BEAUTY IN A MINOR KEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 483, 24 September 1948, Page 6

BEAUTY IN A MINOR KEY

Waketield Art Collection Arrives

Written for "The Listener" %G

HOWARD

WADMAN

OMETIMES we are in no conS dition to receive the great booming masterpieces of the world. We want something in a minor key, done with such excellent skill that we enjoy it too much to ask carping questions as to what it amounts;to. This is the mood that calls not for Bach or Beethoven,

but for Arne or Boyce. This is when you take down not your Shakespeare but your Housman, not War and Peace

but Pride and Prejudice. I think it could be maintained that it is in this department of the Arts that the Efglish excel and always have excelled. You will see them at it again in the Wakefield Collection. __ This collection was made possible by a gift of £3,000 to the British Council from the late Lord Wakefield. Its purpose was the purchase of drawings and prints by contemporary British artists which could go on tour as worthy representatives of the graphic arts in Britain. Mr. Campbell Dodgson was given this delightful job of shopping to do, and he came back with a basket of beauties, More than two hundred of them. The over-all and unavoidable impression left upon you by these pictures is one of superb craftsmanship. These are the works of men (and a few women) who know exactly what watercolour, or the drypoint needle, ér the graver can do, and who can make them do it, It is in this aspect that the exhibition is so salutary for a generation which has almost persuaded itself that the vision is everything and that no technique of communication is required.

There is, however, a world of difference between mastering your medium, and sticking to the academic rules until you are well and truly stuck, ,Not all Art Schools seem to understand the distinction, The grammar must be learnt, certainly. The hard discipline of drawing, the grind of learning how paint or ink, how wood, stone, or copper" behaves, all this must be embraced and

loved, and_ after that comes freedom -for the few who want it. This is what happened to Frances

Hodgkins. She succeeded as an academic painter and teacher of watercolour,*and then threw out the rules and_ started again. By a significant irony it has been left to the British Council to bring us (for a few weeks) one of the late, mature works of this New Zealander. But what a refined pleasure ‘it is to see one here at last. Fish on a plate (No. 29) with their vertebrae answering the pattern of the bracken and the whole thing swimming in that characteristic colour which is not quite like anybody else’s. John Piper is another law to himself; an austere romantic who scumbles and scratches and scribbles on his paintings, who rubs crayon over his colour washes, and who out of all these ungodly tricks produces lyrical beauty from the bombed and timeworn buildings of Britain (No. 47). Zis2% And were you not told in drawing at school never to rule a line as this was a short-cut. no well-conducted artist would take? I am sure you were. Now look at the sketch by Lord Methuen of a corner at Rouen (No. 39). All the

main structural lines are ruled, are they not? Look closely and you will see that the charm of this little architectural gem lies precisely in the contrast between the firm clarity of the ruled lines and the nervous liberty of the freehand detail. \ Observe No. 64, John Tunnard’s strange and dreamlike watercolour The Terminus. (Some ladies asked me what the picture was supposed to be, as though a verbal inventory could evoke more than the picture does already.) The thing that struck me about it was that Mr. Tunnard has superimposed on ‘a ‘translucent watercolour some signal shapes which appear to be painted in opaque body colour-a device enough to make the pundits turn in their grooves. ~ The point is that all these deviations from the book of rules justify themselves completely because the artists responsible for them know’ the rules so well and have in their day served a rigorous apprenticeship to them. Perhaps what I am trying to say is that in service and discipline is perfect freedom, if the prayer book will excuse me. It is fascinating to see how wide is the liberty within the boundaries of a medium, and how different is the char.acter that different artists extract from its limitations. To.Wilson Steer and H. B. Brabazon, painting 40 years ago, watercolour was essentially wet, and pools of colour seem to linger undried

on the paper. To Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden (who is unfortunately not represented in the show), watercolour is dry. Their delightful effects are obtained by dragging a drying brush over the uneven paper, and breaking down pure colour with thin cross-hatches like an engraver. For me, at any rate, the Ravilious drawing of the Carnation House (No. 48) is the most delicious item of all. Enjoyment Enjoyment-that isthe word I wanted. It is a pity to analyse enjoyment too closely, but there are at least two elements in the enjoyment of picturesthe eajoyment of what the artist reveals to you, and the enjoyment of the means he has employed to reveal it. The second, which is admittedly the lesser of the two, is likely to remain the uppermost impression of this show. But eyen in this enjoyment of the artist’s means, there is a distinction to be drawn between craftsmanship and virtuosity. Perhaps an example will explain it best. Compare the etching by Gerald Brockhurst called "Adolescence" (No. 85) with the drypoint by C. R. W. Nevinson of a window in Paris (No. 170). It seems to me that the Brockhurst takes your breath away with its skill, but that the subtle gradation he has achieved by an infinitely fine stipple does not belong uniquely to the medium of etching. The effect could have been ‘(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) achieved more easily in paint, or by photography. We say to ourselves "How frightfully difficult. How can he have done it on a copper plate?" In the Nevinson we have an effect of air and distance seen through glass and seen through an open window. And: the pleasure we get from it is heightened by the perception that the effect is of the very nature of drypoint: The artist has left a thin film of ink over the surface of the metal except for the square of outdoor light where he has wiped the plate clean. And we say to ourselves "How delightfully simple. a exactly right to have done it this " * Wonderful Wood Engravings As to the wood engravings, it is safe to say that this is the most wonderful, assemblage of them that New Zealand has ever seen. All the great names are here-in ascending power I should mention Agnes Miller Parker, Gill, Farleigh, Gertrude Hermes, and Blair Hughes-Stanton. In Hermes and HughesStanton the humble woodcut suddenly takes flight into the highest reaches of fantastic delicacy, yet its essential character remains-the razor sharpness of the white incision upon the solid’ black bulk of the timber.

On each of the five times I have so far visited the exhibition I have seen one or more of our local engravers (and we have some good ones in Wellington) devouring these prints in a mixed mood of. despair at their perfection and of determination to achieve a like excbllence. That, perhaps, is where a show like this has its greatest value. We laymen can go along to enjoy and wonder, but to these artificers it is 4 major experience to come face to face with the work of some of the finest engravers in the world. It would be churlish to leave the show without a word of thanks to the British Council for bringing it to us, and to Mr. Maclennan and his helpers for the hard work involved in mounting it so well.