Af HA Ryo are ai aera sth ia Cd bak -ange es i aces ap, , , ay » ‘ : aero oo ee Le eh bora ; ory ae ve Nhe re : he nae t aT a drag ores 4 bern, ' aan | 8 SO VN topo al ‘ 4 Pd wie’ Can ot hy ee ay my sa hs \ aK f ” = ote ‘hs ° ee y * ; : er PF £ & 7.7 y Te is ? , i . ‘ i ; 1 pe. ‘ y MY. ong i Wine Sr ee be 4 oes 7 aoe ( , * Rte ! y- ly es ae ol a es 7 ja 4 , : 5 x i" ave ret) ape! he Ae ee bth) Vert A , f C7, \ E ; oa 7 : f ‘ A ont Tame me Fi ‘ ort Uy ga de 2 3 i j ; f , e ; ) = Oe ia | aaa eae f Ps “a ~ i 1 ? * ¢ : Z : ; f i! » a F ‘ . 8 ’ : PA ay é 3 - ¥ At ay ; ~ by % i v : ‘ » ‘ ' F ‘ * ‘ : . s ; F e iad H t ue™ ‘ ny Pp, p , i j fi ' HW Ss Ls iY ; - = ‘ 4 “hf i Ps a ra Py 5 '¢ t i : y f Bt at Le é 4 PS a ° Ny Ce) he] oe ; 1 eet a ss (ae Hh aise i wey ye or Ay (te it } aonb sage >, + 44 : - i 2 am : arn ons % ; > cote Mane ea et Oe 7 cd ‘at read — a P CONTEMPORARY BRITISH ARTISTS: AMBROSE McEVOY General &ditor: ALBERT RUTHERSTON Esq f Claude Johnson, 10n O In the possess ) (1919 PORTRAIT SELF- AMBROSE McEVOY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1924 ACKNOWLEDGMENT ‘THANKS are due to the National Gallery of British Art for the permission kindly given to reproduce The Ear- ring, the Portrait of a Young Man and the Study for “The Mirror” ; to the Imperial War Museum for per- mission to reproduce Lieut. R.D. Sandford,R.N.,V.C.; and to the Contemporary Art Society for La Reprise. Acknowledgment is gratefully offered also to those owners of Mr. McEvoy’s pictures and drawings who have courteously allowed photographs to be made of them for the purposes of this volume and to Mr. McEvoy himself for the valuable assistance he has given. All copyrights, except where acknowledged as otherwise, are strictly the property of the artist. Made and printed in Great Britain at The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. = ° 2 OI AM PY YD re ae La] Lal . 12. 13° 14. 15. 16. +7. 18. 19. 20. 21. is iieOb Plate S SELF-PoRTRAIT. (1919). In the possession of Claude Fohnson, Esq. Frontispiece. THE ENGRAVING. (1901). In the possession of S. D. Bles, Esq. THE THUNDERSTORM. (1901). In the possession of Mrs. Bishop. THE Book. (1903). In the possession of Sir Cyril Kendal Butler. THE ORCHARD. (1904). In the possession of Claude Fohnson, Esq. WINTER. (1905). Jn a private collection. DieprE. (1909). Jn the possession of Miss F. Spencer Edwards. INTERIOR. (1910). In the possession of Sir Cyril Kendal Butler. THE EAR-RING. (1911). National Gallery of British Art. SIANA. (1911). Jn the possession of the Hon. Cecil Baring. La REPRISE. (1912). In the possession of the Contemporary Art Society: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG Man (W. Jowitrt, Esq., K.C., M.P.). (1912). National Gallery of British Art. La BasqualisE. (1913). Jn the possession of Mrs. McFadden, Philadelpa. MapaME. (1914). Musée du Luxembourg. VIRGINIA GRAHAM. (1915). Jn the possession of Captain Harry Graham. Tue Artist’s MOTHER. (1915). In the possession of the Artist. Tue Music Room. (1915). In the possession of T. Lowinsky, Esq. Mrs. Cuartes McEvoy. (1915). In the possession of the Artist. LorpD D’ABERNON. (1916). Jn the possession of Lord D’ Abernon. BLUE AND GOLD. (Mrs. CLAUDE JOHNSON). (1916). Jn the possession of Claude Fohnson, Esq. CLAUDE JOHNSON, Esq. (1917). In the possession of Claude Fohnson, Esq. THE MIDINETTE. (1917). In the possession of Claude fohnson, Esq. 22. 23. 24. 2, 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. ar. 32. 33- 34. LIST OPSPEATES MaDAME DE GANDARILLAS AND CHILDREN. (1918). In the possession of Madame de Gandarillas. LrzuT. R. D. Sanprorp, R.N., V.C. (1918). The Imperial War Museum. THE Rr. Hon. AuGustIne BirreLy. (1918). In a private collection. Miss GREEN. (1920). In the possession of Charles Romer Williams, Esq. Mrs. JOHN CARPENTER. (1920). In a private collection. By THE RIVER. (1922). In the possession of the Artist. STuDY FoR “ THE Mirror.” (1911). National Gallery of British Art. STupy For “THE Dancers.”” (1913). In a private collection. STUDY FoR “ MyrtLe.” (1913). In the possession of Miss F. Spencer Edwards. STupy. (1914). In the possession of E. F. Hesslein, E'sq., New York. PERIMAY. (1914). In the possession of George Plank, Esq. THE ArTIsT’s WIFE. (1915). In the possession of Claude Johnson, Esq. ZITA, (1923). In the possession of E. Poulter, Esq. AMBROSE McEVOY F it be true that “le style c’est l’homme,’’ we may hope to learn something of Ambrose McEvoy from a sym- pathetic study of his work. Our business is, in any case, with his work rather than with the man; and such brief biographical notes as may follow are given with a view to throwing light on the artistic personality embodied and revealed in his painting. McEvoy is essentially a stylist ; but not for that reason an esthetic doctrinaire. He is a stylist because he has an exceedingly delicate zsthetic sensibility, and a beautifully trained hand ; so that even his improvisations have an exquisite “ touch.”’ He uses the pointed and broad “ pencil’ with the happy love of the surgeon for his finely ground and tempered instruments. His drawings and canvases are thus instinct with vivid gesture, and there is something recognizable about the surface quality of every inch of his 6 work. He is no “ expressionist”; but so responsive is his hand to the nice perceptions of his eye and mind that there is a subjective personality in his work which is rare indeed in a painter of fashionable portraits. Wherein the charm of that personality lies we may look to learn rather from an appre- 9 AMBROSE McEVOY ciative study of his drawings and pictures than from an intimate knowledge of his life’s history. It does, however, enlighten us a little to know that McEvoy is a West-countryman of Celtic extraction, whose father was a soldier of romantic fortune, a man of strange and distin- guished experience, and a friend of Whistler, with whom he joined in encouraging young McEvoy’s ambition to become a painter. The boy had thus to face none of the accustomed parental opposition to the artistic career ; and at the delight- fully early age of fifteen found himself, just on the eve of its greatest epoch, a student at the Slade School in London. This very early start was entirely in accordance with the recommendation of the present Slade Professor ; and certainly the boy apprentice may hope to avoid the ineffectual diffidence and premature disillusion of a more advanced general educa- tion. Be that as it may, McEvoy was happy at the Slade, and did not rebel against the exacting Legros tradition and the con- servative security of Professor Brown. As for that intellectual capacity which is needed for the ‘‘ fundamental brainwork ” which Rossetti posited as necessary for the production of great painting, McEvoy never lacked a good brain and means and inclination to exercise it by reading, talking and appreciating the infinite variety of nature and humanity. At the Slade he fell in with that first essential to the rich fulfilment of a subtle IO AMBROSE McEVOY personality, good congenial friendship. Augustus John was the very companion for which McEvoy might have sought the world over. ‘The two young men were like enough to enjoy a profound sympathy and community of enthusiasm and am- bition, and unlike enough to fertilize each other’s craft and imagination. And the pace that John’s magnificent youthful draughtsmanship set was well maintained by Orpen, Edna Waugh, and Albert Rutherston. The air was big with present endeavour and achievement to come. So McEvoy worked hard at school for three years, touring the painted counties with John and a donkey in holiday time, and humbly copying Titian and Watteau in the National Gallery and in the Soane Museum ; learning every day to love the work of the old masters more and more, and to paint, not like them, but with the same spirit of ardour and endurance. His ambition was not to set the Thames on fire, but rather to do first-rate work of a very unobtrusive kind. From the outset the quietest of facts appealed to him as subjects ; dim interiors, quietly lit, quietly arranged, quietly peopled ; peace, and the harmony of remembered twilight; dim _ pensive symphonies of rest, in which colours and tones reflect the secure, unadventurous mood of the young painter. Or say that, hitherto, his adventures are in the esthetic world alone ; that his wrestling and stress are with tones and qualities of II AMBROSE McEVOY surface, and the intense difficulties of drawing and com- position which fairly tire out even the most facile draughtsman and composer. For the rest he was already, as he is still to-day, painting “moods’’; painting his own reactions to things and people ; deeply moved by the dim security of Victorian withdrawing-rooms and the dreamy sweetness of Victorian maidens ; an unashamed romantic, blind to the humanity of women, remotely charmed, with the uncomprehending chivalry of a schoolboy. Of such a mood The Engraving and The Book may serve as examples. The Thunderstorm, painted in the same year as The Engraving, is something of a sport in our painter’s e@uvre. The design and handling are quiet enough ; but the mood is dramatic, and it is the intensity of a moment that is recorded. Alone, too, among his works this picture is anecdotal in interest; though that interest did not pre- dominate in the artist’s mind. The point is admirably made, and the thoroughness of the painting assures achievement. But the work is not typical of the painter’s