RankBran^wyn AND HIS WORK E^ BY W\LT£R SHAW-SPARROW THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FRANK BRANGWYN AND HIS WORK = i y. o h o .ft z •-' Cr:i S o <; .1 C »— ( z W Q S; ^ O a; < .<^ ^ ^ O Pi a, w h C/3 (a! h ^ ^ z Q ■€> »5 w > OS < z < h 1 1- a *2 FRANK BRANGWYN AND HIS WORK. 1911 BY WALTER SHAW-SPARROW AUTHOR OF "OUR HOMES," "THE ENGLISH HOUSE AND ITS STYLES," &c., PART AUTHOR OF "THE GENIUS OF J. M. W. TURNER" DANA ESTES ^ COMPANY ESTES PRESS, SUMMER STREET, BOSTON Printed in Great Britain The rights of translation and reproduction are reserved College Library TO CHARLES HOLME Esq. KOUNUEk AND EDITOR OF THE STUDIO MAGAZINE 20.U^5iO PREFACE I HAVE to express grateful thanks for assistance in many forms rendered to me during the production of this book. It is through the courtesy of M. a Pacquement, the present owner of " Buccaneers," that I have been able to include a reproduction of that famous picture, the blocks being made specially in Paris. Much help has been received from the Skinners' Company, from Lloyd's Register, from the Royal Exchange, and from the Art Gallery of Leeds, by whose courteous permission seven copyright works are here illustrated. It is a great pleasure also to acknowledge with thanks the assistance given me by Mr. T. L. Devitt, Mr. R. H. Kitson, Mr. S. Wilson, Dr. Tom Robinson, Mr. Haldane Macfall, Mr. Warwick H. Draper, Mr. W. Gibbings, Mr. H. F. W. Ganz, Mr. B. W. Willett, and Mr. Frederic Whyte ; by Mr. Collier of New York ; by M. Pacquement, M. Stany Oppenheim, and M. Bramson of Paris ; and by Herr Ernst Arnold; of Dresden. To Messrs. Gibbings & Co. I am indebted for the use of their blocks of the illustration, " Queen Elizabeth going aboard the Golden Hind!' To Messrs. Swain, the London blockmakers, and Mr. Edmund Evans, the printer of the colour-plates, I owe a special b vii T^reface word of acknowledgment for the care and skill they have brought to their anxious work. The making of compara- tively small illustrations of very large pictures is a matter of the greatest difficulty, more especially when the works in question involve special journeys to public buildings and to private galleries out of London. vm CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE PARENTAGE AND EARLY STUDIES , CHAPTER II LATER STUDIES . . i6 CHAPTER III CONTESTS OF CRITICISM: "A FUNERAL AT SEA," "THE BUC- CANEERS," "SLAVE TRADERS," AND "A SLAVE MARKET" . 36 CHAPTER IV CONTESTS OF CRITICISM: SUN-COLOUR AND RELIGIOUS ART . 53 CHAPTER V CHARACTERISTICS: LIGHT AND COLOUR 7+ CHAPTER VI LIGHT AND COLOUR l^continued) 88 CHAPTER VII SOME OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 10+ CHAPTER VIII DECORATIVE PAINTING n& CHAPTER IX DECORATIVE PAINTING (continued) 132 ix Contents CHAPTER X PAGE POINTS OF VIEW IN DECORATIVE ART : AND THE SKINNERS- HALL 144 CHAPTER XI SKETCHES AND STUDIES 164 CHAPTER XH WATER-COLOURS 175 CHAPTER Xni ILLUSTRATIONS FOR MAGAZINES AND BOOKS— DESIGNS FOR POSTERS 180 CHAPTER XIV ETCHINGS: AND SUMMARY OF CHARACTERISTICS .... 185 CHAPTER XV DESIGNS FOR HOUSE FURNISHING 206 APPENDIX I PICTURES AND SKETCHES 219 APPENDIX II ETCHINGS— CLASSIFIED 236 APPENDIX III BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 INDEX 253 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOUR PLATES A River Procession to Westminster in 1453 — City AND Trade Barges Frontispiece lUproduced by permiision of the akinners Cam f any, l^ndnn. Copy- right. Montreuil: Cottage Landscape Facing p. 8 Keprodtued fram a small Oil- Painting. Cepyrighl. The Bridge of Alcantara „ 12 Rtprodtued from the Water-Colour, Copyright. The Buccaneers „ 36 Reproduced by permission of M. J'acquement, Paris. Copyright, Harvesters „ 48 Reproduced fr»m the large Oil-Painting. Copyright. The Rajah's Birthday „ 84 Reproduced by permission of R. H. Kit son, E>ij., Leeds. Copyright. The Brass Shop „ 88 Reproduced from the large Oil- Painting. Copyright. Mars and Venus „ 92 Reproduced from the large Oil- Painting in the Municipal Art Gallery, Dublin. Copyright. The Card Players „ 96 Reproduced from the large Oil- Painting. Copyright. xi List of Illustrations The Retui^n from the Promised Land . Facing p. loo Rtprodtued by permission of the Art Gallery at Johannesburg. Copyright. The Venetian Funeral ,,112 Keprodueed by permission of the I^eds Art Gallery. Copyright. A Still-Life Study of Leeks ,,128 Keprodtued by permission of R. H. Kitson, Esq., Leeds. Copyright. Queen Elizabeth Going Aboard the "Golden Hind" „ 132 Reproduced by permission of LloyiCs Register. Copyright. Blake's Return after the Capture of the Plate Ships ,,136 Reproduced by permission of Lloyd's Register. Copyright. The Fruits of Industry ,,144 Rep^roduced from the large Panel in Tempera. Copyright. Reception of General Monk at the Skinners' Hall, 4th April 1660 ,,152 Reproduced by permission of the Hiinners' Company. Copyright. Life among the Ruins, Messina, 1910 .... ,,176 Reproduced from a IVater- Colour. Copyright. The Duomo, Messina, 1910 „ 180 Reproduced from a Water- Colour. Copyright. The Weavers: a Decorative Panel in the Leeds Art Gallery ,, 212 Reproduced by permission. Copyrigh'. Design for a Fan „ 216 From " History of the Fan," by G. Woolliscroft Rhead. Copyright. xii List of Illustrations COLLOTYPE PLATES Blacksmiths Facing p. 6 From a IVall-l'anel in the Leeds Art Gallery. Copyright. Platelayers „ 20 From an Original Lithograph. Copyright. The Baptism of Christ „ 68 From the Oil-Painting now in the Art Gallery at Stuttgart. Copyright, The Windmill, Dixmude „ 80 From an Original Etching. Copyright. The Departure of Columbus ,,104 From a Decorative Panel belonging to the Profj-ietor of " Collier'! Weekly" i\ew Yori, U.S.A. Copyright. Santa Maria della Salute ,,120 From the Oil-Painiing in the Wellington Art Gallery, New Zealand. Copyright. Old Houses, Ghent ,,124 From an Original Etching, Copyright. Modern Commerce ,,140 From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, London. Copyright. Music ,,164 From an Original Lithograph. Copyright. Unloading Oranges at London Bridge ... „ 168 From an Original Lithograph. Copyright. The Loom From an Original Lithogiaph. Copyright. 172 xm List of Illustrations The Black Mill, Winchelsea Facing p. i88 From an Original Etching. Cofyrighl. The Tow-Rope ,,192 From an Orif^tnal Etching. Copyright. The Sawyers ,,196 From an Original Etching. Copyright. Old Hammersmith „ 200 From an Original Etching. Copyright. Santa Maria della Salute „ 204 From an Original Etching, Gold AUdal, Venice International Exhibition, 1907 ; Grand I'ri.x, Jnternational Exhibition, Milan, 1906. Copyright. XIV FRANK BRANGWYN AND HIS WORK CHAPTER I PARENTAGE AND EARLY STUDIES 4 S many painters have been affected throughout life by /\ inherited gifts and inclinations, it is proper to note / \ at once that Frank Brangwyn is partly Welsh and partly English ; his father belonged to an Anglo- Welsh family living in Buckinghamshire, and his mother, nde Griffiths, is a Welsh lady from Brecon. One cannot mention this blend of races without thinking of an earlier painter of note, Peter De Wint, whose parentage gave him two nationalities, Dutch and Scotch, and who developed traits from both in his personal character, and also in his landscape work. De Wint was a Scotsman in his deep and rich harmonies of colour, as well as in simple breadth of technique, while his favourite themes were as Dutch in their low horizons as fiat country scenes in England would allow them to be. Again, De Wint is not a student of clouds, like Constable. His thoughts keep near to the earth, just as Dutch minds for centuries have concerned themselves with the dykes of Holland ; and these things A Frank 'Brangwyn and his M^ork denoting the influence of a pedigree, perhaps Brangwyn, like De Wint, inherits much from his parents. It is a question of very great interest, particularly when we con- nect it with the views held by Matthew Arnold on the Anglo-Celts. Matthew Arnold's theory was that England has owed her finest poetry and art to a fusion of Celtic imagina- tion with her own native qualities. Arnold never failed to use the word " Celtic," but, strictly speaking, this term applied to only one type of the inhabitants of Wales. The pure Celts were energetic men of great stature, with light hair and blue eyes ; they were nomads by instinct, they travelled far, peopled France, and found their way across the Channel into Britain. Some ethnologists think that they then lost their own distinction, but their breed is found to this day in Wales, tall and fair, making con- trasts with the primitive type of Welshman, who is short and sturdy, and whose lineage is probably as old as the Neolithic inhabitants of England. He is akin to the dark, short, oval-headed people with small features, whom we encounter also in Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and the West of Scotland as far north as the Orkneys. Brangwyn — on the distaff side of his family — belongs to this dark breed of virile little men, whose life-struggle from prehistoric times has served to prove that imagina- tion and quick emotion and tenacity may go hand in hand with indomitable pluck. England owes innumerable debts of gratitude to Welsh and Celtic imagination and emotion ; while from other races she gets a fitful energy and the joy she takes in wandering adventure. T^arentage and Early Studies These qualities you will find united in Frank Brangwyn. Whether the Welsh alone would ever develop great art is open