ARTISTS AND BEAUTY.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18165, 1 November 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

ARTISTS AND BEAUTY.

Women who visited the Royal Academy were' interested to see that the “pretty-pretty" face no longer provides the artist' with his inspiration. The Victorians, who sought to 1 capture conventional loveliness on canvas, have few successors to-day. The beautiful women whom Leighton or Burne-Jones employed as models •might find it difficult to earn a living in 1930. Nowadays the painter demands personality. One has only to look at the portraits and the faces of models who have posed for various studies in this year’s Academy to realise that a plain woman who expresses an interesting personality is a more popular subject than her infinitely “prettier” sister. “Personality is much more interesting than beauty,” Mr Orlando Greenwood, R.8.A., said to Daily Chronicle representative. “I have painted what some people would term nondescript types without character,' but often in such men and women there is something very personal. They are quite unlike oftier people, and so are interesting to the artist. Faces of the average flapper type -are no good to the artist. The Victorians followed in the line of eighteenth century painters, who loved ‘prettypretty’ faces. I suppose there is a fashionable type to-day, although it is vastly different from the Victorian type. But we are too near to it to see it properly. Fifty years hence the 1930 type may be as easily recognisable as the Victorian type.” Mr G. R. W. Nevison;' asked by a Daily Chronicle representative if he had ever taken an ugly, or even an extremely plain, woman as a model, replied instantly'. “Women whom I should consider good-looking most people might regard as ugly. As for the conventional face, regular features, lovely hair, and so on, I loathe It." ’ '