attitude to people or to Nature ; and the vivid flash illuminating the drenched trees and sky and grass are as unique as the strained momentary gesture of the still romantic, still Victorian lady. For the rest, in these early years Nature was to McEvoy a thing of gentle moods for the composer to experiment with. It is characteristic of the painter that he has chosen from this I2 AMBROSE McEVOY period rather his unfamiliar landscapes than the interiors for which he was already in 1905 becoming well known. This and the previous year are represented by Winter and The Orchard. In the latter the motive seems almost entirely esthetic ; the forms and light and shade being treated with the complete freedom of a Watteau or a late Corot or Gains- borough landscape. The Orchard composes like one of those ¢ impressions of Claudian “‘ arrangements ’’’ which figure on the walls of our artist’s own early interiors. And the surface y ¢ b of the paint is lovingly worked into “ qualities’ which are the invention of the painter and no reflection or counter- part at all of the things he saw. After this brilliant essay in pure zsthetic Winter seems curiously reactionary. One is reminded of Rubens’ compelling chalk drawing of a winter landscape, or Turner’s astonishing Frosty Morning ; so little artifice, so little comment or positive creation is there in this modest record of observed fact. And yet it is a mood recorded, and not the frozen face of Nature. It is, indeed, in all three of these Winter masterpieces as if the face of Nature were, just precisely, while it lasted, the mood of the observer, empty of all significance, as is Hardy’s Wessex landscape, but for the hearts that beat in tune or out of tune with it. It is no realist’s Winter, but as human a document as that brown field and that white sky on and under which crawled Tess and her x3 AMBROSE McEVOY blowzy companion. No wonder so personal an impression is dear to the artist. It was to be expected that Constable and the French impressionists would, sooner or later, have their influence on our painter. He could hardly have spent holidays in France with Walter Sickert without coming under the spell of these latter. So we have a Dieppe, dated 1go9, full of the lively illumination, the accurate tonality, the vibrant air, the rapid careless touch of the outdoor Frenchmen. But the first move- ment ends with a restatement and consummation of the earlier theme ; an infinitely quiet studio “‘ interior,” in which for the last time we note that remote detachment which gives his early work, for all its moodiness, an oddly impersonal air ; serene, dispassionate, but oh! how deliberately elaborate in colour, line, light, and quality. Thereafter, about 1911, the key begins to modulate ; not suddenly, but through long tentative passages. ‘The beat quickens ; developments are foreshadowed ; a primary artistic personality is emerging. ‘The pure idea is labouring to the birth ; and in three years’ time McEvoy’s essential self is to take wing ; to reach the zenith of its charming flight, perhaps, but two years later, in 1915, in that incredibly lovely portrait of Mrs. Charles McEvoy (his brother’s wife), sometimes called Silver and Grey, which need not fear to hang beside the best - 14 AMBROSE McEVOY of the English eighteenth century, beside the best of English Gainsborough. But the modulation was through an alien key or so. The Ear-ring, with its odd mixture of accurately focussed vision on the further elements, and rough quality in the foreground, already strikes a somewhat exotic note ; and La Basquaise (1913) and the drawing of the next year, Pertmay, seem to threaten, or promise, our painter’s turning sharply aside to follow John in his delight in queer types queerly handled. ‘This picture is the first important work in which, it appears, McEvoy thought that the sitter was subject enough for his portrait. The strong, whimsical, black design leans memorably across a plain gradated background. Within the design, perhaps the most forceful of his invention, the details are summarily treated, and the pale bony face tells with a disquieting insistence. Just for once McEvoy has struck a bizarre, an almost macabre, Goyaesque note. But the next year he “arrives”? with Madame (the artist’s wife) on a gay, brilliant cadenza of witty comment, sparkling gesture, and wilful oddity of lighting. We may note that no less than five works from the year 1915 have been selected for illustra- tion in this little volume. ‘Their range is wide and their various achievement secure. In this momentous year McEvoy hung in the balance between the subjective and the objective. Thenceforward, in his painting of women at any rate, style B os AMBROSE McEVOY was to take charge, matter