ROYAL ACADEMY 1927.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 2

ROYAL ACADEMY 1927.

AN UNEXCITING SHOW. *

“ ..... The prestige of the Royal Academy has been so consistently maintained with the exception of the period immediately succeeding the war, when a Bolshevist clement was perilously near obtaining control that the acceptance of a work of art for exhibition is invaluable to the reputation of the artist.” “Morning Post.” “ the young artist faces the ridicule of his fellows when he sets his course towards the Academy.” James Bone.

Since the spacious days when dukes lived in ducal residences with walls lifted for hanging huge pictures the art of painting has changed vastly The change lias been in part the economic one which manifests itself in ducal estates becoming transformed into limited companies: in part a change of technique which has been the result of foolproof photography ousting laborious manual reproductions of pictorial subjects. For this reason the art of painting no longer aims at the pictorial ■ accuracy of, say, a Frith’s “Derby Day,” but at an intangible something which the mind of the artist wishes by his brush, to convey to the onlooker, a mental effect no photographically exact picture can give. This mental effect .is so elusive that many miss it, hence we see the profiteer of our day, emulous as he is of the ducal estate and its amenities steering clear of picture buying on a large scale. The tests of good and bad pictures are too nebulous: ho would never know the money value of his purchases. One can see little in common between the many new schools of painting except; the desire to express something - a something which the artist often fails to get across to use the metaphor of the sister art of acting. Such of these artists as achieve their aim do so through the medium of pictures the language of which is little understood by the lay mind. But they have begun to have a following, the importance of which is now so great that the Royal Academy has had to admit it. This the Academy has done in two ways by hanging some of the work of these newer schools in Gallery XI. and by admitting a number of these artists to membership. But in spite of all tliis the Royal Academy remains old-fashioned and although the Academy has at last adopted better methods of hanging its pictures the modernist painter tights shy of Burlington House. Thus Augustus John and Brangwin, admitted to the Academic fold, have not even sent in pictures. This year the list of 11.A’s who have not sent in numbers ten bigger than ever before. There are no works by Mr Alining Bell, Mr Frederick Griggs, Mr D. Y. Cameron or Mr Charles Sims. The Australians, Mr G. W. Lambert and Sir Bertram Mackeimal, are absent. Obviously the “Morning Post” dictum which heads this article is the academic, the official view. Mr Bone’s that of the fervent post-war spirit. The new school were born before 101-4 but they were speeded up and are now coming into their own. How els*e can one interpret the purchase of Mrs Dod Proctor’s “Morning” which the “Daily Mail,” that great organ of the British public is to send on tour round the country? Mrs Proctor has indeed arrived and one sees sour grapes in the cold remarks—that it will be over people’s heads—of the mouthpiece of another Fleet street magnate who is, one imagines, secretly annoyed he did not have the happy thought first ! Ail this being understood we can examine the Academy with an appraising eye. The Exhibition is not socially the attraction it was. One can see an opening for Diehard reflection that this was bound to happen. Look what a lot of women artists having thei." work shown: the picture of the year, “Morning,” is actually a woman’s work. And there are a great many more women’s portraits this year than is- usual and the best portrait is undoubtedly Mr Giya Pliilpot’s attractive picture of Mrs Henry Mond seated, very unconventionally, on the floor —a feminist vagary of course ! —with a most decorative screen behind he)'. It is more than a portrait, it is an extremely beautiful and decorative picture which would always hold the spectator’s interest altogether apart from the identity of the sitter.

Sir Willi:’.in Orpen lias given us. this year a portrait of a woman which is being hailed as better than I lie many portraits of men he has given us. The many studies lie made of staff; officers seemed often to be produced by a.

mechanical formula, but Sir William’s portrait of .Miss Penelope .Lawrence, M.D., is a masterly and sympathetic st mi v.

