ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2949, 21 September 1910, Page 70

ART AND ARTISTS.

THE ART OF DAVID MURRAY, R.A. The fine art feature of the September Holiday Number of the Windsor Magazine consists of 12 excellent reproductions of landscapes and seascapes by David Murray, K.A., together with a beautiful coloured plate of the artist's fine painting, "Meadow Sweets," and a biographical sketch of the- artist's career, in the course of which the writer says:

"In following that general law of growth and transformation of style inevitable in all art which is progressive, Mr Murrayshows youthful vigour side by side with matuiis dexterity. His seaacapen are a surprising development and example of his artistic activity, and apparently, however large are his ambitions, his capacity for their expression instantly responds. Mr Millais, Mr Leader told us the other day, confessed to knowing nothing of the diificulty of drawing until he took to drawing trees. Mr Murray would probably tell us that it was not, until he started to draw waves that that difficulty- with him developed, for in the drawing of waves there must be not only great scientific knowledge of their construction, but something, in the doing, of the excitement and the sternness of the chase. Incomplete and confusing as they climb and uncurl and blur, or spread into great reaches of irradiated surface, they must present constant diffioulty through allurements of the sight. But while Mr Murray's seas are full of emotion, here slashed and fringed with foam, there displaying an outspread glory of luminosity, his .admirable ignoring of detail in favour of fchos essentials, local colour, atmosphere, and light, has resulted in achievements of effect that, are astonishing in their semblance to truth, for ho has let in upon them the open air of acute observation. "Under the words Art or Nature we include all the phenomena of the universe. Art, therefore, means everything which can bo differentiated from Nature; and to bring the two within the compass of ono frame is the work of the landscape painter. To put two a.nd two together i 6 Art; that which prompts man, however, to do tire

same is Nature. Art is therefore the employment off Nature's suggestions for an end.

''When 25 Mr Murray built himself a rude hut on the banks of Loch Coruiak. ana' set himself determinedly to learn the process of a strange medium. Thus, somewhat -late in life, he opened the book of Nature, the holy writ of beauty. Probably he has never been happier, never more despairing than ha was in that first summer of freedom, when, artistically, he lived every moment of the day, despaired each night, arid rose each morning anxiously hopeful to accomplish something great. He (may have met—he probably did meet —a few artists, and must have heard in talk with them ideas and ideals take the place of market prices. He mu6t have many unforgettable memories of thoso first months of freedom, when he was floundering in the use of„an unaccustomed vehicle ; when he was seeking to train himself to keep the first vision intact, that? he might, plank it upon canvas, and when lie was just beginning; to recognise that, to become an artist, it was necessary to simplify Nature from its complexities. "In 'IBBS Mr Murray came couth, awl established himself in Langham Chambers : and from that time forward, although London is his permanent abode, lie had come und£<r the dominion of the Wander geist. •'He set himself to explore the English counties, s?!ecting fields here and woode there for portrayal, offering to the public the {gathered harvest of the country's beauty. In 1885 Sussex attracted him, as is shown in his picture 'The Rother at Kye.' He also in that year visited Dorri(Techt, from which visit 'The Oude Canal' was the outcome. The following year h* went back to Scotland and painted two pictures of Loch Katrine. But he alEo went to Picardy, and in 'A Pieardy Pastoral' we have, as it were, his first conversion from the sombre dignified quality of work done in the north to the equally important higher values of that done in the south, for we find him, as a student of the sunnier atmospheres, recording his impressions in norvel terms, and showing signs of that extraordinary versatility of which we had an astonishing example in his more recent departure into seascapes, and that. versatility is not the best part of his art's charm.. Looking at pictures as dissimilar as 'A Hampshire Haying,' with the mystery and the majesty of its storm-eloude, at the sunny and ethereal 'Siesta,' and then at the majestic rendering of the lines from Tennyson's 'Maud'—

Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave, to take chance examples from Mr Mur-. ray's work, it is difficult to over-appreciate the splendid concentration which, lending him insight in each case into the essentials of art, have led to such different results. "To-day, with almost 4-0 yeans of practice behind him, and with that complete masterv of his medium which is denied l to all but great executants, Mr Murrray must view, through the long perspective of time, that lonely youth who worked so hard in the Isle of Skye, makinlg experiment after experiment, with tolerant strangeness; he may even fed that it is perhaps fortunata that by his successes and not his failures a man's place in Art is gauged. "His 'Valley of Coruisk,' which was the result of these first months of struggle, reached so high a level of excellence that it was hung in the Royal Academy of 1875: and from then we find him a regular exhibitor at that institution, of which, in 1891, he was to be made an Associate, and) in 1905 a full member. Long before this honour was conferred upon him he was to receive recognition in his own land. Ho was elected an assooiate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1881. The Royal Water colour Society in 1886 enrolled his names amongst its list of members. Honours he, has indeed had 'thrust upon him.' 'Fir Faggots' is included in the Glasgow Corporation Gallery ; 'A Hampshire Haying' is in the Bradford Art Galkiry; 'Driving the Cows' is 'in the Leeds Art Gallery; whilst 'My Love ia Gone a-Sailing' and 'ln the Country oif Constable' were purchased for the nation under the terms of the Chantrey bequest in 188 i and 1905 respectively ; and other public galleries also have important pictures by him."

MR ARTHUR HACKER. The early years of Mr Arthur Hacker (who has at iast reached the coveted fauteuil at Burlington House) Jay in artistic paths, for his father, Edward Hacker, was • a well-known line engraver in the days when line engravers were entities. At that tiimo it was the fashion —if a boy was not destined for a 'varsity career—to spend so many yearn at a well-known school, and ito finish on the Continent Young Hacker conformed with the fashion, and, after « pleasant time at St. John's College, London, ho went to Nogcnt-sur-Marne, in France. At 18 he entered th>e Royal ; Academy Schools with such brilliant conI temporaries as Stanhope Forbes, Solomon ;J. Solomon, and La Thangue. Then ramo i Paris. He joined the atelier of M. IJon- ; nat, and he and Mr Solomon ran "cheek by jowl" for a time, and it was "on the knees fil the gods" who would be the first) to reap academical honours. They painted in a similar style, and' thero was much ; n common in their choice of subjects. Even with Mr Hacker's health broke down and he was compelled to go abroad, his companion was Mr Solomon. Together these inseparables tramped' through the Spanish peninsula to Madrid, and from Madrid they went to Tangier. This journey has since been reflected in works from the brushes of both painters. When the time came for academic honours, Mr Hacker was the first to impress the academicians with his ability. He became an n*.;ociato two years before his friendly rival; hut Mr Solomon turned the tables on him later iby first reaching full rank. The new R.A. has had plenty of encouragement from the trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, who in 1£92 purchased his ''Annunciation" for £B4O, and : the directors of our public galleries, who have bought no fewer than nine of his works. Like Mr Solomon. Mr Hacker of late years has devoted himself largely to portrait, painting, and his eminence in this particular branch of art has made him one of the most-sought portraitists of the time Ono of his finest efforts in this direction is a portrait of Miss Ethel Wright, herself a clever artist, for which she gave 50 sittings. The interlaced hands are wonderfully drawn and as wonderfully coloured.