to yield to manner, and the marriage between representation and invention to fade into a quiet dissolution. In the meantime the union holds: the fusion of the two interests is nearly complete. If Gainsborough and Reynolds have nothing more honestly charming to show than Mrs. Charles McEvoy, nothing more finely felt, more happily handled, Whistler, in his Miss Alexander, made hardly a more vital rendering of the quaint idiosyncrasy of precocious girlhood than Virginia Graham. The liveliness of this compact little figure, set in a staid nineteenth-century home, seems an amused savouring of the comedy of the modern young woman bred of a generation to which she must be per- petually shocking. As if she did not, bright impudent soul, see the folly alike of silk jackets, fluffy skirts and family furni- ture, and thereat shake the tousled mane on her erect, positive little head! With the portrait of The Artist’s Mother we are in Rembrandt’s world. Satire, romance, sentiment, comedy, give way to the exclusive interest of character patiently elaborated. You can look, as with Rembrandt’s old lady at Trafalgar Square, at nothing but the intense old face, and perhaps at last at the hands. There is no attempt in such work to achieve beauty of texture or surface. This hammering out of pure character, to the neglect of all calligraphy, all dexterity, and every kind of zsthetic motive, can in modern 16 AMBROSE McEVOY work only be paralleled in Mr. Wilson Steer’s recent portraits. Quite complementary to this is the almost wholly esthetic Music Room, as different from the Portrait of his Mother as is Steer’s Sketch of Dover Harbour from his self-portrait. It is not, like the earlier interiors, the reflection of a mood, but rather an impression of light, air and surface. To this same year, 1915, belongs the exquisite drawing of The Artist’s Wife, in which that fine blend of delicate line and bold mass, which is perhaps our painter’s happiest method, reaches its full flavour. In drawings such as this the sensitive precision, the nervous relishing of actual form and potential formula which underlie all McEvoy’s work, but are less noticeable in his painting than in his drawings, give a quality which delights the intimate eye, while the broad tonality and seemingly careless design stimulate and satisfy the more casual distant glance. ‘The combination has occasionally been tried in France and England, but amounts in McEvoy’s hands to something of an invention in portrait method. We are dealing now with an artistic personality which has, without any shadow of doubt, “‘ arrived.”” And if the world has acclaimed McEvoy’s arrival as that of a “‘ society ” portrait painter, it is an intriguing comment on the world’s estimate to note that the painter himself has agreed to be represented by not so much as one of the portraits of women of the kind 17 AMBROSE McEVOY on which his reputation is largely based. Nearly of this kind, however, is our No. 19, the physical type of which, the dress, the pose, the lighting, might be called, in the best sense of the +) term, “ fashionable.” But it is not for nothing that the artist calls this study,—at first sight a study of high breeding and secure taste,—by the painter’s title Blue and Gold. ‘The tribute to Whistlerian nomenclature may be taken as bearing witness to his preoccupation with esthetic values, to his indifference to the merely modish. But if he wishes to stress this aspect of his work, it is not therefore the only aspect ; and we shall hope to suggest how fittingly, how inevitably and in spite of himself, our painter was to become par excellence the fashionable painter of the leaders, not the followers of fashion. I remember meeting McEvoy in the second year of the War in a drawing-room, the friendly brilliance of which must already to those who recall it seem to belong to the irrecover- able past. It was peopled chiefly with young men and young women ; young men who, called from many intense peaceful interests, had flung their brains and good humour, their ideals and varied gifts, into the one business of war ; women who had had every chance in life and who seemed to have risen magnificently to their opportunities ; bred and trained to a nicety of limb and movement that might honour a race- 18 AMBROSE McEVOY horse, and of a taste and tact which could make of an idle evening something exquisitely worth while, in spite of those ugly realities in which all were taking their heavy part. Here was a society as delicately sensitive to the “‘ mere ”’ refinements as any vapid beau-led Bath or Tunbridge ; but wearing this fine flower of nice perception, as its women wore their clothes and their beauty, as the merest decent tribute to the infinite dignities, the