The New English Art Club

The Speaker, 26 November 1892, pages 645-646, 1,617 words

This, the ninth season of the New English Art Club, has been marked by a decisive step. The club has rejected two portraits by Mr. Shannon. So that the public may understand and appreciate the importance of this step, I will sketch, à coups de crayon peu fondus, the portrait of a lady as I imagine Mr. Shannon might have painted her. A woman of thirty, an oval face, and a long white brow; pale brown hair, tastefully arranged with flowers and a small plume. The eyes large and tender, expressive of a soul that yearns and has been misunderstood. The nose straight, the nostrils well-defined, slightly dilated; the mouth curled, and very red. The shoulders large, white, and over-modelled, with cream tints; the arms soft and rounded; diamond bracelets on the wrists; diamonds on the emotional neck. Her dress is of the finest duchesse satin, and it falls in heavy folds. She holds a bouquet in her hands; a pale green garden is behind her; swans are moving gracefully through shadowy water, whereon the moon shines peacefully. Add to this conception the marvellous square brushwork of the French studio, and you have the man born to paint English duchesses – to paint them as they see themselves, as they would be seen by posterity; and through Mr. Shannon our duchesses realise all their aspirations, present and posthumous. The popularity of these pictures is undoubted; wherever they hang, and they hang everywhere, except in the New English Art Club, couples linger. "How charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man à l'hauteur de ses sentiments casts on him a withering glance, which says, "Why can't you afford to let me be painted by Mr. Shannon?"

We are here to realise our ideals, and far is it from my desire to thwart any lady in her aspirations, be they in white or violet satin, with or without green gardens. If I were on the hanging committee of the Royal Academy, all the duchesses in the kingdom should be realised, and then – I would create more duchesses, and they, too, should be realised by Messrs. Shannon, Hacker, and Solomon. And when these painters arrived, each with a van filled with new satin duchesses, I would say, "Go to Mr. Agnew, ask him what space he requires, and anything over and above they shall have it." I would convert the Chantrey Fund into white satin duchesses, and build a museum opposite Mr. Tate's for the blue. I would do anything for these painters and their duchesses except hang them in the New English Art Club.

For it is entirely necessary that the public should never be left for a moment in doubt as to the intention of this club. It is open to those who paint for the joy of painting; and it is entirely disassociated from aII commercialism, Muslin ballet-girl or satin duchess it matters no jot, nothing counts with the jury but l'idee plastique – comradeship – money gain or loss are waived. The rejection of Mr. Shannon's portraits will probably cost the club four guineas a year, the amount of his subscription, and it will certainly lose to the club the visits of his numerous drawing-room following. This is to be regretted – in a way. The club must pay its expenses, but it were better that it should cease than an infringement of principle should be incurred. Either we may or we may not have a gallery from which popular painting is excluded. I think that we should; but I know that Academicians and dealers are in favour of enforced prostitution in art. That men should practice painting for the mere love of paint is wholly repugnant to every healthy-minded Philistine. The critic of the Daily Telegraph described the pictures in the present exhibition as things that no one would wish to possess; he then pointed out that a great many were excellently well painted. Quite so. I have always maintained that there is nothing that the average Englishman – the reader of the Daily Telegraph – dislikes so much as good painting. He regards it in the light of an offence, and what makes it peculiarly irritating in his eyes is the difficulty of declaring it to be an immoral action; he instinctively feels that it is immoral, but somehow the crime seems to elude definition. The Independent Theatre was another humble endeavour which sorely tried the conscience of the average Englishman. That anyone should wish to write plays that were not intended to please the public – that did not pay – was an unheard-of desire, morbid and unwholesome as could well be, and meriting severest rebuke. But the Independent Theatre has somehow managed to struggle into a second year of life, and the New English Art Club has opened its ninth exhibition; so I suppose that the Daily Telegraph will have to make up its mind, sorrowfully, of course, and with regret, that there are folk still in London who are not always ready to sell their talents to the highest bidder.

Praise of the New English Art Club is understood to mean that the walls are covered with masterpieces, and that with every exhibition painting has been discovered afresh. But my praise is the simplest statement of the truth. The present exhibition is the most interesting we have had in London this year. There now hangs in the New English Art Club a better portrait and a better landscape than any that hung on the walls of this year's Academy. The Editor of THE SPEAKER seems not disinclined to print letters controverting the articles I send him. Correspondents are numerous. Perhaps one will undertake to name a portrait in this year's .Academy better than the portrait (47), Mr. Sargent's "Portrait Study." Perhaps the same, or another, correspondent will undertake to name a better landscape than (87) "Evening in Spring," by Mr. Bernard Sickert; or (100) "Henley Regatta," by the same painter.

By the side of a fine Hals, Mr. Sargent's portrait study might look small, thin, and over-explained, but nothing short of a fine Hals would affect its real beauty. A more engaging and enticing work in modern art I hardly know. I returned to it again and again, and every time to discover new beauties. Truly a charming picture, perfect from end to end. My admiration for Mr. Sargent has often hesitated, but this picture completely wins me. It has all the qualities of Mr. Sargent's best work; and it has something more: it is painted with that measure of calculation and reserve which is present in all work of the first order of merit. I find the picture described with sufficient succinctness in my notes: "A half-length portrait of a woman, in a dress of shot-silk – a sort of red violet, the colour known as puce. The face is pale, the chin is prominent and pointed. There were some Japanese characteristics in the model, and these have been selected. The eyes are long, and their look is aslant; the eyebrows are high and marked; the dark hair grows round the pale forehead with wig-like abruptness, and the painter has attempted no attenuation. The carnations are wanting in depth of colour – they are somewhat chalky; but what I admire so much is the exquisite selection, besides the points mentioned – the shadowed outline, so full of the form of her face, and the markings about the eyes, so like her; and the rendering is full of the beauty of incomparable skill. The neck, how well placed beneath the pointed chin! How exact in width, in length, and how it corresponds with the ear; and the jawbone is under the skin; and the anatomies are all explicit – the collar-bone, the hollow of the armpit, and the muscle of the arm, the placing of the bosom, its shape, its size, its weight. Mr. Sargent's drawing speaks without hesitation, a.beautiful, decisive eloquence, the meaning never in excess of the expression, nor is the expression ever redundant."

I said that we find in this portrait reserve not frequently to be met with in Mr. Sargent's work. What I first noticed in the picture was the admirable treatment of the hands. They are upon her hips, the palms turned out, and so reduced is the tone that they are hardly distinguishable from the dress. As the model sat the light must have often fallen on her hands, and five years ago Mr. Sargent might have painted them in the light. But the portrait tells us that he has learnt the last and most difficult lesson – how to omit. Any touch of light on those hands would rupture the totality and jeopardise the colour harmony, rare without suspicion of exaggeration or affectation. In the background a beautiful chocolate balances and enforces the various shades of the shot-silk, and with severity that is fortunate. By aid of two red poppies, worn in the bodice, a final note in the chord is reached – a resonant and closing consonance.

Mr. Sargent's portraits aro often improvisations; this is an exception: the face, if I am not mistaken, was retouched. It seems more closely knit than usual; a beautiful work, certainly: I should call it a perfect work were it not for one thing: the drawing is a little obvious: in places we can detect it; it does not coule de source like the drawing of the very great masters.

I have come to the end of my space, and must postpone the rest of my remarks on an interesting and remarkable exhibition till next week. G.M.