Of the figure pictures by British artists which are popular to-day, and for which continued appreciation can safely be prophesied, a large number have for subject something that refers to the sea.The North-West Passage, by Sir John Millais, is, for instance, an inspiring reminder in its spirit and sentiment of a series of sea adventures which must for ever stand to the credit of the British race; and Bramley’sHopeless Dawntells eloquently the story of a tragedy only too sadly common where men seek a precarious livelihood on the treacherous sea. Other pictures like the Hon. John Collier’sLast Voyage of Henry Hudson, and H. S. Tuke’sAll Hands to the Pumps, give us full opportunity to judge the nature of the dangers to which seamen are exposed; while others again, like Napier Hemy’sPilchards, and Colin Hunter’sTheir Only Harvest, show us what kind of work occupies the fisher-folk and the other coast dwellers whose necessities the sea supplies. Another aspect of the subject is seen in Tuke’sAugust Blue, and C. W. Wyllie’sDigging for Bait, which suggest those pleasanter moments when life by the sea has its genial and enjoyable side and the stress and turmoil of the winter storms are for a while forgotten.
These particular pictures are quoted because, being all in a national collection, they are accessible to every one and are permanently available to illustrate the varying relation of humanity with the sea. They represent a class of production within which is comprehended a wide range of subjects and to which a host of distinguished artists have made important contributions; they point the direction in which there is still much to be found that is worthy of the most serious consideration and the most carefully applied treatment; and they mark the lines along which men who have the faculty of observation and a capacity for personal interpretation can travel to great accomplishment. There is, indeed, hardly any kind of sentiment that does not, in this connexion, lend itself well to the artist’s purpose: tragedy, domestic drama, romance, pure fantasy, comedy even, are all permissible, and often a picture with the most attractive qualities can be made out of a plain statement of everyday facts, so picturesque is the setting which the sea life provides for the people who lead it. During recent years, indeed, many painters have established themselves by the sea with the express intention of seeking there material for important works, and many others have paid long visits to our coasts for the sake of studying at close quarters the subjects which are so plentifully available; and thesemen have not found it necessary to depart from strict reality to give interest and convincing strength to their pictures. By being true to fact, by recording faithfully what they saw around them, they have added to British art much that is well worth possessing, and they have proved that realism under suitable conditions is a factor of infinite value in pictorial production. They have had ample scope for the exercise of their selective sense and for the use of their powers of observation, and even though they have chosen to deal with a clearly defined class of material they have not been hampered by limitations which checked the free expression of their temperamental preferences. This is because the sea life is so abounding in action, and because the people who lead it are of so many types and so unstereotyped in their ways, that to the painter who works by the sea a constant succession of new motives is presented, and motives, too, which by their picturesqueness and human interest satisfy completely the artistic demand.
Clearly, in marine painting there is no lack of opportunities. In its various branches it offers to the artist room for the most divergent activities and it allows him a spacious field for the exercise of his powers. If he aspires to conquer difficulties they are there in plenty, difficulties which have to be met with courage and handled with discretion. If he is content with simple tasks there are many which will occupy him agreeably and be well worth working out. If he is a serious student of nature’s manifestations they are set before him in profusion, and the whole array of her mysteries is paraded for his instruction; and if humanity is his subject, all the actors in the drama of sea life are there to inspire him with their doings and to stir his imagination with the record of their achievements. Always the contact with the sea brings him something fresh that leads him into new trains of thought and suggests to him new ways of applying his technical skill; but always the demand is made upon him that he should put forth the whole of his effort to reach and maintain the highest standard of artistic practice. There is no place in marine painting for the man who, taking the line of least resistance, seeks by compromise and convention to gloss over his want of knowledge and tries by superficial cleverness of handling to divert attention from the incompleteness of his analysis. An artist of this sort had better let the sea alone and choose something simpler and less abounding with pitfalls for his inexperience.
THIS series of reproductions of paintings by artists who have given particular attention to marine painting in its various aspects has been made as comprehensive as possible so that it may illustrate adequately a subject capable of the widest application. Examples belonging to different periods have been included to show what have been the changes and developments during a term of nearly two hundred years, and what has been the nature of the appeal of the sea to men of widely differing temperaments. The conventional arrangement, the poetic transcription of fact, the realistic study, the decorative interpretation, and the frank expression of the modern idea are all presented and are available for intelligent comparison. The capabilities, too, of marine painting are made clear, and the extent of opportunity it affords to the serious student of art. Thereare illustrations which have a specially instructive significance because of the technical knowledge of the subject displayed in them; there are others which are interesting on account of their imaginative quality; and there are others again which reveal the inspiration of the sea life and reflect the spirit by which it is guided. All these have their part in the record of British marine painting, and are both valuable historically and worthy of consideration for artistic reasons.
