It seems hardly possible to do adequate justice to the very unusual genius of Frank Brangwyn, who charms thousands of Exposition visitors with his eight panels, representing the Four Elements, in the Court of Abundance. Brangwyn's pictures have one great advantage over all of the others, which lies in their accessible location, well controlled by daylight. All the other decorations seem to me to be situated too high above the ground. Brangwyn's have no such disadvantage to contend with. How much more important, for instance, Mathews' lunette would look, placed somewhere nearer the level of the eye.
Brangwyn's canvases are a veritable riot of color, full of animation and life. They are almost dynamic. There seems to be something going on in all of them, all the time, and one hardly knows whether it is the composition, the color, or the subject, or all three, which gives them this very pronounced feeling of animation. He knows how to approach the extreme possibilities in pictorial decoration without losing sight of certain elements of repose. Seen from a distance, their effect at first is somewhat startling, owing to their new note, not reminiscent in the very least of the work of any other living - or past - painter. On closer examination they disclose a great wealth of form, very skillfully treated. There is every indication that it gave the artist the utmost pleasure to paint them. This spirit of personal enjoyment, which all of them convey in a remarkably sustained fashion, is contagious, and disarms all criticism. They are primarily great paintings in a technical sense. Added to that quality is a passionate love of pure color, juxtaposed with fine feeling for complementary colors of great intensity.
Brangwyn's glass window technique, of separation into many primary and secondary colors by many broad contrasts of neutral browns and grays, is very effective in bringing a feeling of harmony in all of his paintings, no matter how intense their individual color notes may be.
His pictures are not intellectual in the least, and all of the people in his pictures are animals, more or less, and merely interested in having a square meal and being permitted to enjoy life in general, to the fullest extent.
The quality of enjoyment that runs through all of Brangwyn's work is extremely useful in the general atmosphere of Mullgardt's court. In the northwest corner, Nature is represented, in all the fecundity of the earth. Only in our wildest dreams, and only in the advertisements of California farm lands and orchards, do such grapes, pumpkins, pears, and apples exist.
The picture to the left shows the grape-treaders, in the old-fashioned and unhygienic practice of crushing grapes by dancing on them in enormous vats. Others are seen gathering and delivering more grapes. As in the other picture, showing the harvest of fruit, more people are shown. Brangwyn never hesitates to use great numbers of people, which seem to give him no trouble whatever in their modeling and characterization.
Following on to the right, "Fire," represented as the primitive fire and as industrial fire, in two pictures, continues the scheme. That group of squatting woodmen carefully nursing a little fire is almost comical, with their extended cheeks, and one can almost feel the effort of their lungs in the strained anatomy of their backs. There does not seem to be anything too difficult for Brangwyn. "Industrial Fire" is interesting from the decorative note of many pieces of pottery in the foreground. They seem to have come from the kiln which muscular men are attending.
"Water" is unusually graceful and delicate in its vertical arrangement of trees and the curve of the fountain stream, coming from the side of a hill. Women, children, and men have congregated, taking their turn in filling all sorts of vessels, some carried on their heads, some in their arms. Brangwyn's clever treatment of zoölogical and botanical detail is well shown in flowers in the foreground, such as foxglove and freesia, and the graceful forms of a pair of pinkish flamingoes. In the other panel of the same subject, a group of men on the shore are hauling in their nets.
The last of the four, "Air," represents this element in two totally different ways; the one on the left gives the more tender, gentle movement of this element, in the suggestion of the scent of the bowmen screened by trees, moving toward their prospective prey, while the other very bold composition is of a windmill turned away from the destructive power of an impending windstorm. In the foreground people are rushed along by gusts of wind, while children, unaware of the impending storm, are flying kites.
The masterful and varied treatment of these eight canvases show Brangwyn as the great painter he is known to be. We should rejoice to have such excellent examples of his brush permanently with us.