to doubt, because their national love for music does not, as a rule, show a preference for stringed instruments ; and their gifts for eloquent talk break through the self- discipline that art finds helpful. On the other hand, Anglo- Welshmen of talent are emotional in a steadier way, though routine worries them. Work between fixed hours does not " set their genius." When the impulse comes they toil as a racehorse runs, stopping when their emotion and energy are spent. I have never noticed in Anglo-Welsh artists a patience similar to that which Thackeray admired in his little painter-hero, "J. J." Certainly it is not a trait in Frank Brangwyn, who paints at a white heat or not at all. From Wales, too, I think, comes his great liking for what may be called tints of mountain colour — heather tints, the hues of dried ferns, lichen greys, blue distances, and the gleaming yellow of gorse blossoms. In his colour there is a mingling of Eastern sunlight with the magic of the Welsh hills. When painting an English landscape he sees deeper tones than do our English eyes ; and in this he resembles De Wint, who found no place in his art for wet greens that flash into pale brilliance. But Brangwyn is not drawn to Wales by any strong feeling of affection, although his art owes so much to his mother's race and country, and although his father, Mr. Curtis Brangwyn, spoke always of Wales with great enthusiasm, and himself claimed some descent from that country. Mr. Curtis Brangwyn ' was a very remarkable man, and ' It is interesting to note that an earlier Brangwyn had turned from business to art, and made a reputation for himself. This was Noah, a great-uncle, I believe, of Frank Brangwyn. He spelt the last syllable of his surname with an " i,' Brangwin, and was Frank "Brangwyn and his Tf^ork his name has been coupled with that of Pugin, for he greatly loved Gothic and helped to reawaken the public taste for mediaeval arts and crafts. His temperament was Anglo-Welsh ; and when he chose architecture as his pro- fession, he did not know that building methods had lost their old-time freedom, and that they needed long office hours and stern business habits. Painting would have suited him much better ; and although he gained the confidence and admiration of distinguished architects like G. E. Street and Sir Horace Jones, Mr. Curtis Brangwyn was thwarted all his life by his inability to be at the same moment an artist and a man of business. Many writers on architecture have deplored the effects of a mercantile routine on men of imagination. Fergusson went so far as to say that modern architects in practice " could never afford to give many hours to the artistic elaboration of their designs," and that they generally succeeded " more from their business- like habits than their artistic powers." Fergusson was right, and the career of Mr. Curtis Brangwyn was a case in point. The racehorse could not be broken to the plough ; that is to say, the artist could not adapt himself to relentless methods of routine in a city office, so he worked in the employ of other men rather than bear the many respon- sibilities that Fergusson hated and condemned. Mr. Curtis Brangwyn married early, and his education in architecture having brought him in touch with the energetic school of thought known as the Gothic Revival, living at Henley-on-Thames in 1854, when he sent two pictures to the Royal Academy, entitled "Welsh Sheep" and "The Watchman." The following year he was represented by "The Ploughman's Meal," and in 1856 by "A Berkshire Lane." His name does not appear again in the R.A. catalogues. It has not been my good luck to see any of his work, but his subjects prove that he was attracted by rustic life. 4 T^arenta^e and Early Studies he kept his home for some time by doing for church uses such work as many could afford to buy. Then, believing that life on the Continent would be less expensive than it was in London, he decided to make his home in Belgium, at Bruges ; here he set up his quarters at No. 24 in the Rue du Vieux Bourg, and then opened workrooms for the reproduction of old embroideries for altar-cloths and vestments. At Bruges his son Frank was born, May the 1 2th, 1867. Mrs. Brangwyn was then twenty-three, and her husband twenty-seven. Frank Brangwyn was their third child. He had two sisters for playmates, and Bruges — she has been called the Dead City — was a quiet nursery. One thinks of Bruges as a fitting birthplace for a Fernand Khnopff or a Maeterlinck; but Brangwyn and Bruges? Have they anything more in common than Rubens had with Jiis birthplace in a foreign land, the little town of Siegen, in the Duchy of Nassau ? And I find, too, that Brangwyn has very little to tell about his birthplace, though he remained there for eight years. Some recollections are clear-cut, but they have nothing to do with boyish mischief in the town. They are all connected with art. He remembers many a visit to his father's workrooms, where exquisite needlework lay on tables, shimmering with bright colours ; and one day in his father's garden he found by chance a bundle of photo- graphic negatives, half broken, and looking up from them he saw, against a background of houses and blue sky, a tree covered with red blossoms, such as the Japanese love in their lightly touched prints. Colour was to him what music was to the boy Mozart. He has related — in an article that appeared in M.A.P., February 27, 1904 — that 5 Frank 'Brangwyn and his Jf'^ork the home garden in old Bruges was an enchanted place to him, where great beasts lurked in the shadows, where trees were giants and ogres, and flowers little lords and ladies. More important still, I think, is another recollection. There was a portfolio of prints at home, and the boy was allowed to play with it. A good many artists were re- presented, but only one really delighted him ; it was Charles Degroux, a painter of the Belgian poor, who died in 1870. Some critics have compared Degroux with J. Israels, be- cause both are masters of pathos. But Degroux is the better colourist, and his brushwork is nearer to John Phillip's than to that of the modern Dutchman. For the rest, Degroux loves cottages, garrets, taverns and alleys, and his feeling for the drama of poverty is so deep and true that he has been called the painter of social in- equalities. Degroux never laughs in his w^ork, like David Wilkie, nor does he pass through character into idylls, like William Hunt. It will be remembered how Ruskin praised Hunt's water-colour of an old peasant in the act of praying before he takes his dinner. Degroux painted a similar work, "Saying Grace," now in the Brussels Museum, but the emotion here has a subtle depth of effect that Hunt never felt in his presentation of character. The Belgian painter is not concerned with an idyllic piety ; he sees below the surface of life, and finds in the garret of a poor family that pathetic tragedy of temperament, that compulsion of circumstances, from which good and evil spring at the same moment. Yet Brangwyn at the age of eight not only enjoyed Degroux, but struggled to copy from engravings after 6 CO h t-H .g ■^ X ■^ ^ =i 1:: CO i« •^ 1:4 t-^ t^ o e \ < « ^ J § %j pa «; ^ ™ pCL. >i :«; y^ ?-fj>. ■> a 1 ' ''^JMH^ 'mk^^^ - * 2 ^j "iVHjE •^- ''' i ^j ■ I •^'^^^^^^^^^■i .^^^Bfri^S^k- Vyfi^^MA^ \^^ ^■F^ ~'' hI^H s^^nBaJi^p^ ■■^. '^- ^ .^2fc 1% '^^ ■7. - ^ € f T^arentage and Early Studies Degroux's pictures. The boy was father to the man. His present work (to a great extent) was foretold by his native tastes in childhood. The same inborn liking for what is typically modern and industrial may be found in the noble drawing by which he commemorated the funeral of Edward the Seventh — a drawing published in the Standard newspaper. Photographers, with one accord, took their stand in thronged streets. Brangwyn chose the railway station at Paddington, and in his rapid drawing a flash of sunlight comes down through the glazed roof and rests on King Edward's coffin and the mourners gathered about the train. This touches the heart of our time. The railway station looks as quiet as Westminster Hall, and it represents the genius of modern life and industry, as that Hall typifies for us the spirit of home in bygone ages. At the beginning of 1875 Mr. Curtis Brang^vyn left Bruges for England. " I remember dimly our embarka- tion, though it might have resulted in the days of my youth being ended once for all, for — at least, so I am told — I was discovered crawling along one of the sponsons of the steamer. From this highly perilous position I was rescued in the nick of time, and — here recollection becomes more vivid — soundly spanked and put to bed. In England I went first of all to a dame's school, and then to a big middle-class school, the name of which has totally escaped me. For reasons into which I need not enter, but which have nothing to do with myself, my schooldays came to an abrupt end, and I made myself useful in my father's office." When Mr. Curtis Brangwyn arrived in London he 7 Frank "Brangwyn and his M^ork took an office at No. 6 John Street, Adelphi, and sent two architectural designs to the Royal Academy, " Hastings Town Hall," and " Schools of the Grocers' Company, Hackney." Next year, 1876, he exhibited again, "De- sign for Offices of the Board of Works at Greenwich," and also, in 1879, "Yarmouth Town Hall," and a fine sketch in water-colour of a pulpit at Canford Church. The R.A. catalogues give me no other information, but Mr. Curtis Brangwyn is permanently represented at the Victoria and Albert Museum by a beautiful piece of embroidery — a banner carried out from his designs in his own establish- ment. After a life of hard work, chequered with ups and downs, he died in December 1907. It will be remembered that the seventies were very important years artistically. yEstheticism came into vogue, with its limp clothes and forlornly gentle ideals, looking very absurd in the pea-soup fogs of that time. In 1878 Whistler and Ruskin fought their battle in the law courts, and modern art w^on a new farthing as a shining plaster for its injuries. If Ruskin had been foreman of the jury perhaps the damages would have been higher, for he tried always to be fair when he held a position of trust as an on- looker. In those days, again, a very distinguished French artist, Alphonse Legros, was already at work in London, trying to recover for us the art of teaching the arts, that had been allowed to decline very much since the great era of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner. Professor Legros was the first of the foreign artists to whom England would soon owe many debts of gratitude, both directly and indirectly — directly, as in the work of Mr. Sargent, Mr. Abbey, Mr. J. J. Shannon, and others ; indirectly through 8 u ID h z o CO Q Z < -J w O < "<, ... 