Rightly, an early place in this record must be assigned to Charles Brooking, because in his works can be seen for the first time the clear intention to study marine subjects with a perception of their inherent characteristics. Brooking’s intimate knowledge of shipping, acquired during his early days at Deptford Dockyard, is plainly shown in such a picture asThe Calm(p. 35), which has an attractive truth and precision of statement. It is a matter for much regret that his early death should have cut short a career which was so full of promise, and in which he accomplished so much that deserves to be remembered; but honour is due to him as the painter who gave to our school of marine painting its foundation of accurate observation and careful regard for the actualities of the subject.
Other men carried on ably the tradition he had established, and in a comparatively short time there grew up a by no means inconsiderable group of painters who took an effective interest in the pictorial material with which the sea provided them. Within half a century of his death he had many successors, some of whom were true sea painters, though, perhaps, the majority were landscape men who included the sea in their study of nature’s manifestations, and only turned to it, more or less frequently, in the intervals of their more usual work. Yet in this latter class were counted some of the greatest British masters whose achievements rank among the best by which our school is distinguished. To the company of these masters certainly belongs George Morland, the erratic genius who, ranging over a wide field of subjects, found that the sea was often one of the most helpful sources of his inspiration. His coast scenes—of which theFishermen Hauling in a Boat(p. 37) is a good example—have a characteristic measure of strenuous vitality and are painted with all the sureness of touch that marked his handling of the rustic motives which occupied so much of his attention. Morland, however, did not paint marine pictures so frequently as his contemporary, John Wilson, who was a consistent student of the sea and lived for some years at Folkestone. His capacity can scarcely be questioned. The picture reproduced (p. 38) has a very modern freshness of manner and shows exceptional knowledge of wave movement and atmospheric subtleties, and though there is in it something of the convention of the period, it certainly conveys the sentiment of nature.
Another master who made many digressions into sea painting was Constable; a number of sea and coast pictures are included among his more memorable performances. HisChesil Beach(p. 39) has the better qualities of his art, its strength and sincerity, its robust directness, and its sense of rightly estimated reality. Without being in any way dry or dull it is singularly faithful in its statement of the facts of the subject and in its adherence to nature’s authority; and it bears decisively the stamp of the artist’s personality.
Even more personal both in point of view and in manner of interpretation are the pictures by Turner, that greatest of all painters of the sea. No one but Turner could have attained such a height of dramatic power as is reached inLowestoft(p. 45), andThe Shipwreck(p. 41), in which the majesty and the tragedy of the sea are expressed with overwhelming strength. Only a supreme master could have kept conception and execution in such perfect relation, or could be so vehement in conviction without lapsing into bombast. But Turner was a master without a peer, and in these two pictures—and the extraordinarily suggestive and mysteriousFarne Island(p. 44)—he is seen to rare advantage. Yet he was not less evidently a master when he chose to deal with less ambitious material, when he painted subjects like theYacht Racing in the Solent(p. 43), andThe Prince of Orange Landing at Torbay(p. 42), in which no tragic note was needed, and no greater problem was presented than the expression of the breezy freshness of a restless sea. Always, the acuteness of his vision, the depth of his understanding, and the consummate certainty of his method can be realized, whatever may have been his mood or his intention.
