Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 5 June 1923, Page 2

places. A HANDLESS ARTIST. LONDON, April 3. History records a certain Giuseppe Mezzofanti who was horn without arms and yet achieved fame as a painter. Air IT. Weaver Hawkins, whoso etchings and water-colours are on view at Elliott- and Fry’s Galleries in Baker-street, does not, like Mezzofanti, hold his brush between his toes, but, having lost one hand in the war, and the other hand permanently disabled, he manipulates his brush or etching point with what remains of his mutilated arms. And ho does so with astonishing skill. Both his water-colours and his etched plates can lx> appreciated on their own merits without any allowance being made for tho physical disability under which they are produced. The street views of Tangier are particularly notable for tho subtle observation of shadow colour in a land of sunshine and heat so intense that all shadows are lightened and rendered transparent by reflected light. Afr Hawkins is at his best when he uses his delicate washes ou a basis of pen drawing. ITis pure water-colour drawings are a little vague and lacking in structure and substance. Quite surprising is a “Study of the Nude,” which has a firmness of line and nervous accentuation scarcely to be expected in work done under such exceptional conditions, when tho pencil is not guided by a flexible wrist, hut by a movement emanating from the torso.