GALLANT COMPANY

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

GALLANT COMPANY

FAMOUS FOLK OF OUR TIME. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY. / From the walls in one of the new rooms of the National Portrait Gallery, London, look down the faces of men and women who, in the King’s reign, left a name behind them, says the Children’s Newspaper. Not all are here who will be long remembered, but what most strikes us is that, though the war seems the most tremendous occurrence in these 25 years, the soldiers are far outnumbered. When .we look on these portraits it seems that war was far less important than other fields of human endeavour.

The soldiers are three—Lord Roberts as he looked to G. F. Watts before the century began; Lord Kitchener painted by Charles Horsfall, a youthful-looking portrait; and Lord Ypres, who had ceased to be Sir John French when John Sargent painted him after the war.

Among the statesmen and politicians the best portrait is that of Mr. Asquith, painted by Andre Cluysenaar, who has captured to admiration the bluff, shrewd face of the great Yorkshireman who led the nation as it went into the Great War; here are his sagacious eyes and forehead. Next to him we might place Mr. de Laszlo’s Lord. Haldane, though we feel that the weighty thoughtfulness of the face is lost.

Then comes Lord Milner as Hugh Glazebrook saw him just after he had made the Peace of Vereeniging with the Boers, laying the foundations of a united South Africa by a great act of Liberalism; and after him comes a company whose place in the story of Britain the future will judge better than we can now: the Marquess of Landsdowne (rather overpowered by the feathered hat of the Order of the Garter), Lord Balfour, Lord Curzon, Lord Birkenhead, Lord Bryce, and (a rather faint sketch) Mr. Bonar Law. Sir Joseph Ward, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, has an honoured place among them. Just by him is the imperious head of a man who was not often in the public eye, but was one of the greatest lawyers of our time, Lord Sumner, who died only last year. These were all well-graced actors on the stage of public affairs who had their meed of applause while they lived. We can place with them two to whom death gave the highest honour, Scott and Shackleton. There is an explorer of another kind who won fame in a day and whose portrait here will surprise some people; it is that of Sir John Alcock, who made the first direct flight across the Atlantic. Here is Mrs. Pankhurst, who led the Suffragettes; and here, too, are Keir Hardie, with a lined face of transparent honesty and sincerity, : and the rugged Henry Hyndman, Father of English Socialism.

Painters, musicians, writers, . dramatists, are here also; a sketch, of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, Sir Arthur Pinero, Henry James (who became an English citzen because he loved the land of decent and dauntless people, as he called them), Joseph Conrad (the Pole who loved to be one of us), Sir Edward Elgar, Thomas Hardy, Rupert Brooke and Sir Edmund Gosse.

We are a little surprised to find only two scientific men, William Bateson. and Sir James Dewar. William Orpen, who painted, a number of these people, is otherwise remembered by his portrait of himself; and among all this galaxy of talent is one who had a genius for saintliness, Bishop Gore. »