Beside Turner, John Thomson of Duddingston can be assigned but a minor place; yet, amateur though he was, he cannot be passed over as unworthy to be reckoned among the more accomplished of the earlier sea painters. Minister of a church in Scotland, he was able to practise his art only in the intervals of his clerical duties, but as can be judged from hisFast Castle(p. 47) he had real ability and much command of technical processes. He belongs to a period of great importance in British art, a period which produced not only Turner and Constable, but other masters of high rank, two of whom, Cotman and David Cox, painted marine pictures frequently and treated them with delightful sympathy. Cotman’s broad, dignified method is well seen inA Galiot in a Storm(p. 48), a composition finely designed and convincing in its large simplicity; and David Cox’s exquisite perception of beauties of atmospheric effect is rarely better evidenced than in his delicate and luminousCalais Pier(p. 49), a study of sea and sky which can be unreservedly praised for its sensitiveness and truth. It is as rightly seen as it is attractively painted. There is much less freedom and spontaneity in Pyne’sTotland Bay(p. 51), and yet this picture has a scholarly quality that entitles it to respect, though it is a little too formal and conscious. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a fashion for elegant formality, and Pyne was, perhaps, induced to follow this fashion by his study of Italian scenery. As a sea painter he can scarcely be compared with George Chambers and Clarkson Stanfield, who were of the same date, and both of whom had much professional experience of the sea before they became artists. Chambers drew shipping with admirable accuracy—there is ample proof of this in his picture,Off Portsmouth(p. 52)—and knew the ways of the sea intimately; Stanfield was also an excellent draughtsman, but on the whole was more artificial than Chambers. Both men were for some while successful scene painters, and in Stanfield’s work particularly the influence of the theatre is apparent; there is an obvious scenic quality in such pictures as theEntrance to the Zuyder Zee(p. 54) andThe Port of La Rochelle(p. 53); and hisCoast Scene(p. 55) is planned and composed with the scene-painter’s feeling for construction and distribution of detail. But, despite the theatrical atmosphere of his art, Stanfield’s achievements are not to be despised, because the foundation of them was sound and the knowledge he displayed in them was acquired at first hand.
Dyce’sPegwell Bay(p. 57) is interesting for two reasons, as a digression by a successful figure painter into open-air work, and as an illustration of the influence exercised by the Pre-Raphaelite movement upon the painters of the time.It is an extraordinary piece of precise statement, photographic in its accuracy, and is painted with a careful regard for reality that deserves recognition. Indeed, its simple honesty makes it of more account than such a picture as Cooke’sDutch Boats in a Calm(p. 58), which, capable though it is, has more than a suspicion of artificiality; or than E. T. Crawford’sClosehauled, Crossing the Bar(p. 59), in which the spirited treatment of the sea is to some extent discounted by a certain clumsiness in the drawing of the sailing-boats and by the somewhat mechanical manner in which they are used to help out the composition. There is artificiality, too, in the design of Müller’sDredging on the Medway(p. 60), but it is more cleverly disguised, and the handling is more accomplished. All three of these men, however, contributed something to the sequence of paintings which stands to the credit of the British school, and all were serious observers of the sea.
So, too, was Copley Fielding, though other subject-matter than the sea engaged much of his attention. But he spent a good deal of his time on the coast and used his opportunities there with considerable discretion. As a result his sea paintings have a sympathetic quality that is undeniably persuasive, and they derive an additional charm from their dexterity of brushwork and from their pleasant management of colour and tone. TheCoast Scene(p. 61) represents him well; it is an eminently skilful technical exercise, and it conveys correctly an impression of gathering storm and of the force of a rising wind. The suggestion, also, of cold, gleaming light when the sky is partly veiled by dark clouds is sufficiently true and is made with due restraint—without that over-accentuation of tone contrasts which is so apt to destroy breadth and unity of effect.
From Copley Fielding to Edwin Hayes is a wide step—a jump from the methods of the past to those of the present day. Yet in actual time the two men were not so widely separated, for Hayes was born some while before Fielding died, and counted several of the earlier British masters among his older contemporaries. Fielding, however, was brought up in a tradition which had a strong hold upon the painters who were working at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and he made no real effort to break away from it, though in his interpretation of it he was, in some respects, less narrow than his fellows. But the formula influenced him as it did nearly all the other men of that date, and it gave a sort of set pattern to the paintings even of those artists who had the sincerest possible desire to be faithful to nature and to study her seriously and persistently.
The effect of this formula was to regulate the composition and to prescribe the introduction of shipping in certain specified positions so as to conform to an accepted pictorial convention. To its dominance is due the general similarity which can be perceived between the works of John Wilson, Chambers, Crawford, and Müller, here illustrated, and which could be followed out in many other pictures by the lesser painters of the time—a similarity which was neither accidental nor unconscious, but directly induced by adherence to what were held to be the correct principles of picture designing. Moreover, there seems to have been a belief then that a painting of the sea must have some added interest to assure it of popularity, for a sea without shipping prominently placed upon it was hardly ever attempted; an incident was almost always introduced or a story suggested.
