No one would hunt for unknown youthful talent at the
Old " Water Colour Society ; one looks for well-established traditions and accomplishment and is not disappointed. There are sleepy villages and dead towns, but even these keep vestiges of their old beauties. Among the more vital work Sir Charles Holmes' studies of mountains are distinguished by an intellectual grasp of essentials, a rare quality here. Mr. Henry Rushbury progresses in virtuosity, Plymouth is one of -his best drawings, keen in observation, remarkably quick and fluent in handling, and pleasant in its combination of colour with line. For its rendering of cha ratter and structure in the houses, and in the rise and fall of the ground, Burford, by Mr. Francis Dodd, is most convincing, while the figures in it have a similar interest of characteristic occupation. It is a sense of design and choice that marks Mr. Gere's work, which is most vital when, as in Loading Timber at St. Raphael, the drawing is apparent and is kept most strictly to the arrangement of forms.
There is much else to enjoy if you can take up a certain attitude of appreciation rather than criticism. If you can still read Maeterlinck's early plays and recapture their magic without being jarred by their artifice and mannerisms, you can probably, feel the romantic attractions of Mr. Cayley Robinson's figure pieces, with their calculated repetitions, and mannerisms of form. If you relish sheer accomplishment nothing more brilliant than Mr. Russell Flint's Billiard-Hall, Laigueglia, with its astonishing management of graduated washes, could be asked for. And so one could go on.
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