infinite capacities of an aristocracy of friends: an aristocracy in which “ conversation,’’—the rich interchange of quick, well-stored minds, taking oh ! so much for granted,— was a real and relished possibility. It turned out precisely as it should that McEvoy should be attached in France to that uniquely gallant and unfortunate Royal Naval Division which, to those who knew it intimately, reflected or expressed with a curious felicity the strange, high-minded, dazzling personality of its creator. Poets, scholars, painters, writers, men of boundless promise in the fields of peaceful achievement, and with them veterans of sea and land and the political lists ; here was a charming, ironic company, in which Sir Philip Sidney, or Sir John Falstaff, might have found themselves equally at home. Now such a society it was McEvoy’s manifest destiny, in spite of his dim interiors, his pale landscapes and pensive ladies, to paint. We think of the society painter as a man of commanding presence, with the broad waistcoats and eyeglass 19 AMBROSE McEVOY ribbons of assured success. But then we think of “ society ” as the slave of, not the creator of fashion; as gross, stupid, automatic ; as inspired by (if inspired at all), and not as inspiring its dancers, preachers, painters, mimics, music- makers. Perhaps the generality of society has always been, must still be so. But fresh vital thought and imagination, nay the nicest of perceptions, the most pregnant of ironies, the highest of unspoken ideals, need not forever go along with a low-heeled dowdiness, and it was our painter’s fortune to fall in with and delight in a company of fine spirits as gay, as highly polished, as brilliantly mondaine as the most feather-headed of French or Viennese courts or English eighteenth-century watering-places ; a company which had assuredly a right to find an interpreter and reflector,—a greater right than had Bath to the youth and maturity of Gainsborough. It was natural and necessary that McEvoy, during the War at any rate, should take to painting men. His instinctive interests being primarily zsthetic, hardly at all in affairs, it is quite to be expected that he should “‘ make more ” of women than of men. It would be something of a tour-de-force to undertake nowadays a “‘ symphonic arrangement” of a portrait of a man ; though of course the Brescians, the Venetians, the French, and the English have often done such a thing. Like- 20 AMBROSE McEVOY ness, or at any rate a vivid interpretation of character, is what we want of male portraiture to-day in England ; and, though McEvoy was not in the least indisposed to satisfy this pre- dilection, he was not so perfectly equipped to do so as he was to give us what most of us want in paintings of women. At all events he was glad to have the fine romantic face and figure of Lord D’Abernon to exploit in a frankly Latin manner. Like Watts, or Titian, or Tennyson, the living man himself was, the sheer physical presence of him, a thing of design, of style, of vivid form, which went out handsomely more than half- way to meet and comfort the painter. In more than one of his portraits of sailors and winners of the Victoria Cross McEvoy betrays a patent gratitude to the appropriate “ pictur- esqueness ”’ of his sitter, to that obliging sense of style and type which Nature occasionally indulges, introducing just what the public longs for and expects in a Wellington, a Hinden- burg, a Beatty, after so exposing her indifference to, her wanton neglect of formal fitness in modelling a Wolfe or a Jellicoe. But, if he could not make great rhetoric of those of his naval and military sitters who were not cast in the more heroic mould, portraits such as Lieutenant Sandford, R.N.,V.C., show. once for all that McEvoy’s temperament and technique equip him well enough, on occasion at any rate, to carry through to its arduous conclusion a close objective research 21 AMBROSE McEVOY into the bare bones of character. Before this remarkable record, the strength, the thoroughness, the intensity, the impersonal simplicity of which recall Velasquez, the compel- ling subtlety Goya—Goya in his incredible Dr. Pereal—one - may well ask oneself, “ Do I, ought I nowadays to ask any- thing else at all of male portraiture than just what I am given here?” Beside it the oil-sketch of The Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, painted the same year, is a slight, if a happy, impres- sion. The painted quality of this pleasing note thrusts itself a little too insistently on the attention ; and if it were not for the comprehended truth which informs the features of the delightful old man we might mourn that the neglect of esthetic significance has not achieved a more poignant