When Edwin Hayes began his career the earlier tradition was losing its authority and was being replaced by a less limited conception of the sea-painter’s mission. To some extent he came under it in his youth, but he was naturally responsive to new ideas and kept pace with the more modern developments. Anyhow, in hisSunset at Sea(p. 63) there is no hint of the old convention, and there is no trace of the belief that an added interest was required to make a sea picture attractive. He was content to give faithfully his impression of the sea as it appeared before him, to tell no story save nature’s own, and to take for his incident the gleam of sunlight upon tossing waves stirred into movement by the wind—a poor subject, perhaps, according to the old standards, but one which to-day appeals to us as admirably satisfying and essentially complete.
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there has been a steadily growing tendency to enlarge the scope of marine painting and to allow to the men who practise it more and more freedom in the assertion of their personal feeling in art matters. That is why so much material of the most varied character is available now for the illustration of this branch of pictorial production, and why so many artists seek in it opportunities for the display of their capacities. They can approach it from the point of view that suits them best, they can interpret what they find there in the way that seems to them most appropriate, and they can, if their study is sincere, get most closely into touch with nature’s secrets.
One entirely legitimate point of view is given adequate demonstration in the two pictures,The Kyles of Buteby C. Parsons Knight (p. 65), andFrom the Dorsetshire Cliffsby John Brett (p. 67). Both pictures are records, plain and uncompromising statements of fact, and in neither of them is anything unaccounted for or any detail left for the imagination of the spectator to supply. Frankly, the intention of both painters was to put in everything that the most acute vision could detect in the scene represented and to attain completeness by painstaking effort; and undeniably both painters have justified themselves by the thoroughness with which they have carried out this intention. Yet to many people so much labour to prove the sincerity of the artist would seem to be unnecessary and to savour somewhat of pedantry; knowledge so lavishly displayed—and with such scrupulous regard for accuracy—is not always persuasive. But such pictures have every right to exist, and there is a place for them in art.
So there is, too, for conceptions of such a totally different type asThe Wreckby C. E. Holloway (p. 68), and theMarineby Whistler (p. 69). These go to the opposite extreme, eliminating detail, avoiding precise and careful explanations, conceding nothing to the unimaginative man who can only believe what is made perfectly clear to his limited vision. They demand from every one who sees them a full measure of thought and intelligent analysis so that the shrewd understanding which controls their apparent carelessness of method can be estimated at its proper worth. Holloway’s painting is, in fact, only a rapid note in which he has visualized a momentary impression, but visualized it so surely that he has been able to make other people see just what he himself saw in the subject. Whistler’sMarineis an impression, too, a summary of movement and wave action; but it is something more than a simple realization of the fundamental things in nature because into the treatment of it a decorative intention has been definitely admitted. By the painter’s skill the formality of the design has been cleverly concealed, and by the spontaneity of his method the deliberate processes of his art are kept from being too apparent;but formality and deliberation have both contributed to the successful evolution of a very significant picture.
Quite a different kind of sentiment pervades Hook’s vigorous canvas,The Seaweed Raker(p. 71). He was not concerned with subtleties of suggestion or with problems of decorative adjustment, but with the robust representation of nature’s ruggedness, and there was a simple honesty in his virile, forcible work. He understood the sea, and though he looked at it in rather a literal way he never made his paintings of it commonplace. Partly this was due, no doubt, to the unaffected directness of his executive devices and to the frankness of his craftsmanship—he never resorted to any graceful artifices to soften off the bare facts of his subjects—but there came in also the influence of a temperament which was by no means insensible to the romance of the sea and to the sombre poetry of the seaman’s life. That Hook was one of the greatest of British marine painters can fairly be claimed.
But greater still was Henry Moore, greater because his insight was even more acute and because, while he equalled Hook in robustness, he used his powers with more reserve. He was a finer colourist, a truer judge of tone relations, and more sensitive to refinements of atmospheric effect; and as an executant he had a lighter and more flexible touch. A lifelong painter of the open air, he began to study the sea almost at the outset of his career, and for some years alternated between landscapes and marine pictures, but eventually devoted himself almost exclusively to the branch of practice in which, as he plainly proved, he was without a serious rival. The particular charm of his work—a charm that is very apparent in the two examples reproduced—is in its suggestion of space and wide expansiveness, and of the recession of the surface of the sea to the far horizon. From such a picture asA Breezy Day—which forms a frontispiece to this article—many lessons are to be learned in the management of tone values to express distance, and in the treatment of clouds not as a background but as an overhanging canopy in true perspective; and both this and theBreak in the Cloud(p. 72) show most clearly the certainty with which he could draw the form of different kinds of waves and give to them their proper movement. And all this he did without appearance of labour and without exaggerated display of technical facility, but invariably with the quiet confidence that comes from exact and well-tried knowledge.
