ART.
GRAPHIC ART AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
So rare in the history of the Royal Academy are the instances of a contrite heart that it may seem contrary to public policy to criticize any innovation there which makes for righteousness. But the Winter Exhibition of graphio art at Burlington House is not quite what people had a right to expect. The reason is that, while opening their galleries to other Societies—the Society of Twelve, the Senefelder Club, and the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour —they did not also decide to fall in line with modern ideas about the status of original work. The Exhibition perpetuates the old error that makes the Black-and-White Room at every Academy Exhibition an offence to real admirers of the art. Reproductive etchings and engravings are hung alongside prints that in design and execution are the original work of the artist. It is an old quarrel, and the cause of several of the most distinguished mem- bers of the Painter-Etchers' Society leaving that body. Mr. D. Y. Cameron, who was one of these protestants, latterly found himself by the irony of events an associate engraver at the Royal Academy, exhibiting his essential and fastidious etchings among reproductive etchings, engravings, and drawings in the overcrowded Black-and- White Room at the annual show. I notice that Mr. Cameron is not represented here at all, which may possibly indicate that he refuses to hold himself responsible for the Royal Academy imposing this obsolete system in an open exhibition of black-and- white art. There are other notable absentees, such as Mr. Augustus John, our greatest figure draughtsman, but it is easy to see the difficulties in the present time of getting a really repre- sentative show together, apart from the question of the admission of the reproductive work. The show creates a good impression. It is a real pleasure to see an artist's work grouped together in a panel in the modern European style of hanging, which now appears for the first time in the Academy, and other innovations that make for a happy effect. Far too much mediocre stuff has been admitted, and it will come as a revelation to many to see how little draughtsmanship was seriously pursued by our popular Academi- cians. Sir E. J. Poynter is one of the distinguished exceptions, his two nude studies of men being among the notable things in the show.
The lithographs are hung by themselves in a room, with very pleasant effect, the Senefelder Club, which keeps that art alive, making a strong demonstration in the medium which people used to associate only with the dullest commercial work; Mr. Joseph Pennell's drawings of the munition factories, Mr. Spencer Price's Belgian and English scenes, and prints by Mr. Copley, Mr. Hartrick, Miss Flora Lion, and Mr. E. J. Sullivan being the chief things. The colour prints include a very strange and original colour rhapsody, L'Agonie des Fleurs, by Theodore Roussel, and some interesting London compositions by Lieutenant Verpilleux. The section of drawings is exceptionally good. Mr. Clausen has a panel of farm scenes; Mr. William Strang presents his four stalwart sons all in khaki; Mr. Muirhead Bone shows several of his drawings made at the Western front in his capacity as official artist (an exhibition of the main body of his drawings was opened this week by Mr. H. W. Forster at Coluaghi and Obach's Galleries); Mr. John Wheatley has some beautiful rarefied figure studies. Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. F. L. Griggs, Mr. Edgar Wilson, Mr. G. W. Lambert, Mr. C. S. Cheston (whose combination of delicacy and joviality of line recalls Rowlandson), and Mr. Will Rothenstein, in a series of portrait heads of notables, support this section. The Etchings and Dry-points Room has several dull spaces, but Mr. Francis Dodd's powerful portraits and the contributions by Sir Charles Holroyd, Mr. W. Strang, Miss Sylvia Gosse, and Mr. Robert Spence do something to redeem it. One would like to write of the very deligh.tful collection of Vietorian illustrations in the small South Room, and of the well-chosen series of prints by Old Masters, which make up for any dreariness in the contemporary section of thin interesting Exhibition. There is also exhibited a
number of models of war memorials. I. B.
Previous page
