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Death at The Acaderriy
Tim Royal Academy has shown courage—a quality unusual in it. After the series of Dutch, Flemish, Italian and French Exhibitions at Burlington House it has dared to challenge comparison with the greatest artists of all times and places by reverting to its old custom of holding a Winter Exhibition of works by its lately deceased members. But there is no need to bear any such comparison in mind to see the appalling barrenness of the present exhibition. It leaps to the . eye from every wall.
The Academy still seems to be suffering from certain difficulties which surrounded it at its birth. Its early members in the eighteenth century consisted principally of a number of brilliant portrait painters who were obsessed by the idea that portrait painting was an inferior kind of art. They hankered after historical painting and strove to achieve the grand manner. Alas, in the eighteenth, century.the grand manner had fallen into a decline, so Reynolds and his con- temporaries had to turn to its original exponents, Michelangelo, Raphael and the Bolognese painters who were too remote in time and mentality to, be suitable models. Further, the grand manner in painting seems never to have been congenial to English artists. All our successful painters have worked in other genres—usually the portrait or landscape.
But the lust after -the grand manner died very slowly, and through the whole tradition of the Academy we see the pathetic straining of English artists to use an idiom wholly foreign to them. This , concentration on history painting combined with an aggravation of the natural northern tendency towards descriptive as opposed to abstract painting inevitably led English Art to become essentially literary. This tendency is well shown in the six painters now represented at Burlington House whom I wish to discuss, leaving till a later occasion those who were essentially portrait painters.
Sir Frank Dicksee was elected President of the Royal Academy in 1924. This is remarkable when we consider that his painting is the backwash of a tradition which flourished in the '70's of the last century. For in outlook Dieksee is a pure but inferior pre-Raphaelite and therefore belongs to the most strictly literary movement in all English painting. The difficulty about such " illustration " is that its value depends on changing fashion, and it happens that for the present generation Dicksee's illustration is particularly unpalatable. And, as his paintings have no formal qualities for the spectator to fall back on, the result is disastrous.
Wyllie's paintings do not, I imagine, even claim to be works of art. They arouse only vaguely, romantic and historical emotions and it is appropriate that his canvas entitled Crippled lust Unconquered should be given in the catalogue eleven lines describing the incident illustrated. There is nothing but the story to look for and it happens that in this case the story would be unintelligible without such documentation.
Tuke, I must admit, gave me a surprise. I had remembered his paintings to be monotonous, but to contain at least some
sunlight and some sincerely felt flesh. But I find_ I was wrong. Except in August Blue, his seas are only sunny the first time you look at them, and they have a dangeroUs tendency to be in a vertical instead of a horizontal plans. And it.is incredible that a man of his experience, who seems to have spent the whole of his life studying one kind of object, the naked bodies of boys, should never even have begun to 4mderstand the construction of shoulders, chests or limbs. It is perhaps significant that there is no single drawing by 'Puke in this exhibition. • If La Thangue had never lived in England he might have been a minor, but respectable, Impressionist. As it was, the literary tradition into which he was absorbed prevented him from developing what appears to have been an intelligent interest in light effects. Ricketts almost achieved a grand manner, apparently through a study of Delacroix, but his history' paintings never quite come off; and his real success was in theatrical designing.
But the most melancholy case of all is that of Sims, who for many years painted dainty little pastorals and then suddenly woke up one' morning to find that he really had a mind like Blake's. Then he produced that magnificent series of symbolical works in which all his wonderful feeling for line and brilliant sense of colour are displayed to the full, unimpeded by the demands of literature or naturalism. Here 'alone, in the whole of Burlington House, is life.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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