characterization. How much more, on the average, our painter could, in IQI7, make of women than of men is suggested by comparing his disturbing Midinette with Claude Fohnson, Esq. This latter is a thing of fine bold style, and as straightforward a study of character as you could wish, with a notable “ English ” air in the fresh lighting and ironic understatement. It carries rather more than less than its face value; it has an honesty which we might call pellucid. But the Midinette is a crea- tion of agitating suggestion, a thing to trouble and delight the imagination, as might a sudden distant night-view of 22 AMBROSE McEVOY Paris or London. Once again some stray delicious creature has provoked in our painter a mood of the subtlest formal invention. Deeply intrigued by the April freshness, the tender sparkle of this pretty maid, he has played with the unabashed tilt of her nose, the smooth broad cheek, the exquisitely rounded chin, the dewy softness of eye and lip, even with the rich weight of her rough coat, with a frank delight in the charming young person. There is little doubt that in recording his delicate reactions to such phenomena as these McEvoy will live in the future, as Romney has lived, mainly by passing on to later generations his nice responsiveness to feminine grace. Of the creative felicity which may result from such excitements a lovely oil painting of this same year, 1917, of Lady Wimborne—not, alas ! illustrated here—might be cited as an entrancing example. It may be supposed that the artist would not object to the surmise that this conception may owe something to Romney. It is a harmony of colour, light, line, and quality designed entirely to please. The displayed charms of this roguish beauty are deliberately planned to intrigue and provoke the more by the lack of repose of both expression and gesture. The dimpled, bare-shouldered nymph, with sidelong, smiling glance—lit, as the painter has latterly chosen to light his ladies, from below the eye-level—hurries, in sweet disarray of hair 23 AMBROSE McEVOY and dress, across the vision. In a flash she will be gone, a type of the fleeting elusion, the irresponsibility of fair women. To find another work of such entire loveliness as this we must go back to the 1914 drawing of the head and shoulders. of a girl; a study more staid, more sober, more static than Lady Wimborne, but akin to it in sheer adorable statement. This must surely be one of the prettiest drawings ever done ; as near perfection of style and perfection of fact as such things can be. ‘The delight in pure form is worthy of an early Dorian or Celt ; the calligraphy of an early Chinaman ; the humanity of an Englishman ; the illumination of a Frenchman. It is before drawings of this calibre that one is ready to be convinced of the superior expressiveness of line and wash to all other graphic media; and though it was done nearly ten years ago it is with this thing of perfect taste before us that we should wish to take a measure of McEvoy’s peculiar genius. Before, however, we embark on that difficult journey we may look a little closer at his technical methods, at the way in which his taste “‘ gets through.” Since, moreover, much of his energy has gone to the invention and perfection of ways of handling paint, any examination of his technique should throw some light on the problem of what exactly is his personal contribution to the sum of fine painting. A glance at our illustrations will suggest at once how varied has been the 24 } AMBROSE McEVOY direction of his experiments. Indeed, from these pictures and drawings, we might suppose that McEvoy was singularly free from the tyranny of formula. And yet that would, it may be hazarded, hardly be the view of him that most of us, who have never troubled to make a close study of him, have carried away from a casual memory of his exhibited work. We remember two phases in which formula seems, in his portraits, half the battle. The more important of these is perhaps that manner of line and wash drawing to which reference has already been made. Drawings of this kind were, we may suppose, originally made as ‘“ studies ”» for more laboured paintings in oil. A good instance of such a study—for The Mirror—is our No. 28 of the year 1911. But already at this date the method had an independent value; and line and wash portrait drawing was to become the first manner by which McEvoy was to establish a wide reputation. In these drawings the inter- pretation of form is entirely distinct from the interpretation of light and mass. The one is suggested by a rapid, but searching line, got with a sharp pencil point; the other by a series of opalescent or dusky water-colour washes, reminiscent of the plain and smoked varieties of