1 I ^ c3 r, -5 O 5 'Parentage and Early Studies the English students who studied in continental schools and through the sale of the best foreign pictures in England. It was in 1877, after much hesitation, that the Paris Salon made its famous compromise with the Realists, accepting Manet's portrait of the singer Faure in the part of Hamlet, but rejecting his " Nana." It is pleasant to recall the enthusiasms then in vogue : the earnest efforts, the talk about pictures, how dealers besieged many a painter, and that few persons ever dared to admit they had neglected to spend their shillings on exhibitions and on catalogues worth twopence apiece. The golden age of art had come to grim old London ! Many thought so, and the belief lasted for some years, thanks to the fervour of those who went to the Grosvenor Gallery as pilgrims go to Mecca. Perhaps ordinary folk liked W. P. Frith at the Royal Academy very much better than E. Burne-Jones at the Grosvenor ; but Rossetti assured all the world that pictures by Burne-Jones were unrivalled for "gorgeous variegation of colour, sustained pitch of imagination, and wistful, sorrowful beauty; all conspiring to make them not only unique in English work, but in the work of all times and nations." You remember? Art was very dreamful and serious. ''Have you seen Bume-Jones ? " was a question to awe any one, for it was spoken always with so much fervour that you could not say " No," lest your artistic reputation should die there and then. Yes, it was a keen, ardent time, and a boy like Frank Brangwyn, eager and quick, could see in many places during the ne.xt six years an unusual number of differing aims, and could get from them something for his own future. Millais, Orchardson, Watts, Leighton, Whistler, Tissot, Albert 1) 9 Frank "Brangwyn and his W^ork Moore, Holman Hunt, Pettie, Herkomer, Legros, Bastien- Lepage, Alma-Tadema, Fantin-Latour, Cecil Lawson (he died in 1882, aged thirty-one), Rossetti, Ouless, Frank Holl (elected A.R.A. in 1878), made some among the many contrasts that gave variety to picture galleries. Fred Walker (1840- 1875) and George Mason (181 8-1 872) were dead, but their paintings were to be seen here and there, all high-minded, serene and sweet, but without the seriousness, the depth of perception, the vigour of drawing that appeal to us from the work of Brangwyn's fore- runners, Millet, Meunier, Degroux, and Legros. Is it not singular that Englishmen — a race of sportsmen and athletes — should prefer in art the more feminine qualities of style? So, in an atmosphere of enthusiasm, when the yEs- thetic period made great ado about Oscar Wilde and pre-Raphaelite visions, Frank Brangwyn began to find himself as an art student, after attending day schools for his general education. The etchings of Legros, ex- hibited in a shop near the British Museum, were one useful influence, and he was only about thirteen when he first found his way to the South Kensington Museum, pencil in hand, and made drawings of whatever struck his fancy. Visitors took notice of him, stopping to look at his work. Among them was Mr. Harold Rathbone, an artist, who at once offered cricitisms, and then set him to work from the early Florentine sculptors. The lad was delighted. With a hard pencil he drew for months on very smooth white paper, copying the reliefs of Donatello, and doing whatever Mr. Rathbone wished. It is never easy to train a young hand to represent in hard outlines what the eyes are trying to analyse. 10 T^arentage and Early Studies This long task has broken many a heart. For the eyes throughout a painter's life do at least four times as much work as the hand succeeds in doing ; they are trained and very critical long before manual freedom has been gained by constant practice. It is certain, then, that very close and definite technique is a great help to a young student, teaching him to be patient and exact, to dwell lingeringly over the rhythm of each outline, and to store up in his memory what he has learnt. At the Brussels Academy I was set to draw eyes three feet long, and Van Saverdonck, my class master, insisted upon the same hard outlines that Brangwyn learned from Mr. Harold Rathbone. There was no waste of time over elaborate shading. Brangwyn remembers this with gratitude, for English students in those days often followed a routine of bad drawing methods. Any student who wished to enter the Royal Academy schools toiled for months on a single study from the antique, till his work became a wonderful and fearful thing stippled all over with minute dots. Such work never seemed to get finished, and nothing of any value was learnt from it. Saved from this ineffectual routine, Brangwyn worked on at South Kensington until, one day, another visitor made friends with him. It was Mr. A. H. Mackmurdo, the architect and connoisseur, an artist of broad taste. It was he who founded the Hobby Horse, now dead, and prepared the way for all that is best in our maga- zines of art. His influence on Brangwyn was important. In those days at South Kensington there was a fine work by Mantegna, the sketch of a Roman triumph, with elephants, and Brangwyn was told to copy it. Mantegna 1 1 Frank "Brangwyn and his Work gripped him at once, taking" a strong hold on his mind ; and the same thing happened to Francois Millet when Manteena was studied for the first time. Indeed Millet related that in looking at Mantegna's martyrs "there were moments when he felt as though the arrows of a Saint Sebastian pierced him. These masters are like mesme- rists," Millet added, quite truly. It was fortunate that Brangwyn took his first painting lessons in a sternly noble school, where no weakness in the presentation of a chosen subject ever appears. Mantegna seems to build with his brush, for he paints with a sculptor's hand and knowledge, like Michael Angelo. You cannot be half- hearted when you try to copy him. Much work was done under Mr. Mackmurdo's supervision, relieved by visits to a country house where master and pupil studied plants together. But soon another turn was given to these early studies. One day, at South Kensington, William Morris spoke to Brangwyn, examined his work, and then asked him to collect details from old tapestries. Some critics have been puzzled to account for the com- mand displayed by Brangwyn in practical methods of decorative design — an art unknown to ninety-nine painters in a hundred, perhaps. It is forgotten that his first know- ledge in this very useful field came partly from his study of plants with Mr. Mackmurdo, and partly from his training under William Morris. For some time he worked at the Morris rooms in Oxford Street, not only doing odd jobs, but making full-sized working cartoons from his employer's sketches. This sounds easy, perhaps, but many artists of note would much rather see it done than sit down to do it themselves. For the work is not only 12 w <; o Pi G < Pi h PQ Z < W u ac hj h < ■<> ;S o ■-"■ o ~ Tarentaqe and Early Studies decorative freehand drawing ; it must be done at once, without bungling and hesitation, each motif falling pat into its right place, every detail in scale with its neighbours, and all within a space appointed w^ith Procrustean rigour. Now% the tendency of every kind of drawing, whether you work from models or from memory, is to outgrow the limits of space fixed by your paper or canvas. Many a portrait painter, after years of practice, feels this when he begins to place even a single figure effectively. Con- sider, then, how useful it was to Frank Brangwyn to enlarge the sketch designs by William Morris, turning them cjuickly and correctly into full-sized cartoons for carpets, wall-papers, tapestries, and so forth. This was the exercise that gave him courage and self-confidence ; it strengthened his hand ; it taught his eyes not only to measure correctly, but to see on the paper before them the exact spacing of a big composition. So, then, instead of passing from life-class to life-class, he enjoyed from the first a practical training very well fitted to bring out the qualities of his temperament as an artist. There are many dangers in life-schools. This