ART
WHILE writing last week of Frances Hodgkins I was tempted to underline another interesting juxtaposition achieved by the Lefevre and Leicester Galleries, since the latter are showing a retrospective exhibition of work by another painter of the same generation—Dame Ethel Walker. I refrained, however, for the simple reason that practically the only point they have in common is a talent for constant progress. Ethel Walker stems directly from the English Impressionists. Her admiration for Sickert, Steer and Whistler is clearly revealed by the earlier paintings (some of them dating from the 'nineties). She has continued to work strictly within the Impres- sionist terms of reference, though with ever-increasing individuality, and her recent portraits, flower-pieces and, particularly, her seascapes —at once chalky and shimmering with light and atmosphere—will assuredly retain an honoured place in the contribution of an epoch.
Like Dame Ethel, both the other exhibitors at the Leicester Galleries base their pictures directly on the thing seen. One senses no hothouse searching for new techniques in the case of Kenneth Rowntree, for example. His pictures appear ingenuously lively. The linear design is strong and well-considered. The colour is bright, clear and applied with great freshness. An apparently effort- less brushwork shows nice contrasts between transparency and opacity, and when the fashionable scratch is used, it is used with the utmost discretion. I ask myself whether a certain obviousness in his work would cause it to wear well as a constant companion. Perhaps a few more implications and one or two fewer statements would strengthen it? What does constitute Mr. Rowntree's trump- card is his ability to see the pictorial possibilities in the most un- promising material, and, by a little simplification and forcing of the tones, produce a minor revelation. Mr. Thomas Carr's watercolours are less importunate. They are reserved, gentle, filled with a wistful, grey-green Celtic twilight, and are a good deal more personal, I feel, than many of his oils.
Messrs. Agnew are showing thirty-five recent acquisitions—as fine a dealer's collection as we have seen for a long time. Among other good things are a Rembrandt study-panel, a Matsys portrait of lean Carondelet, an impressive portrait by Fabritius which was once owned by G. F. Watts, and a Poussin which is marred only by the Madonna's head itself. Of the two Tintarettos, one is as powerful and exciting as the other is dull ; of the several Rubenses the small panel of A Young Man appealed to me as much as the more important " find," the Battle of the Amazons, an enthusiastically riotous affair, which has been identified with the painting in
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