Colin Hunter’sFarewell to Skye(p. 73) seems, somehow, to have about it a touch of sentimentality and to be lacking in force. Perhaps this impression comes partly from the title, but it is encouraged also by the sweetness of the composition with its flow of curving lines and its carefully balanced distribution of lights and darks. But as a study of a picturesque coast scene the picture is pleasing, and as a note of an effect of evening illumination it has much merit. It represents well an artist who possessed his full share of the Scottish feeling for romance and whose methods were sound, and it can justly claim a place among the more popular of modern marine paintings. There is a place, too, for W. McTaggart’sSounding Sea(p. 74), a picture very different in inspiration and technical manner and yet as definitely expressive of the Scottish temperament. Like all McTaggart’s works, it arrests attention by the strength of its personal conviction and by the characteristic method of handling that he has employed, and to this attention it is fully entitled.
Frank Brangwyn’sIn Port(p. 75) has a story to tell, the story of a voyage ended and of the safe arrival of a homeward-bound ship. The artist has notembroidered his subject with any touches of fancy; he has dealt with it as a simple matter of fact and as an everyday incident in the concerns of a seaport town—an incident which excites hardly more than momentary interest among the idlers on the quay. Yet by this very reticence he seems to give point to his story and to emphasize the British attitude towards sea life as something to which the people are accustomed and which they treat as an obvious part of the national heritage. It is, perhaps, because he has been at sea himself that he has no inclination to be either sensational or sentimental in painting what a sailor would regard as a very ordinary occurrence; it is undoubtedly to his experience afloat that can be ascribed the air of intimacy which pervades the picture and the sterling accuracy with which every detail of it is rendered. Of course, as a painter he is exceptionally distinguished, but even the painter of distinction is none the worse for possessing an expert technical understanding of the material which he proposes to depict upon his canvas. In this instance the combination of nautical experience and high artistic ability has been productive of unusually satisfying results.
It is questionable whether to T. B. Hardy has as yet been assigned the position among British artists which is due to him on account of the merit of his work. A prolific and popular painter he possibly spread his energies over too wide a field and fell into the habit of over-production. But in his best pictures he reached a very high level of accomplishment, and as a sea painter he was especially successful.A Change of Wind, Boulogne Harbour(p. 77), which has been chosen to represent him, ranks among the best things of its class, on account of its accuracy of observation and its powerful realization, not only of the action of the sea, but of the weather conditions, too, by which this action was induced. In design the picture is to some degree a reversion to an earlier type, but in spirit and manner of execution it is essentially a modern effort, and brings a past tradition logically up to date.
Napier Hemy’sBoat Adrift(p. 78) owes none of its inspiration to the older sea painters, or at all events to none earlier than Hook. There is a hint of Hook’s robustness and solid realism, but the character and quality of the handling, the constructive sense, and the observation of the lift and sweep of the waves are all Hemy’s own. He took his subject far too seriously to depend upon any one else for his inspiration, and he studied it afloat under all aspects and in all sorts of weather, not as a landsman who limited himself to what he could see from the shore. His thoroughness had its full reward, for it is by his marine paintings that his reputation as one of our leading artists has been established, though in his early days he was a figure painter and made some success with landscape as well.
Another instance of a figure-painter’s judicious dealing with the subtleties of the sea is to be seen in Sir John Lavery’sEvening—the Coast of Spain from Tangier(p. 79). He has found something here well worth recording, an effect of warm evening light over still waters which ripple gently on a flat beach, a subject full of colour and delicate aerial suggestion. He has interpreted it with tenderness and sympathy, but without descending into mere prettiness, and without losing the strength of the subject. A picture so happily conceived deserves the sincerest welcome.
An entirely different class of work is exemplified in W. L. Wyllie’s ambitious composition,Blake’s Three Days Engagement with Van Tromp(p. 81). This is neither a simple piece of nature nor a representation of a normal incident inour modern life, but an imaginative reconstruction of an historical scene. To build it up a vast amount of research and consultation of authorities were needed, to carry it out convincingly a very thorough acquaintance with the sea was indispensable—both conditions have been excellently satisfied by the artist. His picture is entirely credible: he makes us believe that he has put before us what actually happened, and he treats the whole motive with a seamanlike understanding that clears it of all suspicion of artificiality. Compositions of this type were popular a century ago, when the sea painters had opportunities to witness such picturesque, yard-arm to yard-arm naval actions; the sea-fights of to-day do not lend themselves so well to the artist’s purposes. A good deal of the drama must inevitably be lost when miles of water intervene between the opposing fleets.
