an extraordinarily
gifted statuary? Even if this work be an imitation, how admirable a one
is it! That Mr. Epstein should combine with the taste and intelligence
to perceive the beauty of Mexican sculpture the skill and science to
reproduce its fine qualities is surely something to note and admire.
There is enough in this figure, imitative though it be, to secure for
its author pre-eminence amongst living British sculptors.[19]
A third work in this part of the hall has attracted some attention. It
is a picture of the coronation of George V. by one Fernand Piret, a
French aviator--so the story goes--who never before dabbled in terrene
arts. It may be so. In any case he has contrived a mordant comment on
that memorable and mystic ceremony.
Upstairs, the best things are two charming pictures by Mr. S. F. Gore.
It is a joy to watch the progress of this good artist. The patient and
unpretentious labour of his experimental years is being handsomely
rewarded. Mr. Gore is finding himself; we never doubted that he was well
worth finding. Mr. Gilman, too, is steadily becoming more interesting;
but Mr. Ginner has, as yet, hardly fulfilled the promise of his early
work. The delicate sensibility and fine scholarship which M. Lucien
Pissarro chooses to conceal beneath a presentment of almost exaggerated
modesty will escape no one whose eyes have not been blinded by the flush
of fashionable vulgarity, of which, happily, there is very little here.
The London Salon is no place for those who are, or who hope to become,
portrait-makers at "a thousand" a head.
All the creditable work to be found in this exhibition is not to be
mentioned in one article. The pictures by Miss Helen Saunders, painted
surely under the influence of Mr. Etchells; _The Omnibus_, by Mr.
Adeney; the works of Mrs. Louise Pichard, Mr. Malcolm Drummond, Mr. J.
B. Yeats, and Mr. W. B. C. Burnet; that rather pretentious piece, _Les
Deux Amies_, by Madame Renee Finch; and _The Cot_, a charming little
picture by Mrs. Ogilvie--all deserve more attention than any overworked
critic is likely to give them. They are, for the most part, accomplished
paintings that provoke no doubts and no outrageous hopes.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] 1917: A friendly critic reading this paragraph suggests that it
might stand fairly as a description of Me[vs]trovi['c]. I cannot agree.
Epstein is in every respect superior to the Serbian sculptor, in whose
work there can be no question of anything bu
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