is proved by the fact that the most brilliant students — the prize-winners — seldom do anything first-rate in after years. Not only do they miss the encouragement of delighted masters, the enthusiasm of fellow-students, but their early success generates man- nerisms, with a belief that they have done something — have even "arrived." And then, all at once, disenchant- ment comes, and they learn that those who bore up against defeats in the schools were lucky fellows because they gained habits of persistent pluck. The less a student hears about "art," and the more closely he is brought in 13 Frank "Brangwyn and his JV^ork touch with practical methods, workmanlike and strong, the better it is for him. And here is another point con- nected with BrangAvyn's early studies : they did not teach him to talk, did not make him facile of speech — a bad thing that nearly always accompanies weak craftsmanship. As soon as a painter begins to write about pictures, or to talk with fluency about his impressions, you may be quite certain that he will not have emotion enough for his own work. He is like a boiling kettle, the steam from which makes much ado while evaporating. A critic is made by talk ; a painter by silence and energetic practice. For the rest, William Morris offered to take Brangwyn into his employ, but events intervened, and the pupil passed on into a wider experience, that included trips to distant countries. Between his journeys he did some work for Morris, and gained much by his business intercourse with one of the most remarkable men of the last century. For Morris was born to attract and to lead. His convictions were magnetic, his presence was energy personified ; and many a distinguished man now, like Mr. William De Morgan, thinks of him with veneration. If Brangwyn had been older, a young man instead of a wayward boy, it is probable that Morris, with his ardent and deep- rooted beliefs, would have gained too strong a hold of the pupil's mind. As it was, BrangAvyn slipped away into a life of adventure, and there was no loss of per- sonality while he learned all he could from the master spirit. Not that ever)'body was satisfied with his work. Some of the boy's drawings were shown to Mr. W. Q. Orchardson, 14 T^arentage and Early Studies who had become a Royal Academician in 1877. The great man was kind, but very far from pleased ; he had no hopes at all for Brangwyn's future. Then other studies were taken to Mr. Colin Hunter, and this painter mingled encouragement with good advice, saying that fame in art could never be foreseen ; it rested with each man's char- acter. Tenacity, as well as talent, was essential. 15 CHAPTER II LATER STUDIES WHILE doing what he could to please William Morris— from about 1882 and 1884 — Brangwyn saved from his earnings the sum of forty shillings, and prepared for a sketching tour in the country. It was a very natural feeling of dis- content that urged him on. For all art students — unless they happen to be prigs — rebel from time to time against the artificialities that form around professional work an unchanging atmosphere. The same thoughts are discussed day after day, the same things are seen, almost the same things are done ; and although the mind is active, it moves within limits set by custom, rather like the mechanism of a watch within its metal case. I know men to-day who hated modern art when I was a lad of fifteen at the Slade School. Their tastes then were all bred in museums among the primitive masters ; and to this day they are antago- nistic to any other painters. For thirty-two years they have kept their atmosphere unrefreshed. So, as custom is reason either fast asleep or only half awake, every art student ought to break free from familiar surroundings and the repetition of ordered studies. This was understood in England years ago, for Cozens, Girtin, Turner, De Wint, Cox, and many others, owed much more to independent observa- tion out of doors than to lessons and methodical teaching. 16 Later Studies This applies also to Frank Brangwyn, whose real schools have been travel and the sea, distant countries and their ways of living. It was an education in light, in colour, and in wondrous varied towns, peoples and costumes. Luckily, too, it began at a time when he was too much of a boy to gather his impressions in a self-conscious way, as if he were a correspondent for a newspaper. It is ever indiscreet to trust a man who goes out deliberately to observe given events ; he tries to be effective, and falsifies what he sees. Brangwyn's aim when he left Morris was to score a little off his own bat ; he knew nothing of the world and its life, and was bored by a routine of talk about familiar subjects. His first trip was to a village on the coast of Kent — Sandwich. Here there were fishermen with their boats, little cottages and their kindly womenfolk, gleaming sands, and the sea with its thousand moods. The boy painter lived as simply as the villagers. " During the day I worked hard at my sketching, and by night I hobnobbed with the ships' captains who frequented the inn in which I lodged. One of these mariners was a man of some artistic ability, and soon we became great friends. Thus the time passed very pleasantly — until funds began to run low, and eventually ran out altogether. H.xpected supplies from home did not arrive. While the people of the inn were most kind and con- siderate, the situation was unpleasant, though I daresay my imagination made it worse than it was. Anyhow, when my friend, the artistic captain, suggested that I should make a voyage with him, I jumped at the chance" {M.A.P., February 27, 1904). c 17 Frank 'Brangwyn and his JVork Indeed, he gladly worked for his passage on the schooner Laura Ann, doing whatever came along. He stowed sails, handled ropes, helped the cook, washed dishes, made sketches of the ship, and sold them to the crew for sixpence apiece. It was a capital opportunity to learn every rope and spar on board a vessel ; and Brangwyn got to know more about sea life than "The Cruise of the Midge'' would have taught him. Here was an experience all alive with good subjects, and it did not end when the boat anchored in the Thames. A great liking for the sea remained, and his earliest paintings were of ships and sailors. "The first money I earned was by painting the name on a vessel's hull. This work brought me sixpence. After that I made friends with the Laura Ann; then with some other coasters — not actually sailoring, you know, though I had to work my passage more than once. At times I was actually on my beam-ends — but happy. On several occasions I had to assist in loading a vessel to get a supper, and once I was even harder pushed than that. A Welsh schooner came in, and I applied for a job. For a couple of days I ran a barrow across a plank backwards and forwards, and all the generous skipper gave me was a mouldy old biscuit. Still, I was following Art, so I just munched that biscuit and was content, though I mentally registered a vow never to work for a Welsh sea-captain again." It was in the thick of these experiences that the boy painted his first picture, a small one in oil, "A Bit on the Esk," near Whitby ; he sent it to the Royal Academy, and it was accepted and hung in 1885, when Brangwyn was just eighteen. Then for a while he lived hater Studies in a single room at i8 Shepherd's Bush Green, doing- work from time to time for William Morris. Besides that he designed for several manufacturers, passing from wall-papers to tiles, and from card backs to other utilities. Very low prices were paid for his drawings. In modern shop-expenses, advertisement is deemed of greater im- portance than well-paid designing ; but Brangwyn some- how managed to save a few pounds, and with their help he tried his hand at a difficult picture, a seascape with a wrecked boat lying on a sandbank in rough weather. It was freely handled, it was true in dramatic feeling. The Royal Academy accepted this early work in 1886, and a shipowner bought it, and made friends with its author. He was a patron such as any young artist would wish to have; and in 1888 he allowed Brangwyn to give a certain number of sketches in return for a sea voyage on board one of his boats. The passage having been bought in this way, Brangwyn set sail for Asia Minor. An active life was very pleasant, and the painter was so delighted with the East that he bargained for another trip, setting sail in the summer of 1890. This time he visited Tunis, Tripolis, Smyrna, Trebizond, Constantinople ; sailed around the Black Sea, saw a part of Roumania, and made sketches on the Danube. At Constantinople he met with an adventure : — "One evening I went for a stroll in company with two of the ship's engineers. In the course of time we came to a cypress grove, surrounded by a low wall. I don't think we had any particular intention in our minds, and certainly we had no thought of doing any harm, but we jumped over the wall. Hardly had our feet touched ground when a 19 Frank 'Brangwyn and his IJ'^ork ferocious-looking soldier rushed at us with drawn sword. I did not stop to argue the matter, but transferred myself to the other, and right side, of the wall with great rapidity. The two engineers, however, being Scots — as I should say ninety per cent, of ships' engineers are — wished to discuss the metaphysical aspects of the case with the soldier. This they proceeded to do in their broad and native Doric. Whether the soldier followed