A sailor’s acquaintance with the sea gives a particular point to the work of Thomas Somerscales. His pictures,Off Valparaiso(p. 82) andBefore the Gale(p. 83), have an unpretentious reality that can be accepted in perfect good faith. They are distinguished by an unusual straightforwardness, and by a simplicity of manner and method that is curiously effective; and they tell us, because they are so simple and straightforward, more about the sea than we can learn from paintings which are much fuller of detail and accessory incident.
R. W. Allan’sOff to the Fishing Grounds(p. 84), and C. W. Simpson’sLanding Fish(p. 85), have to do with life in home waters instead of the adventuring of ocean-going ships, but they are none the less interesting on that account. In the first picture, indeed, the chance of working out a very agreeable line composition has been used by the artist with the best of judgment, and he has entered thoroughly into the spirit of his subject. In theLanding Fish, a good illustration is given of the way in which a perfectly literal statement of a scene, for which almost any fishing-port would provide a setting, can be made artistically important by a painter who looks at it sympathetically and who can induce other people to look at it through his eyes. There are few occupations carried on so picturesquely as that of the fisherman or among surroundings so full of varied pictorial possibilities; and there are fewer still which offer so many picture subjects ready-made.
To turn from works such as these to Herbert Draper’sFlying Fish(p. 87), is to change abruptly from fact to fancy, from a frank rendering of things as they are to a fantastic suggestion of something that never existed save in the artist’s imagination. But the realities of the deep often seem so fantastic, even to the people who have had long experience of them, that the artist may surely be forgiven for building upon them fancies of his own. Indeed, this water nymph at play in the element to which she belongs appears much more credible than many of the sea monsters which have been proved to be actually in existence; and by the artist’s skill she is presented as a very pleasing embodiment of the spirit of the sea—sportive, irresponsible, and ruthless too, but beautiful and intensely alive. It is not good for us to be always material-minded and matter-of-fact, so we can allow to the mermaid a place in art even though we know that she has been classified by science as merely a species of sea-cow—a most unpoetic translation of an ancient myth.
There is nothing either mythical or fantastic about H. S. Tuke’sAugust Blue(p. 88); on the contrary it is a purely realistic painting of a most ordinary subject—some boys bathing from a boat on a calm sunlit sea. But out of thisquite ordinary material he has built up a picture with an exceptional degree of dignity, largely felt, and with a kind of classic distinction of manner. But there is in it no coldness or want of human interest; it is living, animated, and essentially of to-day, and wholly right in its fresh, unforced naturalism. Easy, fluent draughtsmanship and strength of design help to make it a memorable exercise in descriptive painting.
The next three pictures, Sir David Murray’sThe Fiend’s Weather(p. 89),Where the Somme meets the Sea, by Tom Robertson (p. 90), and Moffat Lindner’sThe Storm-Cloud, Christchurch Harbour(p. 91), provide a sufficiently striking contrast in effects of atmosphere. The first suggests the turmoil of a gathering storm, threatening ruin and destruction to everything in its path and sweeping irresistibly over land and sea. In his treatment of it the artist has made the most of a dramatic opportunity to show how thorough has been his study of nature and how well he understands her ways, even when she is in one of her most perverse moods. The second picture finds her at her gentlest moment, exquisitely calm and peaceful and perfectly in repose; the third at a time when beneath her smile lies a threat, and when almost without warning a sudden outburst may break the quiet of a summer evening. All three paintings deserve attention, for they represent artists who are prominent amongst us to-day and whose work is with justice widely appreciated.
Another painter who handles coast subjects with notable ability is W. Russell Flint. His two water-colours,The Fane Islands(p. 93) andPassing Sails(p. 95), have a breadth and distinction of manner and a brilliant directness of brushwork that can be unreservedly admired. His simplified method of dealing with nature’s facts is very effective, as it gives plainly the real essentials without any labouring of detail and without diverting attention from the things that he wishes to emphasize. It has a decorative value, too, and adds a quality of style to his work. During the last few years he has produced many paintings of this type—coast scenes with figures—and he has kept them consistently at a high level of accomplishment.
