ART
THE wave of Coronation exhibitions, though not yet spent, has begun to lose its force. For a few days more visitors to the Victoria and Albert may enjoy the flower arrangements made possible by Dutch generosity ; at the Arts Council Gallery the collection of photo- graphs of the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey is doubly impres- sive, by reason not only of the unaccustomed sense of proximity to the Gothic, Italianate and Elizabethan originals, but also the quality of Mr. Kenett's photographs themselves ; at the New Burlington Gallery the Council's exhibition of pictures illustrating " British Life " between the reigns of the two Elizabeths includes some admirable surprises. This is a friendly, unpretentious collection of more than mere sociological interest.
Friendly, intimate and relaxed too are the Gainsboroughs at the Tate, collected by Professor Waterhouse to give, not a full-dress picture of the society portraitist, but glimpses of the " unbuttoned Englishman who stayed at home, of his rural pleasures, and of his dreams." Portraits there are here, of course, from the Fitzwilliam's shrewd, pixilated, little old Mrs. Kirby, painted before 1750, to the lovely, almost Renoir-like Three Elder Daughters of George III, painted four years before the artist's death, and not publicly shown since 1870. Here too that magnificent waterfall of warm ivory-grey we call The White Lady, some infinitely touching children headed by one of the painter's daughters, and, above all, several of those so- English " no-nonsense " characters at which Gainsborough excelled, like the brewer Sir Benjamin Truman and the Quaker Mark Beau- froy. But the real Gainsborough shows his heart most clearly not in the society portrait or the sentimental " fancy pieces " of later years, but in those youthful pastorals of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews, John Plampin, perhaps the Duke of Bedford's Woodcutter and Milkmaid. The curious tension between the Andrews' figures and their setting, the dreamlike quality of the tonality, allied to the simple, unforced observation and that utmost delicacy of handling which never deserted Gainsborough, make this perhaps the most poetic of all his productions.
At the Hanover Gallery William Scott shows 15 recent paintings. They are unlikely to please all those who admired his still-life and figure compositions of the immediate post-war years. Though Scott himself does not regard his work as abstract, nevertheless the imprint of the image upon the canvas has so simplified and so flattened itself that it frequently fails to communicate itself to the spectator as an object seen, even after a considerable effort of will on his or her part. There remains just exactly what always formed the real subject-matter of Scott's painting : a grave equipoise of very simply painted areas of colour in subtly related semitones, but in a stronger mould. Vestiges of pots and pans remain ; above all, the rhomboid table on its four attentuated vertical supports, which finds an echo even in such a composition as Slagheap Landscape, where the green and black ellipse of the mountains is " supported " on black paths running directly into the picture. Black, white, ochre and a range of crimsons and vermilion dominate the show, mostly applied with the knife and that controlled, masculine vigour that character',es all that Scott touches. The effect is exciting and
even imposing ; I am not sure how long it would stand up to prolonged contemplation.
Messrs. Roland, Browse and Delbanco are showing works by Derain, Vlaininck and, much less known though perhaps undeservedly so, Souverbie. The once prickly innovations have been worn smooth by the years, so that most of these paintings now have an air of pleasing furniture pictures. To all three, life has presented a series of concrete facts as material for a game of skill. Derain's range is the greatest, but most interest attaches to Souverbie's decorative nudes conceived in the manner of Braque's mid-'twenties style—less opulently baroque in rhythm but very pretty. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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