Tempera painting, which is an appropriate medium for her Divaki, Mother of Krishna (545), and she has entered into the region of Oriental design with skill and success. A picture of considerable romantics charm is Mr. C. King's The Palace of H'si (641), which has a delightful element of fairy story about it expressed in terms of landscape.
The landscapes beat worth looking at are usually not the pretentious and elaborate works which pile up striking compositions for effect and which generally end in eonfusion. Better are such works as Mr. Adrian Stokes's The Palace of the Popes at Avignon (15), with its beautiful pattern of white buildings and tree stems and dark masses of foliage, or again the same painter's Villeneuve lea Avignon (30), with its beautiful quality of blue reflected in the water. Mr. Arneshy Brown keeps to the same kind of country and the same sort of treat- ment as he has done for some time past. His power of making a picture by means of the shadows of passing clouds is fully shown in his. May Morning (120) view of Nottingham; in his composition The High Road (142), the church standing up against the sky has rather a posed air which is not satisfactory. Mr. Bertram Priestman has two Dutch landscapes full of beautiful light and colour. Poplars on the Maas (180) is a work of fine qualities, simple and clear in design and flooded with serene sunshine, happily uniting with lovely blue distances. Mr. F. H. S. Shepherd's Mcmtmelian (60) is sombre in colour but remains in the memory by means of the simplified form by which its vital lines are made apparent. Mr. Bertram Nicholls has some small landscapes, which are all accomplished in manner, subtle in colour and beautiful in paint surface. This last is so rare a quality that for its sake we are not troubled by the suggestion of old varnish in The Bridge (2). There is something here in the sky of the quality of Wilson. A better example of Mr. Nicholls's work is Swanage Tower (480), which is beautiful in the sobriety and richness of the touch and in the .subtlety of the colour. In The Windmill (487) the yellow tone is perhaps a little too much everywhere, though the grey of the mill itself is beautiful.
The water-colours are in a state of transition, the old style which one always expected to see here of elaborately finished work competing in strength of bane and• modelling with oils is no longer the rule but the exception. In place of this kind of painting a freer style, and one making more use of the inherent qualities of the medium, with washenput on and left, is asserting itself. This improvement has been stimulated by. the-relaxation of the rules which allowed nothing but gold mounts. Now a return• has been made to frames which suit the drawings they enclose, and there is a return to the methods of the great age of water-colour art. The following pictures are. examples.• el this—The Valley of the Brute (744), Mr. E. G. Beach;. Witbarrow Scar (754), Mr. R. Wallace ; Yew Barrow (773), Mr. W. Tempest. Other pictures in the water-colour room. worth attention are Mr. St. Clair Marston's Washing. Pool,. Assisi (687) ; Miss Maud Beddington's Child Reading (689) ; Mr. J. Cameronts Portrait (781) ; Mr. Shoesmith's Southern Ocean (804),; Mn Hoffman's• ?Word Ka (815), and Mn Owe& Gamboa:1A
romantic Draken.sberg Mountains (859). The black-and-white room contains a wonderful aquatint by Sir Frank Short, Hags in Chichester Harbour (1039), which is a marvel of subtlety and seems compounded of gossamer. H. S.
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