New Art Books
Florentine Paintings. (15th Century.) By Sir Kenneth ClarkMusic in Painting. By Lawrence Hayward.—Blake. By Geoffrey Stanley Spencer. By Elizabeth Rothenstein. (Phaidon Press. 20s.)
THE Faber Gallery books, which seem to be about to appear in great variety, judging by the titles on t14 back of the first four, are a good idea, and when production becomes easier they will doubtless be completely satisfactory in themselves. At present the colour reproductions for which they are vehicles are uneven in quality. The introductory writing is of a high standard, for the simple reason that R. H. Wilenski, who edits the series, has gone to the right people for three and written one himself.
Sir Kenneth Clark is more sensitive toward, and better informed about, fifteenth-century Italian painting than anyone else I can think of ; Geoffrey Keynes is generally acknowledged to be the leading authority on Blake ; Lawrence Hayward does well enough with this slightly precious choice of subject, and Mr. Wilenski himself remains the best historian of recent French painting in the country. What more do you want? The colour plates in Florentine Painting are only fair ; those of Blake are very passable ; in the Music in Painting some are very good and some rather poor. The Degas are all good except the portrait of Diego Martelli. The folios contain about ten plates each.
The colour plates in the Phaidon Stanley Spencer are technically very good, but the choice of them is unfortunate, since they are all, except a tiny one of "Swan Upping," of the niggling Christmas card landscapes which Spencer does when no one prevents him. The serious Spencer of "The Resurrection," "The Last Supper" and the "Apple Gatherers," is only reproduced in black and white, and not the best half-tone I have seen, any way. Mrs. Elizabeth Rothen- stein's essay contains pretty sound stuff, and except that it is some- what highflown in planes serves its purpose well. It -is obviously written by someone whose sensitive admiration for her subject has not overridden her critical judgment. Certain works by Spencer are, in my own view, masterpieces and as fine as anything in twentieth century painting. The.I3urghclere Chapel murals are, I go further than Mrs. Rothenstein, the finest wall-paintings of this age in Europe, but other of his work fails through excess of anguished zeal and the late landscapes fail by reason of the simple fact that they are most of them deplorably bad pictures. Be that as it may, Spencer has a unique vision and, in his early works, a magnificent strength and purity of conception ; so the book is well worth having for the !reproductions of some of these. It is a very great pity that the "Bed of the Centurion" is not included, as this is one of his very
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