Cecil King’s delightfulRegatta Day at Appledore(p. 98) has to do with the lighter side of sea life, and hisH.M.S. “Wolsey”(p. 97) with matters much more serious. TheRegatta Day, as its subject befits, is a lively and brightly treated study, full of incident, and attractively irresponsible in composition. It has both power and originality, and it puts beyond question his capabilities as a draughtsman because it presents a difficult problem in perspective which he has solved most happily. But much of its charm comes from the holiday spirit in which it is conceived and carried out. TheH.M.S. “Wolsey”is more sober, and conveys well the idea of the grim simplicity of the practical fighting machine built for use, not ornament.
Norman Wilkinson is a versatile artist who does many things well, and who yields to no one at the present time in knowledge of the pictorial chances which the sea provides. He is shown here under more than one aspect—as a painter of interesting realities in his panoramicPlymouth Harbour(p. 100), as a very acute student of wave movement inUp Channel(p. 103) andThe Wave(p. 101), and as a maker of rapid and suggestive notes in his sketchEtretat(p. 99). Of these examples the most arresting in many ways isThe Wave; it has such an unusual amount of vitality, it is so seriously observed and yet so free and unlaboured, and it is so correct not only in action but also in matters of lighting and reflection and of colour variation as well. This is an instanceof the happy alliance of the science and the art of marine painting to bring about a perfectly balanced result.
Windbound(p. 104), by Hely Smith, andThe Needles(p. 107), by Charles Pears, are inshore studies, notes of incidents which, though they are undramatic, lend themselves well to the painters’ purposes.The Needles, with its sense of breeziness and of the rough-and-tumble of a tide-race, is a picture that excites a distinctly pleasurable emotion, so much is there in it of the joy of living when the sun shines brightly and the wind blows briskly and the sea is sparkling and full of colour. The other two pictures by Charles Pears,The Examination(p. 106) andThe Yacht Race(p. 105), make a contrast of grave and gay—a contrast between the dark moments of war and the happy times of peace.
Neither W. Marshall Brown inThe Sea(p. 109), nor Julius Olsson inThe Night Wrack(p. 110) andHeavy Weather in the Channel(p. 111), seek to make their pictures more attractive by adding to them any subsidiary incident. They are content to depend for success upon the plain statement of things they have seen in the sea itself and to be painters of the sea, and the sea alone. But both of them have found stirring subjects, impressively strong and calling for a particular decisiveness of method, and both have proved fully equal to the occasion. Of these three canvases perhaps the most largely seen and the finest in its grasp of the motive as a whole is theHeavy Weather in the Channel, which has really monumental breadth and dignity.
Between these powerful paintings and those of the Hon. Duff Tollemache and A. J. W. Burgess, which have a similar æsthetic intention, come in the sequence of the illustrations two very interesting works of Walter Bayes,The Timid Bather(p. 113) andThe Red Beach(p. 112). These make an intelligent compromise between realism and abstract decoration; they are designs worked out with a sound idea of pattern-making and in accordance with a pre-conceived scheme of arrangement, but the details of which they are composed have been studied from nature with serious and observant vision. They are fancies with a solid foundation of fact, whileThe Watch that Never Ends(p. 116) andThe Scarborough Fleet(p. 117), by Burgess, and theStorm on the Cornish Coast(p. 115), by Tollemache, are pure fact all through, and fact stated with well-justified confidence.
A decorative purpose is very definitely apparent in John Everett’sDeck of a Tea-Clipper in the Tropics(p. 118) andBreakers(p. 119), but this purpose has been fulfilled with excellent judgment and eminently good taste. There is an obvious formality in both pictures, and yet this formality does not detract from their charm—indeed, in theBreakersit adds strength to a sensitive note of an afterglow effect in which there is a delightful perception of tone subtleties and of varieties of curiously related colour.
Two absolutely opposed points of view are illustrated inThe Wave(p. 123), by Nevinson, andMargate(p. 121), by James McBey.The Waveis an exposition of a modern theory of pictorial expression; it is set forth with unhesitating clearness of manner and method, and allows the artist’s attitude to be estimated at its full value. In such a series as this it fittingly has its place because it presents an aspect of marine painting that has to be considered. TheMargatesketch, like W. T. M. Hawksworth’s cleverLow Water, Penzance(p. 125), and theWet Rocks, St. Ives, by R. Borlase Smart (p. 126), is frankly naturalistic, professing to be nothing more than a plain record of things as they are,and propounding no new theories about the development and evolution of art. Its spontaneous delicacy of handling is one of its most evident merits.
