The Art Of Today

(via The Outline of Art) Frank Rutter writes:

Since he gave up poster designing, Mr Pryde has never made any attempt to obtain popularity. A fastidious and self exacting painter, his output has been comparatively small, and the pictures he has shown at the old Grosvenor Gallery, at the New Gallery, and at the exhibitions of the International Society, of which he is distinguished member, have appealed more to the collector and connoisseur than to the general public. As a painter he is difficult to place, for he is neither a realist not an out-and-out romanticist. His subjects are a little mysterious, and though his pictures often have an eighteenth-century look we hesitate to assign them to any definite period. What is happening in the picture is rarely clear, yet the artist contrives to hold our interest by a suggestion that something is about to happen. There is a strong feeling of latent drama in his work, because he excels in Dramatic Design.

‘The Venstibule’, in the Earl of Crawford’s Collection, is a characteristic example of the peculiar qualities in Mr Pryde’s work. Here,as in all his pictures, we find a stage beautifully set, a scene which so bewitches us by the nobility of its design, by the monumental splendor of its masses, by rich glows of color from a whole of harmonious sombreness, thta we catch our breath with delight at the spectable, just as we might do in a theatre as the curtain goes up and before we have any knowledge of what action will take place on the scene.

Mr William Nicholson, who was born at Neward-on-Trent in 1872, served a lengthy apprenticeship before he developed into the popular painter of portraits and still-life that he is today. After the success of the posters which he designed jointly with his brother-in-law, he laid the foundations of his individual reputation by a remarkable series of woodcuts in color. Three of his books, an Alphabet, an Almanac of Twelve Sports, and London Types—all published in 1898—widened the base of his popularity and made the name of William Nicholson known to thousands who rarely visit picture exhibitions.

More definitely realistic, less imaginative, and less mysterious than Mr Pryde, Mr William Nicholson has this much in common with him, that he, too, is pre-eminently a designer. This much we may see in a work so remarkable for its fidelity to nature as his ‘Portrait of Miss Jekyll’. In its suave rendering of character and atmosphere this portrait is descended from Velazquez through Whistler, but in its arresting simplicity, the effective placing of the chair-back, head, and hands as the accented notes of a diagonal composition, the picture is also related to the posters of the Beggarstaff Brothers and to the masterly designs of the Far East.

A younger generation of Scottish artists, of whom the best known are S J Peploe, J D Fergusson, and Joseph Simpson, are connected with Edinburgh, not Glasgow, and form another distinct group. All of them were at first influenced by Whistler and subsequently by Manet and later French artists; and while each painter has his own personality, strong drawing, bright clean color, and emphatic design are common to all three.

The once much talked of Newyln School was never a local development, like that of Glasgow, but consisted of a group of artists drawn from various places who found this Cornish fishing village, near Penzance, a pleasant place in which to settle and practice open air painting. Stanhope Forbes, the late Napier Hemy, the sea painter, and Frank Bramley have been considered the leaders and founders of this school. Other artists have founded colonies at St Ives and elsewhere along the Cornish coast, some of the best known of the younger generation being the marine painter Mr Julius Olsson, the landscape painter Mr Lamorna Birch, and that particuarly brilliant pair, alike in portraiture, landscape, and figure subjects, Harold and Laura Knight.

The Art Of Today (continued)