Another point about the official picture is that it is generally very large and is, as a rule, about the dullest product of the brush; for the average modern painter when called upon to perform in this way generally becomes simply overwhelmed with deep seriousness. He designs his picture in the most pompous and formal manner and produces results either boring or unintentionally funny, which latter is perhaps the more tolerable.
William Orpen
Not so with Sir William Orpen—his keen sense of humour is apparent in all his work, whether he is painting tone studies of mirrors at Versailles or drawing his friends on the rocky coasts of Ireland. It is one of the many charms that delight us in his work and does not detract an iota from its distinction and importance. Some of his exquisite drawings are reproduced here, and though the full purity of the line cannot be retained in reproduction they are some of the perfect things in this book.
It is a relief to find oneself thinking in terms of “perfection” about the work of any man so modern as Sir William Orpen. Because, of course, where the modern draughtsman and painter—as is so commonly the case—despises his materials and scorns technique it is impossible for one to do so. The mind—which is so much the product of the senses—must know distaste where the senses are repelled. One may forgive him because of other merits in his work, but the merits have to be rather splendid to cover sufficiently such sins. To Whistler and the stylists who have followed him much of their inspiration must have come from the materials of their craft. One is grateful that they grasped this truth that
Glyn Philpot
the English Pre-Raphaelites also missed—that rare and delicious qualities in the handling of a medium best present to the mind rare and beautiful qualities in nature. In this sense Mr. Philpot is essentially a stylist—one feels that to him the intrinsic beauties of his medium form an appreciable amount of his inspiration: that—quite literally—common oils and varnishes can be blended to a golden elixir for his use. For the materials of his craft are for the artist what he chooses to make them: a piece of red chalk in one man’s hand is a lump of hardened mud, conveniently sharpened to a point for making marks on paper, while, to another, it is a precious substance mined from the earth in some distant country and prepared with infinite care, and he knows that one touch of it on a paper—most carefully chosen—can be the basis of a delicious colour-harmony; that ink can flow from a reed pen in a line straight and true or run its course with subtle modulations—as a little stream flows from the hills.
A lead pencil after all can be only the bitten stump on the office boy’s desk—an instrument for unseemly writings or obscene scrawlings; or it can be a cunningly wrought stick of plumbago encased in a scented cylinder of cedar—such a thing as Leonardo would have loved. Is not the artist capable of an alchemy that can change dross to gold!
Brangwyn