mother-of-pearl. ‘These washes appear to be abstract symphonies, or rather perhaps emana- tions, auras of the subjects: with little justification in the concrete fact beyond some degree of truth of projected shadow. a5 AMBROSE McEVOY Some uninstructed exception has been taken to the method’s merciless treatment of the paper, and certainly McEvoy does not scruple to worry the surface by handsome scrubbing. The iridescent tones seem to have been put on haphazard, and rubbed boldly out here and there until a composition, a harmony, a setting took shape which struck our painter’s eye as—well, “ eyable.”” From this process the delicate, firm drawing of features and hands emerges with a nervous em- phasis, and the worn, faded texture of the setting serves but to flatter our inattentive eye, as secondary matter deliberately out of focus. Apart from this tendency to work the surface into a kind of light and shade and colour that please his eye and an almost over-sensitive reticence in the statement of character, the method is of course akin to Claude’s and Rem- brandt’s portentous scribbles, for the clean definition of their linear forms and the apparent haphazard of their washed tones. Of the other formula we have no good instance among our plates. It is a formula chiefly of lighting. McEvoy was not the first artist to be attracted by the grateful effect on the face of illumination from below, an effect which in its extreme form has long delighted the devotees of the stage-play and the ballet. Applied with a delicate tact and justified by the low- placed lighting by candle or electric lamp of modern drawing- rooms and dining-tables, this “‘ footlight ” formula has served 26 AMBROSE McEVOY him well to suggest the somewhat artificial milieu in which many of his sitters seem most appropriately set. It has often gone along with an almost slovenly assurance in the handling of draperies and backgrounds, which, but for their intrinsic gaiety or subtlety of colour, might have appeared too shallow, too altogether evanescent. But if in all but his best work McEvoy has caused his well-wishers a certain anxiety lest he should be content to follow the facilis descensus, the primrose path that opens so alluringly to the successful painter of women, they are reassured by a conviction of his artistic integrity, his fundamental indifference to everything but the values and requirements of his esthetic conscience. In this conscience there is nothing common or mean; and that he should ever go the way of Millais or Greuze is surely unthink- able. He has capitulated to the world no more and with no less reason than Gainsborough, who sometimes longed to leave ‘the face way”’ and go back altogether to landscape. And though with such men in such circumstances it is not to be looked for that their best work should be done after they are thirty, we may be certain that, with so exquisite a taste, if their right hand forget its cunning, they will cease to paint at all. For the rest, in painting as in drawing, McEvoy is not too proud to follow the old vision and distinguish form from light 27 AMBROSE McEVOY and colour. He is even so old-fashioned as to model his more important forms in a first painting of neutral monochrome. It is a lesson he learnt at school, and relearnt from the greatest masters of Italy, Flanders and Spain. Dare we suggest that just in so far as he holds fast to this quaint old anchor his technique is more securely founded and his achievement more lasting than, shall we say, Renoir’s ? With such a basis the most wayward, whimsical painter may hope to avoid getting into a real “mess”; the eternal appeal of which, however expressive, however vital, however tasteful, however significant, can hardly fail, in the long run, to waver and collapse. We chose to take McEvoy’s measure with the 1914 drawing b) of a girl before us; “a thing,” we said, ‘‘ of perfect taste.” Is that, after all, the long and short of McEvoy’s secret? Other painters—Jan van Eyck, Raphael, ver Meer—have achieved other modes of perfection—perfections of hand and eye, as Rubens was perfect draughtsman. But perfect taste ? Is even the conception, perhaps, a modern one? Or should we concede as much to Raphael or Vandyck? What is this strange quality which claims for the surface appearance of things an infinity of value ;_ to which it is matter of life and death that a line should run just so and a colour be neither, by a minute degree, warmer nor colder? The stock epithet of taste is unerring ; it well suggests the serene assurance of the 28 AMBROSE McEVOY man of taste. We all know him; the man whose advice we should wish to take and fear to neglect in any matter of esthetic choice ; no scholar, perhaps, or skilled practitioner