Memories of a Great Artist
Tins most excellent and unusual collection of autobiographical fragments has appeared at last, and cannot fail in fascination upon all who read it. Eagerly anticipated, it will be found to fulfil all, and more, than was expected of it. In nearly every sentence there is the individual imprint. Mr. John's phrases have the large tread of his personality and could not have been written by a little man. How wonderful to have this book from him after many years ! It has so many facets of interest. An unlooked-for pleasure, in the first place, to have a book from the painter of The Smiling Woman. But there is little in it about his paintings. His concern is more with character, which is perhaps to be expected from so strong an individualist. But if there is delight in his writing, as such, and interest in the characters whom he finds interesting (for Mr. John is bored by just the persons whom we would expect to bore him) there are, to a writer, technical problems in watching this great painter, pen in hand, which are entirely absorbing. There is so much to be learned from him. I find his early pages, describing his seaside life at Tenby, to be models for that kind of writing. How much he can put, and so easily (it seems !), upon a page ! He is to be read slowly, a few paragraphs at a time. For his is a slow book : not to be raced through and then thrown aside. And at about this point in the book .there is a marvellous pencil portrait of a young woman, Alick Schepeler, which sets one wondering anew. The book is, I think, well named Chiaroscuro. For it has a few dark passages, dull corners, but only when Mr. John brushes against the ugliness and disappointments of living in the twentieth century. How much he loves the old Dutch houses of Amsterdam ! How, equally, does he dislike rich hotels and idle fashion, only to be impelled, thence, towards the haunts of character ! -There he is at home, and can recapture whom he meets as vividly with his pen as with his pencil. In different vein, the portentous form of Mme. Strindberg runs like a recurrent motif through some pages, passages which are light and humorous in masterly manner and show how well he can describe burlesque adventure. It must be said that the letter he quotes from her leaves an impression of a rather touching personality.
As a painter, Mr. John has drawn inspiration from the mountains of North Wales, where he worked with Innes, and from the landscape of Provence. He describes visiting the mountain of Arenig with Innes, and writes glorious descriptions of St. Remy de Provence. The light of that happy land illumines many of his paintings. Perhaps the supreme discovery in the life of this great painter may have been when his youthful genius, as draughtsman, took another turn and he composed in colour. For his small landscape panels, a genre in which no painter of our race has equalled him in simplicity and boldness, do not " grow " out of his drawings. Probably there has been no greater self-discovery since the young Johannes Brahms (who has many points of identity or similarity to Mr. John) turned from songs and piano pieces to orchestral music. Both artists have stood apart in their lives and been enemies of convention. Both had classical training, were independent of time, and both loved the gipsies.
An independence of time is strongly marked in Mr. John. This present book, so full of promise, is written by the same " young " man who remembers Wilde, in Paris after his imprisonment. He visited the barber to have his hair cut ; and Wilde coming up to him, the next day, laid his hand upon his shoulder and said, " You should have consulted me before taking this important step." Mr. John confesses, himself, to having little sense of time ; and it is this, I suppose, which makes it difficult to " date " his pictures. I can think of no other painter who falls so little into periods. The big exhibition of his portraits and paintings at the Alpine Gallery in 1919, which I remember well, was the measure of his talent. No other English painter but Gainsborough could have had an exhibition upon this scale. And there was the superb showing of a hundred, and more, of his drawings in the basement of the National Gallery in 1944. The one was complementary to the other. But what a long interval between ! It is time this magnificent painter and draughtsman was shown in his splendour. Then it will be proved that much else is of little moment compared to him. He is, indeed, one of the few who can afford to keep time waiting for him.
The debut of Mr. John, as writer, has come a little late, but, perhaps, it is the better for that. He is now engaged, it is said, upon a further book. His paragraphs, let us hope, will turn into chapters. Personalities of the timbre and weight of Mme Strindberg demand fuller treatment. One would like, too, to hear his views on music and architecture. I have only remarked by inference that Chiaroscuro has some lively illustrations. The Child Pyramus is a fabulous portrait of a little boy in a particular, enchanted stage of his growing, about five years old, and as beautiful as one of the child popinjays of Carpaccio. The Two Gitanas is an evocation of the sunlight of Southern Spain captured with a few scratchings of a stick of charcoal. There is, also, a memorable photograph, Dorelia in the Van, in which we may recognise The Smiling Woman. All in all, a book of utmost fascination ; but it leaves the reader in impatient mood waiting for a sequel. The words, First Series, on the title page, are encouraging. So assured a pen should not find it difficult to write a second volume.
SACHEVERELL SITWELL.
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