The New English Art Club

The Speaker, 14 April 1894, page 417, 1,077 words

The present exhibition does not introduce any new talent, nor can it be said to mark any very noticeable development in the talents of the usual exhibitors; but many interesting pictures and sketches are to be found on the walls, and the visitor is not bored for one instant. He is in turn interested and charmed – now by a blot of colour, now by a happily observed line; and even when the work is feeblest, the intention, which is artistic, raises questions that beguile the way.

1, "Study of a Young Lady," by Mr. W.N.P. Nicholson, is quite a nice drawing. She wears a red striped dress, and seems to be engaged in tying her sash. It is spontaneous in feeling, and suggestive of pretty colour and gracile line. 4, "Fishing Boats, Venice," by Mr. H.B. Brabazon, is quite a little achievement. There is no denying the life and charm contained in this drawing. Say, if you will, that it consists merely of a tint of blue and orange, that lineal explanation of the scene is the very scantiest, that it is insufficient to enable you to realise the position of the boats or the quay. Make all these objections – I shall not contradict you; but when you have launched your last critical shaft, the fact remains that the thing Iives, and is beautiful. And I like nearly as well, 14, "Lago Maggiore: November," a beautiful water-colour in blue and white, transparent as rose blooms, and, in a way, as evanescent. You look, and it is there; you draw one step forward, you look again, and it is gone. 6, "Portrait of Miss A. Pearsall Smith," by Mr. Will Rothenstein. This picture is not lacking in merit, but it seems to me to fail where it should have been the business of the painter to succeed. Miss Smith, attired in a cadmium-yellow gown, stands in a conventional, rather sloppily painted landscape (the intention of the landscape is good), holding her skirt from the ground. Now the movement, the gesture, of catching up a skirt, of holding up a skirt, is particular and distinct. If a painter decides to make use of this movement it seems to me that he must study the movement, for an hour, a day, a week, a month; he must watch and sketch until he captures it; his picture depends upon it. So I am quite at a loss to understand why Mr. Rothenstein was satisfied with an arm stuck from the lady's side stiff as a broom-stick, and from this broomstick arm the skirt hangs like – well, like nothing that I can think of – like a piece of yellow-painted board. Any Academy student could have rendered the movement better; so I pause to think if Mr. Rothenstein was troubled by some vague desire of a conventional movement which would be in harmony with the conventional landscape. It seems impossible to believe that this was his intention, and yet – and yet how are we to reconcile the inability of the man to render even approximately a simple and decisive movement with the ability of the man who painted the lady's face? (The lady's face is the best part of the picture.) Mr. Rothenstein's "Jeune Paysanne Assise" is good in a way; the awkward head, sloping shoulders, and thick, folded waist are well observed and well rendered – again I must add, in a way, for the drawing is a mere report, related to painting only as the "smart" interview is related to literature. In the picture 91, "L'Homme qui Sort" – are not these French titles a little comic? – he attempts no more with oil colour than the tinting of a somewhat theatrically designed figure. But at least two of these pictures show natural talent and future fruition of artistic taste and power.

47, "St. Ives: Night Trawlers," by Mr. Moffat P. Linder, is the picture that I would choose from the walls. It contrasts very favourably with Mr. Linder's other pictures – so favourably that I am led to suspect its merit – and I ask myself if it is easier to paint night than day; for in the blue nocturne many difficulties are eliminated. It is impossible to be violently disagreeable if you are lucky with the blue tint; if you chance on a beautiful blue the rest, perhaps, follows inevitably. I say perhaps, for the difficulties of nocturne painting are unknown to me. I only know that the yellow lights in the distance harmonise so naturally with the blue sky and sea that it would be impossible to get them quite wrong; and then the harmony is enhanced by the gold frame. But there is something more than a blue tint dotted with gold in Mr. Linder's picture; he has kept sufficient of the form of his fishing-boats, and I admired the way he has preserved something of the colour of the red-brown sails, obliterated though it be by the blue veil of night. Mr. Steer, whose exhibition at Goupil's was so successful, sends two pictures; one a charming sketch of a blue bay with yachts in full sail.

61, "Sheep Grazing," by Mr. William Estall, is a pretty sketch. Mr. Furse sends a large portrait of the Hon. and Rev. A. T. Lyttelton, also a portrait of a lady, also a small landscape. I like best the small landscape. 04, "The Thames near the Powder-Magazine," by Mr. J. Buxton Knight, has merit, but the quality of the painting is hard and stony. It looks as if it had been painted with glue and brickdust and then polished with pumice-stone; but it is not deficient in artistic intention.

I see that .I have overlooked Mr. Mark Fisher's work, which is unusually good this year. This excellent painter is ever faithful to his style; he has formed a style, and is content to try to extort all he can from it. "Cows in an Orchard " is the best picture I have seen by him since he painted "The Farmyard." And even better than his oil picture is the pastel 18, "Cows and Sheep." The clouds may be exaggerated and wanting in movement, but the animals on the bleak hill-side are pathetic and beautiful in their solitude. The sentiment of the picture is that of Millet – the loneliness of the country, the pathos of patient animal life. G.M.