the points the two Scotties were endeavouring to make or not I can't say, but he enforced his own point with his sword, and with such vigour and earnestness that my comrades made an abrupt and unceremonious departure as I had done. We found out afterwards that we had unwittingly trespassed upon the gardens of the old Seraglio, not the one where the Sultan's womenfolk resided, but — what made our intrusion as offensive as if we had disturbed the sanctity of the harem — where the treasure-house was." There were other travel adventures, but the painter de- clines to relate them, arguing that the only proper events to be told are those that directly influenced his work. He learned, then, very soon, what sunlight and colours meant in searching climates. In comparison with so much brilliance and so much heat, London seemed a town of perpetual twilight. But impression followed impression too rapidly, and the wish to work was sated before the struggle between handicraft and sunlight began. It is not often that a real painter does any finished work out of doors. Careful outlines, with a few touches of water-colour, were enough for Turner ; and Brangwyn also, in his early travels, usually followed the same method, having confi- dence in that inward vision that dwells unimpaired in the 20 Pi w >^ <: w h < cu <^ m V yS f Vv. i-i: hater Studies memor)' of those who are greatly fascinated by colour and sunlight. On his return to London, his sketches were ex- hibited at the Royal Arcade Gallery, Bond Street, in March 1891, under the title "From the Scheldt to the Danube." Only a few critics noticed their freshness and sparkle. I choose a notice from the Star, which says that Brangwyn w\as seen to the best advantage. " It is his own fault if he led one to suppose that he could paint only grey seas and stormy skies. At most exhibitions of late years he has been represented by pictures of a ship in a storm, or rough weather, until one thought there were but greys and pale browns on his palette. But in the Bond Street collec- tion almost all the studies were made about Constantinople and in the South or East, and they glow with colour. There are waters of the most brilliant blue, glittering white roads under intense blue skies, bazaars and quays filled with gaily dressed crowds. Pink and white towns rise from the bright seas, radiant hills bound the horizon, and only in one or two canvases is there a reminder that Mr. Brangwyn has studied nature in her quieter moods. But it is curious to note in almost all the sketches how much more successful he has been in rendering colour than light ; he gives the colour of the South, but not its sunlight. The cleverest are those of crowded streets and bazaars and quays, in which the figures are put in in a most delightful manner. Not the least charm of Mr. Brangwyn's work is the direct simple method of recording his impressions." Other journeys followed in quick succession, and there had been a rapid one to Spain between these two Eastern trips. One journey took him to Russia, giving him ex- periences very different in kind, often cold and unplea.sant ; 21 Frank "Brangwyri and his IVork while Spain was visited again early in 1891, this time with Mr. Arthur Melville, whose death we mourned in 1904, and whose name has often been coupled with that of Brangwyn because of his originality in thought, in com- position, in colour and in technique. I may speak of Melville again in the chapter on Brangwyn's sketches in water-colour ; the point to be noticed now is that he was encouraged by his friend's example to develop without fear his own style, even although the academic mind should be horrified. Some writers have supposed that he copied Melville's effects of palpitating heat obtained with swift dashes and blobs of water-colour ; but there is no truth in that. They were kindred spirits as well as friends ; both belong to the same native feeling for style that has formed at haphazard a sort of great little cosmopolitan school in which we find Cottet, Simon, the late H. B. Brabazon, and Mr. Sargent in his landscape work. These fine artists, like Melville and Brangwyn, owe something — each in his own way, by a large and free transmutation — to the French Impressionists ; but their elective affinity has nothing whatever to do with conscious effort. Brangwyn, then, in 1891, travelled with Melville in Spain, going first to Saragossa. Here they hired an old boat called the Santa Maria, paying twenty pesetas a day, this sum to include a crew and mules. It was their intention to be towed up the canal. " A one-eyed man named Rincon was signed on as captain, Antonio as crew and cabin-boy, and a muleteer to superintend the mules, gently or otherwise. The boat was simply Ai ; she rose high out of the water, pierced on either side with many windows, and having a carved figurehead of Neptune, 22 Later Studies although she was supposed to be a Santa Alaria. The roof would have been the better for a bit of caulking, for whenever it rained we had to move our goods to the dry- spots. The saloon, with its lockers round, and upholstered in yellow silk, made us feel slightly more luxurious than after-events warranted. At last, amid the jeers and cheers of the cro\\d, we were uricler-weigh. . . . The sun was setting, and the effect of light and colour stealing through the rows of dark poplars on the bank was fine ; while in the distance loomed a mysterious uncanny-looking mountain which might have concealed a demon." Two letters on this Spanish trip appeared in the first numbers of the Studio, April and May, 1893. They are vivid and lively. I will take from them a few quotations — a little revised by their author. "The landscape is quaint, and decorated with rich yet subdued colouring : to some people it might seem monotonous, but there is a subtle pathetic charm in its monotony. On the banks we saw lightly clad girls with great bundles of washing : all this made glad the heart of a painter. Presently we came to a more hilly country : the canal winds by hills, treeless, scorched by the sun. Under the long shadows of the few poplars on the banks we could see a goatherd surrounded by flocks of black goats, looking like spots of ink on the sun-swept hills : above the swell of the hill hung a great white cloud ..." They reached a puebla called Catanillo — " a dead city, peopled with strange earth-coloured phantoms. To the day succeeded a night if possible more weird ; masses of grey cloud swept over the sleeping town — here and there rifts of opalescent green." One day — it was at Galar — 23 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork Melville, "by some occult means, managed to get a goatherd with his flock down in the morning ; so, after breakfast — otherwise a pint of coffee with a flavour of oil about it — we began our work. It was charming at first, till the frequent peregrinations of the goats over the hills caused me to think the goat was not the amiable animal one imagines him. We sweated in agony — not silent on my part. Melville made a good morning of it, but the wily goat proved too much for me." They saw Huesca, where the old kings of Aragon used to live ; they visited Huren, driving thence by Agerbe, through the pine forests of the Serra de Quarra, to ancient Jacca. Jacca, which claims to be the oldest town in Spain, would not allow them to sketch, its fortifications being under military law ; and the painters at last hired an old carriage to drive over the Pyrenees into France, intend- ing to return thence into Spain, this being the cheapest and swiftest route. At first their way went between snow- clad mountains, then amid great gloomy pine forests, through which torrents rushed foaming ; until anon they emerged into fertile plains, and reached Oleron, from which place they booked to Pau, thence to Bayonne, I run, and San Sebastian. From San Sebastian they moved on to Puerta de Passages, a narrow inlet from the sea, widen- ing into a large bay of the deepest and bluest waters, surrounded with picturesque stone-built houses, once owned by the flower of the Guipposcoan nobility, but now tenanted by fishermen. " The architectural features of this city of one street are unique and interesting. It is a tiny Venice, with essentially Spanish features. The many- storeyed and balconied houses all look on the bay, and 24 Later Studies among these long-deserted palaces one comes across treasures of wood and stone carving. Its single street winds round the bay, and following its tortuous passages one can find many pictures : gloomy alleys, with a peep through of the bay bathed in sunlight ; here and there a shrine, stone-covered, with its painted background, now rapidly succumbing to the wear of sun and wind. The place is as it was two hundred years ago. Time has only knocked the angles off. ... I have been starting a tolerably large canvas here of some pilots looking out from the verandah across the bay, with its brilliant white houses opposite. I suppose no one will understand it when I bring it home." True. Few critics did when the picture hung in the winter exhibition at the Suffolk Street Galleries, 1892. After this delightful holiday, Brangwyn went to South Africa with Mr. William Hunt, to make sketches for a London dealer, Mr. Larkin of Bond Street. They made a circuit of some hundreds of miles round about Cape Town, visiting the Paarl, with its main street eight miles long, red and sandy, its running brook, its avenue of trees, and surrounding