Eleven British artists

INTRODUCTION B A . J . L . McDONNELL T H E P R E S E N T E X H I B I T I O N o f contemporary painting in England has been assembled by the British Council for exhibition in Australia, not in order to present a complete survey, bu t rather to stress certain aspects which are important in the general development of English painting today, and which may not yet be over-familiar to people in Australia. Since the beginning of the century painters in this country, in com- mon with those in most other countries, have found inspiration in the work of the French schools, some from the Impressionists through Sickert, the greatest English painter of his age, others from a younger and somewhat miscellaneous generation, which has come to be known as the School of Paris. Others again have been less influenced by the exciting discoveries and experiments that have taken place on the banks of the Seine, and have pursued a gentler course more in keeping with their native tradition. O f the painters represented in the exhibition, Edward le Bas pro- claims the first of these influences most strongly. His 'Conversation After Breakfast', in which the figure on the left is t ha t of the painter Charles Ginner, a member o f the Camden Town Group which acknow- ledged Sickert as leader, is just such a scene o f intimate family life as Bonnard and Vuillard delighted to paint, bu t it is as English in spirit and feeling as their interiors are French. J o h n Piper is a painter whose work shows less of foreign influence t han many others of his generation. One is tempted to think of him as a nineteenth-century Romantic born out of his time. His wild Welsh landscapes, his series o f drawings of Windsor Castle, even the records of destruction brought by bombing to the squares and crescents of Bath, are illuminated by strange dramatic effects o f colour and light that seem to suggest a setting for a stage. 5