Motor Launches, by G. S. Allfree (p. 127), is an example of a type of work which seeks to combine actuality and fantasy in carefully studied proportion, and to produce by this combination something that will be more significant than an absolutely imitative transcription of nature. Certain features of the picture are exaggerated and given marked emphasis so that they may point more definitely the meaning of the subject and increase the strength of its dramatic suggestion. When this method is employed with sane understanding—and with the necessary touch of imagination—it has excellent results. In this case the artist has seen correctly how far it would be expedient for him to go and has not spoiled his picture by making it too audacious.
Yet another phase of modern thought in art influences the work of I. W. Brooks, whose desire is not so much to tell a story or to hold the mirror up to nature as to produce an ornamental abstraction. When the methods he employs to attain this end are not too much defined the outcome of them is a picture likeIn Cymyran Bay(p. 129), which has a most agreeable restfulness and decorative balance and is inspired by a feeling of serious reality. When he is more explicit in his processes he arrives at results like the two coast scenes (pp. 128 and 131), which have the arbitrary expression of a Japanese print and go as far in their elimination of everything save the fundamentals of the design. But such methods are undeniably legitimate because where they are used with due discretion they make possible the working out of decorative schemes which have both distinction and beauty.
A number of notable paintings of marine subjects stand to the credit of Terrick Williams, who has for some years past devoted himself to this branch of art with conspicuous success. Some idea of the grace and delicacy of his work can be obtained from the example shown,Clouds over the Sea, Holland(p. 132); but naturally it does not reveal the character of his colour. As a colourist he is more than ordinarily endowed, he has the real colour emotion, and it is always delightfully in evidence in everything he does, and always it is controlled by an unerring taste. He has, too, an acute perception of refinements of tone by which he is guided surely in his treatment of the luminous atmospheric effects to which he especially inclines. His right to a place among the chief of the British marine painters of the present day is indisputable.
The last two artists on the list are very unlike one another, so this series of illustrations ends with an effective contrast of styles. The picture by Frank Emanuel differs widely in intention and manner from those by E. A. Cox.The Ancient Port of Fêques(p. 133) shows affinities both in style and manner with the early nineteenth-century sea painters and follows their tradition in composition and light-and-shade arrangement. Still, the artist has chosen good material and has made skilful use of it. The other painter, E. A. Cox (pp. 134 and 135), is a decorator with a faculty for seeing things largely, and for setting them down confidently. His use of broad, flat tones is most effective, and the vigorous precision of his drawing gives a convincing quality to his performances. He seems always to know just what he wants to do and to be able to do it without a moment’s hesitation—and that implies very assured knowledge acquired by the most thorough training.
A. L. BALDRY
“THE CALM.” BY CHARLES BROOKINGPhoto, Mansell(In the National Gallery, London)
“THE CALM.” BY CHARLES BROOKING
Photo, Mansell
(In the National Gallery, London)
“FISHERMEN HAULING IN A BOAT.” BY GEORGE MORLANDPhoto, Mansell(In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
“FISHERMEN HAULING IN A BOAT.” BY GEORGE MORLAND
Photo, Mansell
(In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
“SEAPIECE.” BY JOHN H. WILSON, R.S.A.(In the possession of Messrs. Arthur Tooth & Sons)
“SEAPIECE.” BY JOHN H. WILSON, R.S.A.
(In the possession of Messrs. Arthur Tooth & Sons)
“CHESIL BEACH.” BY JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A.(In the possession of John Levy, Esq., New York)
“CHESIL BEACH.” BY JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A.
(In the possession of John Levy, Esq., New York)
“THE SHIPWRECK.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.Photo, Mansell(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“THE SHIPWRECK.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
Photo, Mansell
(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“THE PRINCE OF ORANGE LANDING AT TORBAY NOVEMBER 5, 1688.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.Photo, Mansell(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“THE PRINCE OF ORANGE LANDING AT TORBAY NOVEMBER 5, 1688.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
Photo, Mansell
(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.Photo, Mansell(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
Photo, Mansell
(In the National Gallery of British Art, London)
“FARNE ISLAND.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.(In the Collection at Barbizon House)
“FARNE ISLAND.” BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
(In the Collection at Barbizon House)