vineyards. Brangwyn saw Berg River, Simon's Town, Kimberley, Libertas, Worcester, Jonker's Hoek, and Stellenbosch, &c. ; visited an ostrich farm, went into fields where arum lilies thrived like daisies, looked into the canteens, and studied life generally as it found its hundred and one openings in the new colony. There was a greater native story to tell than he and Mr. Hunt told ; but they made sketches of things which they believed would interest people at home, and they could do no more. Much good material was found in the old Dutch towns, with their D 25 Frank "Brangwyn and his W^ork gabled roofs and their primitive home customs. Ancient Holland was busy there under a hot sky. Some of the old Dutch cleanliness was gone, killed by the heat, perhaps, but Brangwyn still talks with pleasure about the kind- ness he met with at Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Simonsburg — a melancholy place, its white houses almost without windows, for the early Dutch settlers had to guard them- selves from attack. On his way home the painter stayed at Madeira, and made from there a short expedition to the West Coast of Africa. His sketches were exhibited at the Japanese Gallery in Bond Street, March 1892. Many notices appeared in the Press, and opposite opinions were expressed, some critics being very pleased, while others declared that the sketches did not reveal the true genius loci — the genius of men and things in South Africa — as distinct from their mere aspects, as filmed on the memory of a rapid tourist. The JVorld declared the sketches to be full of merit : " A most laudable love of cool grey tones distinguishes his work, and is prominent in ' The Valley of Drakenstein ' and ' The Courtyard of a Dutch Farm.' He has a certain quaint poetic feeling, which is both characteristic and pleasing, that finds utterance in ' An Idyll,' representing a native woman with her piccaninny on her back and followed by another child, wandering along the seashore through sedge and sand in the twilight, while the moon rising over the sea is intercepted by the baby's black head, which it frames, as it were, in a halo. The artist, however, does not confine himself alone to grey tones and twilight scenes. ' The Fish Market, Funchal, Madeira,' and 'The Main Street, Paarl,' prove that glaring sunshine and blazing colour also 26 Later Studies find in him an admirer and an exponent." The Daily TelegrapJi was encouraging also, saying that the general effect of the exhibition was almost magical, for on entering the room " one seemed really to be transported from our own cold, foggy, unsympathetic climate to the burning glory of Africa. The natives, their social life in primitive huts and dwellings, and the picturesque corners of their chief cities, as well as the more desolate regions charac- terised by the grandeur of mountain ranges, rivers, rocks, and veldts, introduce one vividly to a mighty country of which most of us have little knowledge." Still it was impossible to please everybody ; and I may notice that South Africans appear to have been almost as much offended with Mr. Brangwyn as Australians were with Mr. Froude. Several years after the exhibition closed, in 1895, the African Critic spoke with sorrow of Brangwyn's visit to the Cape, and hoped that a really competent artist would take advantage of " the present boom in African millionaires," doing pictures of up-country hunting and wagon life. Mr. C. W. Furse had just sailed in the Dunottar Castle, and it was to be hoped that he would be able to represent some part of the wonderful beauty to be seen at the Cape. To satisfy the local mind of a British dominion is a task beyond the power of a traveller's art, perhaps. Brangwyn had periods of work in England between his voyages of enchantment. In 1886 he left Shepherd's Bush Green and set up his home at 39A Queen's Square, Blooms- bury. The following year he moved on to the Wentworth Studios, Chelsea, and in this art centre he met Mr. J. J. Shannon, as well as many painters fresh from the schools. 27 Frank "Brarigwyn a?id his JVork s The Chelsea period in his early work was one of gradual transition. He joined the Institute of British Artists, coming under the influence of the president, Mr. Whistler, at a time when that great man's likes and dislikes were as laws to many young fellows.^ The thing that counted then as the saving grace of style was tone, which may be described as a unifying mystery of colour that permeates a picture, and binds all its parts together, giving a sort of inner depth and richness. Brangwyn followed in the vogue and made studies in low tone. But he kept away from all the vicious tricks and pigments which at various times have been employed by devotees of the Goddess Tone. Bitumen, asphaltum, lac Robert, and glazing over unhardened paint, have ruined many thousands of pictures, including a good many by first-rate men. Reynolds in his quest for rich and luminous tone often forgot the chemical interaction between pigments, and prepared the way for deep cracks and perished colour. Whistler was far and away more scien- tific, and Brang^^yn also tried to understand the value of tone in its relation both to nature and to good, simple, non-fugitive pigments. Nature is a vast unity with scattered parts, while art is a limited harmony ; and it is tone that helps us to resolve profusion into a definite whole, true to the same key in ev^ery plot of colour. Tone arrives at a semblance of nature's infinity, not by searching for details, as amateurs believe, but by a subtle orches- ' I note here that one critic accused Whistler of copying from Brangwyn. This occurred in 1895, and the criticism appeared in the Speaker of October iS. Here are the words : " Mr. Whistler exhibits a study in red (at the New Gallery). This picture reminds me of Mr. Brangwyn, the juicy quality of whose work Mr. Whistler reproduces very well." What next? 28 Later Studies tratioii of each man's technical methods in their relation to what must be left out, which is the main proJjlem of art. Hrangwyn understood this early in his career. Tone gave him but little trouble ; and in a good many of his early pictures there was a kinsmanship between his methods and those of George Morland. You will notice the same facile play with the brush, and a similar choice of tints, arising from a just belief that a simple palette is the best. Morland preached that lesson all his life, and his work has not changed without help from bungling restorers. Between Brangwyn's palette and Morland's I find a striking resemblance, for Brangwyn, even now, in his most Eastern effects of sun-colour, works with a few pigments that seem quite ascetic. Here they are : Flake white, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, cadmium, Venetian red, vermilion, and French blue. It is a little peal of bells upon which many carillon changes are rung all in tune. W^th this restricted palette he worked in low grey tones at Chelsea, sending his work to the Academy, to Whistler's Gallery in Suffolk Street, and sometimes to the Institute of Oil Painters, of which he became a member in 1892. His subjects were plain landscapes and sea-pieces with figures, painted at a heat, and therefore free from the elaborate retouching that Millet and Bastien Lepage brought into vogue. From the first his touch has had fluency, for in his early studies there was no effort to go beyond the emotional reach of his knowledge and strength. That was very important. Many a young fellow has tried to bend the bow of Ulysses before he was strong enough, wasting his time over futile and disheartening struggles. As if 29 Frank ^rangwyn and his Work any good could ever be gained by making the study of art more troublesome than it is invariably ! There was a time in 1887 when Brangwyn was on the point of forsaking his colours like a bad recruit. He was very poor ; his pictures did not sell ; doing sketches to be pawned for a few shillings was not entertaining; and the sailor in his character was restive. Why not "chuck" art altogether, and go to sea? Londoners, busy with their own affairs, did little to help young painters ; and during those hard times a wearisome inaction settled down upon his studio life. How ridiculous it would be to work when colours, canvases, brushes, frames, agents' fees, with travelling expenses for pictures, asked constantly for more money 1 But at last, one day, the unhappy painter spoke of his troubles to his colourman, good and kind old Mr. Mills, who was a generous friend to many young artists. Mr. Mills believed firmly in youthful honour, and his con- fidence was always at its best when materials had to be given in exchange for promises of payment at some vague date afar off. The good man laughed, then hinted that the "blues" should be kept for palettes and fair skies. Youngsters who painted well did not go to sea ; they accepted £^2. a week for a year or two, gave up talking nonsense, and paid regularly in good work. So the crisis passed. With the capital supplied by Mr. Mills a new start was made, this time in Cornwall, at the little fishing village of Mevagissey, where Brangwyn worked at open- air effects. Among the pictures he then painted was a rustic scene in the vein of Millet, representing several men in the act of stripping bark off felled trees. This picture, 30 Later Studies exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, was rather in keeping with what is now known as the Newlyn School, whose