(Such work as Academicians have sent in is good and usually pleasant work but none, of it is impressive i’Jiougll to linger in the memory. Mr Jack’s, full-length portrait of tier Majesty is more- 'than a ceremonial portrait. The composition is dignified; the detail work is admirable, except that it might be objected that the silks and velvets lack lustre. Sir Arthur Cope’s portrait ol the King is a sound and solid piece of work, but both artists have in the exhibition works of greater merit — lor instance, Mr Jack’s portrait of the Lady Marjorie Krskinc is a most engaging piece of work, and bis two studies of “Tiie Blue Drawing-room” and “The Chinese Chippendale Boom, Buckingham Palace’’ arc stronger in technique, the treatment of light and shade in the first being specially able and the painting of the china in the second masterly.

There are few political portraits and none of them outstanding. That of Sir Austen Chamberlain certainly gives us that masklike appearance we so often see in the Foreign Secretary. One imagines that politicians content themselves with being clone once and most of those who have any claims to be notable have already appeared on the walls of tiic Academy. But the wives of statesmen and politicians are a feature of this feminist exhibition. Viscountess Crey, Mrs Neville Chamberlain and of course .Mrs Henry Mond, whose picture is in a category of its own, Mrs Baldwin was an early visitor to (ho private view to see the portrait of her daughter by that clever artist Mr James Mcßcy, who, it will be recalled, illustrated a book' on Lord Alleuby's campaign in Palestine. Mr Mannings still delights with his equestrian studies aml Ihis year has given us delgihtful portraiture as well in

‘Phyllis and Ua ;hel”, daughters of Colonel Spender Clay, who are shown on horseback. New Zealanders will look for the two Imge canvases, one by W. L. Wyllie. (be other by Donald Maxwell.' of the battle of Jutland, and in these studies of an epic sea struggle try to solve the question, Who won I

Considering how extreme freedom is understood to be the creed of the modernists it is surprising to find few' mule studies and none worth noting. The picture of the year, “Morning,” is nut a nude. It is of a girl lying in bed wrapped in bedclothes, a picture of which Mr Frank Butter says:—

“Here is no artificial composition reeking of the studio, but a fragment of life, nobly seen and simply staled. The girl is a girl of the people, the bedroom is

humble and austere in its furnishing. Beyond the girl and the bedclothes, which afford an ascetic but exquisite harmony in greys and pinks, we get but a glimpse of a corner of a chest-of-drawers, a chair, and the wall beyond. But with these few accessories the picture is full from corner to corner with life, air and light. These are the elements which Mrs Proctor lias organised into a creative design of compelling power and beauty for all who have eyes to see.

“Fresh from the glories of the Prado, fresher still from the array of contemporary French painting in the Rue do la Boetic. I find Mrs Proctor’s picture a masterpiece fit to hang in any company. Here she has achieved, apparently with consummate ease, that complete presentation of twentieth-cen-tury vision in terms of plastic design after which Derain and other muchpraised French painters have been groping for years past. She obtains tliis monumental plasticity of form without any mannerisms or eccentricilies by the sheer power and beauty of her painting.” There is a problem picture, but little has been said about it. Its message gets across, but gets across differently to different onlookers, whose mental eye cannot eliminate its bias. It is the “Allegory” of the Dublin artist, Mr J. Keating. In the background is a ruined country-house, in the centre a gnarled oak, in front of it a woman nursing a baby with a liercelooking man at her feet; on one side is a coffin draped with a Sinn Fein flag, and two men, one a Black-aud-Tau, the other an Irishman, are digging a grave feverishly from two opposite ends; and on the other side of the oak are a top-hatted parson and an unmistakable la ndowner.

Mr J. B. Soutcr, whose picture was so sensationally removed from last year’s Exhibition for political reasons, lias trod the easier path in sending a portrait of Miss Fay Compton.

Mr Oswald Birloy, who has not foug returned from an extensive tour abroad has only one picture exhibited this year and that a portrait of Mr A. C. Zealanders whose work is to be seen arc Mr and Mi's Robert M. Hughes. McCorquodale. The only other New Mr Hughes shows some charming studies of the French Alps —“The Alps from Bourg d’Oisans” in Gallery 1., “Spring in Bourg d’Oisans” in Room XL, the enclave of the moderns. His third picture is “November.” Mrs Hughes shows two charming studies, “The Promise of Spring,” and “Ash Trees at Trewoofe, ” spoils’ of her stay at St. Buryan, Cornwall.