Cotmania. Vol. IX. 1933-4

{cutting}

'Sunday Times'—23/07/1933

Fame and all that, How to get it, the lesson of the masters, by Frank Rutter

You cannot have it both ways. If by fame you mean to be talked about right now, for the next five days, five weeks, or even possibly five months, you have to set about the business in one way. You can achieve your object by acrobatics, by alimony, or by advertising; by almost anything that will momentarily arrest attention. But if fame means to you that our name should be repeated with respect and reverence fifty or a hundred years after you are dead and buried, then you have to go about the business in a very different way, and it is as yet quite unproved that high jinks in paint will take you very far. For in the first place you have to work. Fashions change, tastes alter, but—good work is always good work. Whatever the style, whatever the medium, good work is good work for all time.
There may be people who think that Early English Watercolours are dull. Certainly they are less exciting and hair-raising that some of the latest novelties imported from Paris. But we cannot assert with any confidence that all these novelties are good work. This can be said with far less hesitation about the majority of old English watercolours
The greatest difference between Old Masters and Modern Painters is that whereas the former got better and better, the moderns—however promising in their beginnings—tend to grow worse and worse. I fear this amounts to a rule, though happily there are still many honorable exceptions. At the moment there are at least four exhibitions of Early English Watercolours open in London. One is the annual affair at Walker's Gallery, to visit which is always an enjoyable and instructive experience; another is at the Fine Art Society; a third at the Palser Gallery; and a fourth at the Cotswold Gallery. At each one of these the visitor can see the work by acknowledged masters; and he can also discover some admirable drawing by some artist whose name he has never heard of. At least I speak for myself.

Turner

the youngest of us can still learn something from the work of these masters—even from that of Turner ! The chief feature of the exhibition at the Cotswold Galleries is a range of seventeen drawings done by Turner between his seventeenth and sixteenth year, and these drawings testify not only to his genius, but also to his unremitting industry. In the early "Dent-de-Lion (or Dandelion), near Margate" (3), done when Turner was about 17, he has made rather a mess of the tree on our left; but the rest is beautifully drawn and coloured. We can see how he has profited by the instruction of Malton in perspective: the gateway is almost perfectly drawn and most delicate and sensitive in colour. It is a pity about the tree, but the rest is so good that we are convinced that, like the hero in one of Steenson's novels, Turner "means to do better." How he does it we can see in his later drawings. And now let us turn to the other end of Turner's career.
In recent years attempts have been made to present Turner as something of a toper, though his later works should be enough to give the lie to this slander. No man who had indulged in drink to excess could be physically capable of producing what his sure eye and steady hand achieved when he was in his sixties. Look at this "Schlss Eltz, with the ruins of Baldeneltz" (15), done when he was close on seventy. It is only a leaf from a sketch-book, the merest note of drawing with a very few touches of colour—but how sure is each touch!
It is high time our modern artists learned—which many do not yet appear to have done—that one does not become a Great Man by haunting cafes, by soaking at home, by over-indulgence at cocktail parties. The god-given gift must be there—that is something which cannot be acquired. But those who have the talent can either cultivate it, or kill it. There are too many tragic examples of its killing in the annals of modern art. It can be killed in many ways; it can be cultivated in but one—and that is work, and more work, and more work.
How pleased dear Ruskin would be to know that there are still great moral lessons to be deduced from Modern painters.

Schnebbelie

Do you know this name? I confess I did not till I found it on a most delightful drawing at the Cotswold Gallery, "The Fishmongers' Almhouses, Newington Butts" (19). Signed and dated February, 1819, it is scrupulously topographical; but it is also most pictorial, a little like a particularly good Algernon Newton. And how this man R. B. Schnebbelie could draw, not only the houses, but the sensitively limned bare trees. How delightfully he puts his little figures, how spirited is the coach, with its four galloping horses.
Why have I never heard before of an artist with so admirable a talent? Redgrave tells me that our man, Robert Bremmel Schnebbelie, was the English-born son of another topographical draughtsman, Jacob. S., of Swiss extraction. We also gather from the same authority that though he exhibited a few drawings at the Academy, he was chiefly engaged on illustrations for magazines.
Redgrave adds that his death in 1849. "had been hastened by starvation." What a pity! And yet perhaps it is bettwe to die of starvation and leave the world a drawing as pure and beautiful as this than to feast and riot and go on drawing worse and worse, like—but I really must not mention names.

Amende Honorable

And now with all this moralising I have myself no space in which to deal with the other galleries. I wanted to tell you about the perfectly delightful Rowlandsons—rare landscapes, as well as figure subjects—and a whole host of other drawings at the Fine Art Society. I wanted to talk about the group of pencil drawings by J.S Cotman, the Paul Sandbys, and other good things at the Palser Gallery; and I could prattle for hours about my weakness for J. J Cotman and respect for William Callow, Peter de Wint, Thomas Shotter Boys, and a dozen others at Walker's. But I can only add one more thing.