grey brilliance was first seen in Brittany, at Pont Aven, Quimperl(f, and Concarneau. The Cornish period in the forming of Brangwyn's style was important because it fixed his attention on subtle half-tones that vary in- finitely out of doors ; and the immediate eftect of these studies gave charm to many seafaring pictures, some of which were hung at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists between 1889 and 1902. I will mention three or four. R.A., 1889. "Home" — an ocean-going steamer brought towards harbour by a sturdy little tug that strains its heart out in a gallant effort. " Minutes are like Hours " — a pier-head with fisher-folk watching, and a vessel beating into harbour. S.B.A., 1889, shortly after the painter's election. A picture entitled " Wraik Gatherers," representing a storm- beaten sea and a beach swept by waves ; in the foreground three men gather wraik from the surf. For other works belonging to 1889, see my list of selected pictures. S.B.A., 1890. "Conjecture" — a group of fishermen on a damp grey day standing on a wet quay and discuss- ing some point about a ship that is just arriving into harbour. " It cannot be said that the picture is exactly interesting," said the Times ; " but there is a solidity in the way in which the men are set upon their feet and a reality about their attitudes which show that Mr. Brangwyn has mastered at least some of the principal essentials of his art." R.A., 1890. "All Hands Shorten Sail" — very success- ful at the Paris Salon of 1892. 31 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork S.B.A., 1890. "The Burial at Sea"— of which I shall speak in the next chapter. R.A., 1891. "Assistance" — a large picture with merit; it represents a storm scene on board ship where sailors are in the act of lowering a boat to save life off a vessel in distress. Not fewer than fifteen men are shown in char- acteristic attitudes, and the air is filled with spray. The R.A. skied this painting, and several leading newspapers protested. R.A., 1892. "The Convict Ship" — with its living freight of unfortunates, just freed in the Thames from the pilot's boat, of which a glimpse through the gangway is descried. The side of the vessel is lined with various groups, all well characterised, and in the centre stands a young man in chains — a captive to despair, his hands bound behind him. It is one of those pictures which, besides their instantaneous truth, their genuine appeal as art, have value as copy- rights. "The Convict Ship" was medalled at the Chicago Exhibition, the jury making their decision known in 1894. British Artists, 1892. " Pilots ; Puerta de Passages " — a vigorous work, very striking in colour. " In the deep shadow of the verandah of a railed gallery overlooking the water picturesque mariners sit or stand by the rough wooden tables, drinking and gossiping. Without, on the opposite shore, are visible quaint irregularly built houses and a lofty green hillside, all in vivid sunlight. Relieved against this brilliant background, the figures become little more than silhouettes rich in colour, and with an in- dividuality of contour which gives to them strongly marked character" {Morning Post). This picture caused much controversy. 32 Later Studies Some writers, when speaking of Brangwyn's seascapes, have coupled his name with R. L. Stevenson's. " Here," they say, " is the man to illustrate ' Treasure Island ' and 'Kidnapped.'" They would be much nearer the mark if they called Brangwyn the Smollett among British marine painters. No kindred feeling unites him and Stevenson, while there is much in common between his marine pictures and those that Smollett drew in words, with brawny truthfulness, after getting knowledge at first-hand from a draggled life on board a battleship. Stevenson was not a realist. He hunted after romance ; and when he chose the sea it was not because he knew a great deal about sailors, but because romance there attracted him even more than it did on land. To Brangwyn, in his sea pictures, romance counted for less than a presentation of character, and he showed from time to time a quality that parted him from Smollett and united him to another master of seascapes — Victor Hugo. That quality was a really deep feeling for the drama of circumstances. Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea" brings before us many ocean pieces with a terrible impressiveness ; we feel that the waves are sterile, merciless, and that men may grow to be like them in a life of maritime adventure. That is the drama of circumstances ; and Brangwyn in his early days painted as Hugo wrote. This helps to explain why "The Funeral at Sea" and "The Buccaneers," when exhibited at the Paris Salon — the first in 1891 and the other in 1893 — not only stirred the French public in a memorable way, but made Brangwyn better known and liked abroad than he was in his own country. Critics of many difterent schools — Max Nordau and Ary Renan, Henri Marcel, Lafenestre, F?'ank "Brangwyn and his JVork and L^once B^n^dite, to take just a few examples — welcomed him as a brave and original painter. I had written the foregoing paragraph with its parallel between Brangwyn and Victor Hugo, when, in an article by Maurice Guillemot, I came upon a very similar thought, called forth this time by Brangwyn's etchings, their in- sistent energy and their grip of farouche character and humour. " Certaines de ses planches font petiser aux dessins de Victor Hugo avec, en- plus, une technicitd professiomieller M. Guillemot is right. The sentiment of the handicraft, its impulsive emotion, sharp and quick and powerful, impatient under restraint, nerves and muscles at work together — all this may be seen plainly in both artists, and it is worth remembering. We have now reached a point where Brangwyn's later studies may be said to have ended, because, after travelling here and there from clime to clime, and having passed through four or five phases, he had discovered what he really wished to do and by which methods he was most like to achieve his purpose. There had been a period of hesitation. He could not at first choose between tone in a low grey key and colour all aglow with brilliant sun- light. For indeed, after his varied training, which had taken him from William Morris to the North Sea, and from his Chelsea and Cornish periods through a sort of nautical pilgrimage from land to land, it was no easy task to resolve a chaos of impressions into a workable style. But he won his way at last to sunny daylight. Doubts went one by one, and Brangwyn entered with con- fidence into his own style. The rest belongs to a review of his art as a whole, beginning with the first pictures 34 Later Studies that challenged much attention ; and let it be remembered, as we advance from stage to stage in a busy career, that the painter is only forty-three at the present time. What he has done, then, we may hope is only a small part of what he will do as he develops, one by one, all those hints and ideas on artistic presentation that appealed to him during his early and later studies — from his fondness for Degroux onward to his Eastern experiences. Z^ CHAPTER III CONTESTS OF CRITICISM: "A FUNERAL AT SEA," "THE BUCCANEERS," "SLAVE TRADERS," AND "A SLAVE MARKET" TT is a battlefield always, the work done by gifted men ; I year after year many critics fire their shots over it in I all directions, aiming at things liked and disliked, and trying to make good shots, however painful to human targets. There have been Bisleys of art criticism, with much volley-firing, since picture-shows and newspapers became too numerous ; but when you pass the shooting in review, its frequent hits and its many wounds, do you not feel that there is little to be envied in this part of a painter's life? While going with care through the war of Press notices that Brangwyn had to face between the years 1889 and 1895, I have asked myself that question many times. Why should a workman ask to be fired at in the News- paper Press? And as to the critics, what function do they serve? Biography cannot pass them by as of no account, because their influence acts in two powerful ways : either encouraging a man to make further efforts, or else hurting him terribly in those very moments of discontent that follow the excitement of creative efforts. " Every finished picture is a subject thrown away," said Lord Leighton ; and all true artists feel disenchanted after the stress and strain of their endeavours. 