GEORGE TINWORTH AND HIS WORK.* Tins is one of the
Art books published by the Fine-Art Society, and is produced as regards paper, print, and binding, with the usual good-taste of that Society. It consists of a series of photo- graphs from Mr. Tinworth's terra-cotta friezes, panels, &c., and a comprehensive catalogue of his works. There is also a pre- fatory memoir, by Mr. E. W. Gosse, which tells the main facts of the artist's life pleasantly and plainly, though with just that tinge of over-sweetness which is apt to distinguish Mr. Gosse's biography, and which probably arises from the frequency with which his biographical notices are written of lately deceased artists,—concerning whom, of course, there must be nil nisi bonunt.
Mr. Tinworth's life has been apparently one singularly devoid of excitement and incident. He was the son of a wheelwright, who was the victim at once of a gloomy religion and a taste for alcohol, both of which seem to have combined to render his life, and the lives of his wife and children, anything but happy. The son who is the subject of this biography was early appren- ticed to his father's trade, and though his Art talent was evident almost from the first, he was only enabled to practise it by stealth, in the evenings, and when his father was away from the house. In one of the photographs of this book there is an interesting panel which shows young Tinworth modelling a little figure in his father's shop, while another youth is posted at the door to give warning of the wheelwright's approach. The great step in Mr. Tinworth's life seems to have been his joining the evening classes at the Lambeth School of Art, and there gaining the friendship and help of Mr. Sparkes, who was then master, and has since become the head of the South Kensington Schools. After working here for some time and exhibiting once or twice at the Royal Academy, he began to work for Messrs. Doulion, with whom he has continued ever since.
Mr. Gosse expends a good deal of unnecessary admiration over the fact that the artist has, despite his success, remained in the state of life to which he was born, and is still practically an artisan as well as an artist. No doubt, it is pleasant, in this age of competitive commerce, to find a man who is contented with his estate, and who simply lives to do his work. But from the artistic point of view it may be doubted whether this peculiarity of Mr. Tinworth's mind does not imply a great deficiency. It may be doubted whether any really great artist would be content to live in the narrow bounds of such an existence as that of a British workman, when he could, if he chose,—
" Break his birth's invidious bar, And grasp the skirts of happy chance."
And this leads us to the few words we have to say of his work, words which we would preface by saying that it possesses in an eminent degree three great qualities,—it is at once simple, fervid, and sincere. Its simplicity is, perhaps, its most evident characteristic, and in this it resembles nothing so much as the early German sculptures, such as those one may see to this day carved in the walls of St. Sebald's, at Nurnberg. Looking at these processions to the Cross, watchings in the Garden, casting lots for the garments of Christ, and all the other Biblical sub- jects in which Mr. Tinworth delights, is like returning to the days when we read "Line upon Line" in childhood at our nurse's knee. In the simplest literal interpretation of Scripture, no recluse of the middle-ages could have exceeded Mr. Tin- worth. He is not one of those who, as Tennyson says, "after toil and storm" have "reached a clearer air," but one of those rarely happy souls who have never known the "toil and storm" at all.
He is, too, in his work fervid and sincere, almost in the same degree as he is simple, indeed, his sculptures have an insist- ance, an almost proselytising vehemence, which is very apt to mar their artistic value. And in curious contradistinction to most artists, where he becomes most in earnest, his work becomes least admirable. There are many admirable quali- ties in Mr. Tinworth's sculpture, if sculpture is not almost too large a word to use of these terra-cotta figures, of which the
• George Tinworth and his Work. Published by the Fine Art Society. With a Memoir by E. W. Goes% majority are little more than six or eight inches high ; they are full of ingenuity and invention, and the subjects, though, as we have said, treated with the utmost simplicity, are treated also from an original point of view, it is curious, too, to notice how Mr. Tinworth, though he will sacrifice scarcely anything to artistic convention, and though many of his works show an extraordinary capability of making the most elementary artistic blunders, manages to give in almost all cases a strong dramatie unity to his work. The composition is, with rare exceptions, in, long, parallel lines, and is rarely satisfactory as a whole, but, the unity of feeling is as rarely defective. All the actors in the- scenes play their parts naturally and strongly, and we feel of each of them that he has a right to be there. This effect is the- more curious, as every actor in Mr. Tinworth's dramas has a. strongly marked individuality, and is almost invariably expressing it in some characteristic action. Our meaning as to the opposition in his friezes between unity of composition and unity of drama, may, perhaps, be exemplified by saying that, the work has the completeness of a panorama rather than that of a picture. The action is consecutive and natural, rather thaw concentrated and conventional.
We do not propose to dwell to any extent upon the deficien-. cies of the work. They are such as any child can perceive,. and are in many cases inseparable from its merits. Something ot the mediaeval, ascetic disdain for mere natural beauty hangs over- all the panels, and is strangely interwoven with the natural feeling for beauty and grace which Mr. Tinworth evidently possesses.. It is as if his religions emotions and needs were always trying to get the better of his artistic susceptibilities, and at the shrine of the first he is always struggling to lay down the prejudices of the second. And it is more than strange to see how seldom he is successful in his endeavour. Through the limits of his creed, his free artistic spirit breaks out again and again,— only to be again pursued and bound with formula and tradition. It must have been, and, indeed, must be, for he is still in the prime of his powers, a hard fight between the two great emo- tions of his life,—the art with which he was born, and the religion in which he was educated. And it may be—indeed, in the opinion of the present writer, it must be—that a religion. which was not only so sincere, but, if we may use such a word,. so vociferous, as that in which Mr. Tinworth was educated, was bound to cramp and to pervert the Art genius which it sought to bend to its own peculiar uses.
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