The Cotman Collection | 28

Cotmania. Vol. IV. 1929-30

Archive: SDK Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive
Reference Number: SDK/1/2/1/4
Page: 10 verso (numbered 16)


  • Description

    Newspaper clippings on the Brussels exhibition, and others on the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition and a collection of paintings by Edward Lear

    Newspaper clippings on the Brussels exhibition, and others on the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition and a collection of paintings by Edward Lear

    Date:

  • Transcription

    {Newspaper clipping – Observer}
    THE ENGLISH TRADITION
    A small exhibition of picked English paintings of recent years will open at the Paul Guillaume Gallery in Grosvenor-street on Tuesday; and as I looked round the walls that were being arranged yesterday I could not but regret that the collection as it stands was not included in the British Exhibition in Brussels, where a portrait group by Watts is the most recent picture.
    The two pictures by Paul Nash in this exhibition are equally outstanding. I see in them the English traditions of style, derived from Claude, revitalised in specifically modern form. Both pictures are extremely restrained and dignified in colour and architectural form, and they have that air of finality which comes to us only from work produced by a man who knows exactly what he wants to say and who can express his meaning in precise and elegant terms. Paul Nash is the John Sell Cotman of today.
    Observer. 13.10.29

    {Newspaper clipping, Observer}
    AN OPEN AIR SCHOOL
    The wealth of British public galleries in works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is such that an exhibition of this kind might be organised without difficulty or inconvenience if they were allowed to collaborate, whereas, under existing circumstances, Sir Charles Holmes, President of the Selection Committee, and his distinguished colleagues, had to rely mainly on the generosity and, in some cases, the self-sacrifice, of private collectors. The fact that their untiring efforts have been crowned with success ought not to be used as an argument against the Royal Commission’s recommendations. There is no doubt whatsoever that, in the case of Turner, for instance, the impression created would have been far greater if some of his masterpieces in his later manner, preserved in the National Galleries, had been included in the catalogue.
    The effect produced on the Belgian public by the Exhibition is particularly interesting to watch. It is generally agreed that, as portrait-painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough need fear no comparison with Van Dyck and Rubens. But attention centres undoubtedly on the landscape painters, both in oil and water-colour. Wilson, Constable, Cotman, David Cox, Crome, and, of course, Turner attract both the critical and uninitiated. "This is an open-air school," a friend remarked to me. "English artists and English poets seem to be intoxicated with the love of nature. Even their portraits are painted against a landscape background, and this landscape is not a piece of artificial scenery, but the real think, rough ploughed fields and rambling woods. These people seem to spend their life in the countryside, among their dogs and horses, as if their climate were the mildest in the world. Look at their water-colours: only the cool enthusiasm of English artists could seize such fugitive effects and fix them forever with an unerring brush. People are always talking of their distinction and elegance, but it is love of nature which illumines the whole school, from the classical and well-balanced compositions of Gainsborough and Wilson to the wildest fancies of Turner."
    Observer. 20.10.29

    {Newspaper clipping, Sunday Times}
    Richard Wilson, to whom both these giants owed so much, is also seen in several good examples, and while the Cromes do not come up to the National Gallery examples, Cotman is seen at his best in his "Waterfall," a masterpiece which is certain to command the admiration of Continental connoisseurs.
    Sunday Times. 13.10.29.
    (Brussels Exhibition)

    {Newspaper Clipping, Times}
    EDWARD LEAR
    By one of the ironies not uncommon in the history of art and letters Edward Lear, who is familiar to everyone as the author of "Non-sense Songs and Stories," was wont to call himself "the landscape painter." That the claim was not an idle one is shown by and exhibition of about 100 of his water-colours at the Howard Gallery, 28 Museum-Street. They are selected from a collection bequeathed by Lear to Sir Francis Lushington, from whose daughter it was purchased. Lear was an excellent draughtsman of a kind to suggest -when buildings occur- that he had architectural training. Comparatively few of the drawings are in black and white, but frequent pencil notes on the others lead one to suppose that on most cases the colour was applied subsequently. This would help to explain the stylish economy of such beautiful water-colours as "Janina" (13) and "Malta" (46), in which not only that main features but the qualities of sky and water are perfectly suggested with light washes. The drawings -mostly in Asia Minor- vary a good deal in quality. On a large scale Lear's defects as a composer are evident, and he generally failed in recission(sic.), but some of the small studies are charming indeed. "Near Nice," "Gethsemane," and "Fort San Giorgio, Malta," are examples. In some of the drawings there is a resemblance to William Callow.
    Times. 24.10.29.

    {Newspaper Clipping
    BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB
    The winter exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 17 Savile Row, - to which admission is by signed order from a member - consists of three parts: pictures, drawings, furniture and works of art of the Empire and Regency period; examples of Romano-British art; and water-colours by Francis Towne (1740-1816).
    Francis Towne, whose drawings are shown in the Library, is a comparatively recent rediscovery. In style he may be described as somewhere between J. R. Cozens and Cotman, working for the most part in a convention of pen line and flat washes of colour, with an easy grasp of landscape structure. There are 27 drawings by him in the collection, and "Tree Trunks at Tivoli" "Ambleside," and " The Source of Arveyron" may be named for their special qualities in design. There is a note upon the artist in the catalogue.
    Times. 19.12.29

Newspaper clippings on the Brussels exhibition, and others on the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition and a collection of paintings by Edward Lear