The Art Of Today

(via The Outline of Art) Frank Rutter writes:

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Returning to the pupils of Legros, first attention must be given to Charles Wellington Furse (1868-1904), who, but for his early death, would assuredly now be occupying a position in the art world rivalling that of Sargent and Orpen. Born at Staines, Furse was only sixteen when he began to study under Legros at the Slade School. Later he worked in Paris, and returning to London he soon made his mark at the New English Art Club, where his portraits especially attracted attention. He was only twenty-five when he began his heroic equestrian portrait of Lord Roberts—now in the Tate Gallery—a great work which, being interrupted by illness, he was never able to complete, for after his recovery he was too much occupied with other work to return to it at once.

Between 1899 and 1901 much of his time was taken up in painting the decorative spandrels for Liverpool Town Hall, and his remarkable capacity for executing imposing works on a large scale was clearly revealed to the world in 1903, when ‘The Return from the Ride’ was the ‘picture of the year’ at the Academy. In this magnificent portrait group of his friends Mr and Mrs Aubrey Waterfield, the figures are nearly life-size and the whole picture is painted with the assurance and exuberance of a master. In the following year, when he was elected A.R.A, he repeated his success at the Academy with an open air portraits of his wife, entitled ‘Diana of the Uplands’, another life-sized work full of breeziness and polished brilliance. For many years the artist had suffered from lung trouble; and this finally caused his death in the very year in which he had won his Associateship. The breadth and dignity of his outlook equalled the felicity of his execution, and while the great performances in which his art culminated may be said to have been based to some extent on the practice of Velazquez, his own personal gifts and his keen observations of Nature gave an individual distinction to his works which makes them essentially original.

Mr William Strang was born at Dumbarton in 1859, came to London in 1875, and developed remarkable powers as a draughtsman under Legros at the Slade School. The first works of his to attract notice were his portrait drawings and his etchings, which attained distinction in two very different fields. His portraits, whether drawn or etched were intensely realistic, of a Holbeinesque clarity and simplicity, strong in line and character; but in etchings of other subjects Strang displayed imaginative gifts of the highest order, and his illustrations to the Bible, Don Quixote, and to some of Mr Kipling’s stories revealed a mind as alert to think and philosophise as his eye to see and his hand to record.

As a painter Strang had two distinct styles: in the first his color was based on that of the great Venetians, in the second his palette became much brighter and lighter and the influence of Manet was apparent. The union of his incisive drawing with this pure clean color produced in his second manner pictures of arresting brilliance. ‘Bank Holiday’, painted in 1912 and now in the Tate Gallery, is a fine example of his later style and, while displaying the severity of his line and the emphatic realism with which he presents figures and objects, it also reveals his imaginative gifts in the subtle rendering of the embarrassment of a holiday couple used to the etiquette which prevails in restaurants.

The Art Of Today (continued)