of the arts, but one whose eye reacts at once and with an absolute pre- cision to the subtlest niceties of pure or expressive form. When such a man is also a creative artist, his art will not be challenged as lacking in grandeur or sublimity, in poetry or even truth. The painter himself is our arbiter elegantiarum, and we may consider ourselves lucky if we dimly perceive one- hundredth of his fine-wrought delicacies. His touch is god- like ; out of the fire and gossamer of colour and line he can weave beauties which need not be justified by their content, forms which may be divinely insignificant. What he sees are the things eternally worth seeing ; you must go to the flowers, the clouds, the waves to match his faultless rhythms, his pure fantasies. Untouched by theory or faction, trusting his eye, practising untiringly his hand, he will enrich the world with inventions, born of his taste, and patiently wrought in the image of God. R.M.Y.G. 29 elle S ‘NS the possession of S. D. Bles, Esq. i. In O ve (1901 THE ENGRAVING PUA, Prare 2, THE THUNDERSTORM. (1901). Oil. Inthe possession of Mrs. Bishop. PLATE 3. THE BOOK. (1903). Oil. Inthe possession of Sir Cyril Kendal Butler. ‘bsq ‘uosuyof apnvig fo uorssassodg ay, uy ‘210 (F061) ‘duNVHOMO AHL ch aLVTId In a private collection. Oil. (1905). WINTER. iPTW NANO, oy. ‘spavapy sauads “q ssp fo worssassog ay, UT "710 *(6061) “HddHIG ‘9 ALVId Pirate 7. INTERIOR. (1910). Oil. Inthe possession of Sir Cyril Kendal Butler. PLATE 8. THE EAR-RING. (191 I). Oi¢l. National Gallery of British Art. 7 y fo aaa = - . « fe : * a . en cre “ oy ‘ — a > Ls nin, Py . ae . - ' - ; \ — am ms ‘ Z .. * 4 = * : ‘ . ‘ . ~ ¥i i > rae) ‘ vy awe ip 2 PLATE 9Q. SAIN) In the possession of the Hon. Cecil Baring. "(01905 Jap Lavsoduaquog sy} fo uorssassod ayzUT “110 "(z161) ‘aASIMdGAYM VI (Ol dlvidg PLATE 11. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN (W. Jowirt, -Esq., K.c., M.P.). (1912). Oil. National Gallery of British Art. Pirate 12. LA BASOQUAISE. (1913). Oil. In the possession of Mrs. McFadden, Philadelphia. j > " ‘ i ~ f 5 . = - ‘ - : j yen : a ‘ a a ad ‘ mf > a + ‘ F; F r . " . = y rf ‘ 4 * o y * - F i a = 4 é , ‘ 7 j ay ; 5 : Musée du Luxembourg. I, Oi 1914). MADAME. ( IPA INIUE 903) aby PLaTE 14. VIRGINIA GRAHAM. (1915). Oil. Inthe possession of Capt. Harry Graham. . é ‘ F A ¥) < 2 ye . ; J ‘ “Fe i : = i ‘ _ Ww ‘ “ = n Va a : » . ft a + of ‘ : ‘ Fl y ~ > — p nee ven a F 2 om, ; j a — a inal ’ * E j : | ; e a : - 7 7 PLATE 15. THE ARTIST’S MOTHER. (1915). Oil. Inthe possession of the Artist. - ts , Esq vy k NS w file Lo SSESSION O Inthe po Oil THE MUSIC ROOM. (ro15). PEATE SIO. PLATE 17. MRS. CHARLES McEVOY. (1915). Oil. Inthe possession of the Artist. PraTeE 18. LORD D’ABERNON. (1916). Oil. Inthe possession of Lord D' Abernon. or = —s ae oa ij : ie. 7 te ‘ ce ’ ~ : * ~ - thy op a ek op a] i Mi - te Pa i * + \ ~ - - a ae Poms + oF peat be ). (1916 CLAUDE JOHNSON). (Mrs if von O BLUE AND GOLD. PLATE 19 Esq Claude Johnson, In the possess Oil. CLAUDE JOHNSON, ESQ. (1917). Oil. In the possession of Claude Johnson, Esq. PLATE 21. THE MIDINETTE. (1917). Oil. In the possession of Claude Johnson, Esq. Pirate 22, MADAME DE GANDARILLAS AND CHILDREN. (1918). Owl. In the possession of Madame de Gandarillas. ¢ ¢ ? ;_ “ee : ay , : 7 rag 4 a ’ : ? ‘ o a - 5 . “ 2 4 . ey = a) | ne oe pe ie an eee af Seas: As}, lbinsiean, IR, IDE SNE DIO VSIDY, TRIN, Wee Oil. In the possession of the Imperial War Museum. PLATE 24. Deak te HONDAUGUSTINE BIRRELE: (1918). Oil. Ina private collection. PLATE 25%. MISS GREEN. (1920). Oil. Inthe possession of Charles Romer Williams, Esq. v0on. ivate collecti Ina pr l 1920). Oi ( . ARPENTER JOHN C MRs. PraAre 26, 4) raat “ = wae . =e ? ¢€ : ~~ 7 bd ow e > Te ey bain ie ee ee eo ae Y , = ay > PLATE 27. BY THE RIVER. (1922). Oil. In the possession of the Artist. /; Peart SoU DY POR “THE MIRROR.” (IQI1). Water colour. National Gallery of British Art. ‘uoypaijos aywaug v ut “anojoowma “(€161) .,SHYAONVA AHL, UOA AAAIS “62 atvig Nis 1913 ( ards. a) MYRTLE ce R SUD Yee EO PEATE 20. Ww Spencer Ed iss F. ion of M ess In the poss ater colour. Ww PVATE 31; SEU DING (1914). Water colour. In the possession of E. J. Hesslein, Esq., New York. i F = ; A cn C# aw * ; e 7 x 4 x a of ry ol : Ars “ i ; & 2 Pe : Z = -. 4 ao, ; <2 . > 4 i ; 7 ar | | pre < =a » se A se pe x ’ 7 - ' ‘ _ ¢ 7 - ’ ; : a - . >. 7 i. ; - , See Esq. ? ge Plank f Geor, SiOn O. In the possessi colour Water 5 (@zy). IPA RALLIES NG PLATE 32. Prate 33. THE ARTISTS WIRE. (rox5)- Water colour. Inthe possession of Claude Johnson, Esq. Poulter, Esq. In the possession of E. Water colour. ) 923 (1 ZA PLATE 34 Se ig , ai 4 * ete SS ees Ee EARCH INSTITUTE GETTYR U0 OA 3 3125 01760 2042