Wieneke Archive Book 4g : Art in Brisbane Presscuttings

.11a NEWS AND fiEVIIINV Yeats in Dublin Jai,,. U hire MosT OF TIM Dublin critics used up their atail - able superlatives to describe the last exhibition of Jack B. Yeats' work, feeling that he had reached u peak point of lyricism in the hand- ling of oil paint. Now at the Victor Wadding- ton Galleries he shows, if anything, a more singing quality of colour and brushstroke. For- tunately he never becomes tiresomely rhapsodic because the private world which he inhabits and which he reveals only on canvas, is the domain of a mind which has never made acquaintance with "Ballyhoo". One might perhaps best convey the flavour of this new exhibition by simply reciting some of the titles: "The Man on the Wild One Waved His Hat", "On Through the Silent Lands". "The Violence of the Dawn", "Queen Mum Walked on this Strand", "Glory", "The Laugh- ing Night"-those who know his work will immediately envisage the pictures suggested: the noble, prancing mare dashing into the even- ing sunset; the woman, touched with Grecian calm, bearing against the battering winds: the frock -coated figures inhabiting realms of the imagination and the district of Sligo. Here are all the magic casements which Jack B. Yeats places before admirers of his pictures. It is most difficult to describe the medium which he employs. However 'detached from descriptive ends be his swirls and strokes of gleaming colour, in the final analysis the whole of each of his pictures becomes a landscape or' an interior for the circus, tinker or gentle folk of a past age who form his subjects. It may be claimed that "atmosphere" or "climate" would better describe these painterly backcloths. but it cannot be denied that the world of abstrac- tions never enters into his paintings. True, the artist conveys the abstraction proper to the poem. but using colour and his own curious impressionistic technique instead of succeeding sentences. It is indeed the measure of his in- dividuality in a world of individual painters that though the songs he sings are tinged with an ancient glory they are couched in the visual language of our .time. Foyles SWIFT UPON MR. GRAHAM RIVNOLDS. book on the Victorian painters comes an exhibition with the same title "Painters of the Victorian Scene", appropriately enough, at Foyles. The collection is a miscellaneous ?ne. and some may well cavil at the inclusion of The Thames at Henlet by A. Cope, which is Victorian neither in date. 1916, nor in style, brisk New English Art Club. But there are many important works, a joy to the eye and to the imagination. Millais' Widow's Mite in which the sentiment is reflected in the technique as well as in the conception: R. B. Martineau's The Last Chapter and Joseph Mordecai's Amy Rohsart, which both reveal the sensuous feeling for paint which underlies a great deal of Victorian anccdotage. Pleasing. too, is the crisp colouring of Mulready, the imaginative observation of J. C. Horsley. and the almost Surrealist precision of C. Hunt's An Imp of Mischief. It is remarkable how the influence of the eighteenth century persisted; the tradition of Rey iinlds in Thomas Feed's A Lady in Fancy Dress oval of the French rococo in Etty's nudes. Our new appreciation of the nineteenth century. however, should not blind us to the fact that it could produce paintings infinitely worse than the basest efforts of any other age, and of these the paintings of A. Glen- denning are fully typical. Renaissance Paintings Terence Alullaly Tin UURRI N:1 1 X111111TioN al the Arcade (wilco of Gothic and Renaissance paintings ranges from loo Sienese Trecento panels 117 and 201 to works attributed to Tintoretto 1121, Vasari (26) and Alessandro Allori (II). and contains much of interest and one or two pictures of real importance. Among the fourteenth and fifteenth century paintings there are four damaged, yet nonethe- less quite delightful predella panels, illustrating the story of Amphitryon and Hercules (18) and two excellent Catalan Primitives (13). But much more interesting than these are the fine Boden- see School panel of c. 1450 (5) and the Madonna and Child given to Jacopo di Cione (19). Coming to the sixteenth century. the large Bellinesque Madonna and Child with Two Saints (2) is outstanding, for it is well above the average of the vast number of pictures turned out by Bellini's pupils and followers and com- bines lovely colouring with that air of solemnity which particularly characterises the work of these men. It has been given to Catena, an attribution which is probably correct, in which case it represents hint in his first and most Bellinesque period. Another very striking pic- ture is the powerful Pieta (21) adapted from Michelangelo's famous sculptured group of the smile subject in St. Peter's. There are also two impressive pictures by Buonconsiglio, one, particularly tine Madonna (7), displays the austerity of colour and the simplicity of design characteristic of him at his best, and the other is a Head of Christ (22). regarded by Borenius as an early work. In addition. there are pictures attributed to Ciiampietrino (3), Romanino (8). Marco d'Oggiono (9), Beccafunti (25) and others. and several good portraits. including an admiraine one of a sad little boy by Santi di I no 1.2 Lefevre ALTHOUGH ART WOULD seem to be an essentially -private occupation, it is amazing how few artists succeed in expressing a private INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE 3 vision. Educated at art scliJnds where they all absorb the same lessons, they came eventually to depend on a public which only permits cer- tain clearly defined categories of style'. Only by reason of his social and topographical isola- tion has L. S. Lowry been able to produce so personal, so individual a style as that which is displayed in his current exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery. For he is not, though one would at first sight be tempted to say so, a primitive. His work lacks the minute seg- mentation of observation, the haphazard per- spective and the fortuitous composition which mark the primitive vision. He has evolved a form of figure notation which allows him to depict crowds more successfully than any other living artist. His buildings are endowed with the .personalities of human beings. His urban landscapes have the compelling logic of a classic grove. and instead of nymphs and fauns. bowler-hatted factory hands perform their soulless ballet against a background of shabby shops and grimy chimney -stacks. But though Lowry captures so much of the pervasive melan- choly of our time. though he is the supreme recorder of provincial angst, his works are redeemed front despair by their bright, placid colouring. The light of an early spring morn- ing blesses the air of Manchester and Salford. and it is, curiously enough, the few rural land- scapes (Nos. 19 and 23 for instance) which, by reason of their dehumanised remoteness, pro- duce a sense of sadness. What is so impressive about Lowry's work is his amazing ability to organise tin immense painting. Industrial land- scape is painted on a canvas measuring four feet by five. It is a vast panorama of slag heaps, condensers, water towers, chimney stacks and innumerable buildings, with the most tlistant objects well over a mile away front the imaeinery view -point of the spectator. Yet not only does he avoid any sense of confusion - the long white road bisecting the picture at the point of the Golden Mean is mustcrly-hut he endows it with a sense of pulsating life. men and machines function busily behind the factory walls. The smoke is an outward sign of inward grace. Only the Gothic -revival church in the foreground stands empty and dead. Courtesy: Lefevre Gallery LOWRY KYNANCE GALLERY I, Kynance Place. Gloucester Rd., S.W.7. W1.9. 8977 POTTERY, PAINTINGS, LAMPS By Contemporary Artists TOYS, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY AND BOOKBINDING By Disabled Persons Monday - Saturday 10-6; Thursday 10-1 JOHN UNDERWOOD. PHOTOGRAPHER 12, GIRDLERS ROAD, W 14 Riverside 3517 PAINTINGS. SCULPTURE and COPYING, etc. GEOFFREY GLYNN 116b KING'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.3 Fine Old Coloured Aquatints of London