36 C/3 Pi w w z < o p PQ w I V ^ ■^ § ft* ^ ^ Contests of Criticism It is to be feared that critics do not often remember this drain on the self-confidence of painters and sculptors. Indeed, while thinking of the work before them, they are apt to forget the emotional man both in and behind the work, for you can never separate an artist from his chil- dren, his finished books, or pictures, or sculpture. I notice, too, that Brangwyn received many hard blows during the most tricky and uncertain period of his career, when he was passing from tragic or desolate marine pictures to the bril- liant life and colour made known to him by foreign travel ; but I believe he met with kinder help from the daily news- papers than from any other source. The great weeklies were often arrogant, and sometimes they were even cruel. I note this fact with regret. There is something pitiful in all criticism having blind eyes and a tongue that whips. For critics of that type soon die, leaving a poor record of service to the public ; and presently their old bad tempers have to be recorded in the life of some distinguished man. "When we speak, let no painter call his soul his own" — this humour was too evident in many notices of Brangwyn's early work ; and there are men even now who venture to write of him with a high-crested authority, as if they wished him to work within their atmosphere, forsaking his own. They object to his outlook in art; they do not understand his temperament as a man of genius; and their tastes are rather cobwebs of the study than a free result of know- ledge acquired at first hand from nature and human life. And I mention this here for three reasons. First, we must allow every man of genius to have his own nature ; ne.xt, we should study his work from within its own emotion ; and again, it is impossible to have much sympathy witli 37 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork s Brangwyn if you go to him for anecdotes, prettinesses, literary refinements, these qualities having a subordinate place in the painter's art that he loves and explores. Foreigners understand all this ; and but for their unfailing encouragement, which began in 1891, I do not think that Brangwyn would have gone successfully through the most critical time of his career. Our Royal Academy encour- aged him at first, then gave him a cold shoulder ; and after 1898, when his painting of "The Golden Horn" was hung so high that it could not be judged, he thought it discreet not to send in work to Burlington House, nor did he appear there again until 1904, the year in which he was elected A.R.A. Meantime, many honours were conferred upon him both by foreign critics and by foreign societies of artists. Brangwyn has gained many medals, including the great gold medal of honour granted from time to time by the Emperor of Austria. His work is to be found at the Luxembourg, at Venice, Stuttgart, Munich, Prague, Barcelona, Pittsburg, Chicago, Sydney, Wellington, and Johannesburg. Many of the continental print-rooms have made a choice from his etchings. It is not too much to say that his fame travelled to us from abroad and found us unready to receive it in a proper spirit. This will appear evident as we review his first successes, beginning with "The Funeral at Sea," that represents what is best in his first period. It is a large picture. We are looking up the deck of a big merchant-ship. Midway, near the bridge, four rough sailors carry a dead comrade on a stretcher ; other sailors stand near, listening while their captain reads the burial service : " We therefore commit his body to the deep." 38 Contests of Criticism In the foreground, on our left, stand an old salt and a boy of sixteen, facing the ceremony, and it is easy to read in their attitudes, as in those of the other mourners, what they feel. They are all English tars, these rugged, strong men in weather-stained clothes ; they feel as Englishmen do under unusual circumstances, showing a certain constraint of manner, as if their part in life is to be ashamed when a sudden emotion grips them by the throat. The old salt has a clay pipe hidden in his right hand ; the first mate, a bearded fellow, standing near the head of the stretcher, has thrust both hands into his coat pockets, and, his head drooping, he listens in awkward sorrow while the captain reads. No ocean drama, seen with our own eyes, could tell us more about the simple loyalty and good comradeship that unite a crew near the graveyard of our race — the sea. This work, so true, so poignant, is but a symbol of our national destiny. For England — " Our Lady of the Sea," as Camden named her — has all her fortunes on the deep, and one day they will be lost there and buried. " C'est I'Angleterre," a Frenchman said of " The Funeral at Sea," feeling the sturdy characters of each sailor, the restrained grief, and the strange fatalism that cannot be kept away from those who toil above the ocean in the brave toys called ships. Nothing should take a sailor unawares, accustomed as he is to all the most terrible and majestic effects produced by winds and waves in their agitation and thunders. So the sorrow in this picture is not a bit like any grief that rough men show by a grave- side in a churchyard. It is in keeping with the hazards of marine adventure, not with the ordered security that shelters 39 Frank Tlrangwyn and his Jf^ork life on land. Ashore, death comes ever as a surprise ; it seems abnormal, and we blind our windows from the light, and make our footsteps whisper with our voices. At sea, on the other hand, death is but the spirit of storms and the genius of triumphant waves. It is a part of that everlasting conflict in nature that breeds fatalism among those who earn their bread in the midst of great lonely forests, or vast mountains, or perilous ocean strife. In this picture by Brangwyn, painted when he was only twenty-three, you will find — side by side with a few youthful shortcomings — as much true psychology as any painter has yet put into a typical scene from maritime experience. Nothing here is forced. Every sailor keeps his plane and place in the composition, and stands out of doors with the salt air all around him. His emotion belongs to his own character, and makes no direct appeal for our sympathies. A true seaman who happens to be a young man of genius has painted with penetrating judgment and sincerity a work that all other seamen will understand. One might suppose that the London public, dependent on the sea for all things worth having, would be quicker than the Parisian public to recognise the merit in Brangwyn's pathos and observation. Yet "The Funeral at Sea " was not very much noticed when it hung at the Galleries in Suffolk Street, while a great success was won by it immediately afterwards at the Paris Salon, where its pathos and its power were fully ap- preciated. Roger Marx was as delighted as A. Sylvestre ; Leonce Bdnedite^ and Georges Lafenestre were as enthusi- M. Benedite wrote as follows : " Mais c'est encore un etranger, M. Brangwyn, un Anglais ne dans les Flandres, qui nous fait assister avec le plus d'emotion et d'impression vraie, dans 40 Contests of Criticism astic as MM. Jacques, Groselande, Marcel, Wolff, and others. One critic, writing in the Rdpublique Franqaise, said that the sailors seemed to be alive : on croit les voir soufflant. The picture is still remembered in Paris, though its success belongs to 1891. The French Government wished to buy it for the Luxembourg, but the work had been bought by an Englishman. Some good notices were written in England — ^just a few, but visitors to the Suffolk Street Galleries cared no more for the subject than they did for the year one. For there was no prettiness, no sentimentalism ; it was a quiet picture ; and because it asked for as much thought as was freely given to sports and games, it seemed " heavy " as art to Londoners. The Daily Telegraph spoke well of "The Funeral at Sea," finding it well-grouped and finely depicted in solemn greys, pervaded also with an indescribable salt-air-like touch. The Manchester Examiner threw in a technical criticism with much praise, finding the sea too blue on a grey day, while the Pall Mall Gazette described the picture as excellently designed. Mr. Frederick Wedmore wrote two encouraging criticisms at a time when his good words were very welcome. The first one was in the Academy : " It must at least be said that this picture shows . . . dramatic power . . . fine and accurate observation, and good craftsmanship," all " at the service of a genuine un tablcMu d'un litre discutable, mais naif, Un Enlerretnent <} bord, au dernier acte de ces existences d-ternellement baIIott6es, dont les restes ne trouvent m6me pas le repos apr^s la mort. Sur le pont du navire en marche, respectueuscment d(5couverts, les visages se dessinant rouges et hAles dans I'atmosphcre humide sur le gris continu du ciel, IVquipage ^coute rcligieusement le capitaine qui lit la Bible devant le corps du vieux compagnon de luttes qui va glisser par-dessus bord, dans la mer aux eaux d'un bleu profond d'indigo." F 41 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork imaginative gift." In the Magazine of Art, Mr. Wedmore referred to the painters who had clung to the British Artists after the secession of Mr. Whistler : — " Really first among them in importance I place Mr. Brangwyn's sea-funeral, 'We therefore commit his body to the Deep.' Mr. Brangwyn — beginning perhaps with forcible little visions of smoky steam-tugs in dirty weather making manfully for the port — has developed into one of the most important and original of living painters of the marine. His grey schemes of Anglo-French colour interpret success- fully enough the deck scenes to which he now most frequently addresses himself. A greater range of hue, a far more opulent palette, would be wanted if he saw the sea in its variety, from the infinite agate of the waters off Whitby to the opal and amethyst of the Sussex coast and the sapphires of Cornwall. But these — in their mystery or their splendour — he leaves to others : to Mr. Edwin Hayes, Mr. Henry Moore, and Mr. Hook. And, retaining his neutral tints — concentrating himself wholly upon themes which it is possible for them to interpret — he seeks, in such scenes, story and dramatic effect to which the pure or noble colourist may perchance be indifferent. And this winter (1890-91), at the 'British Artists,' he shows us that he has conceived with dignity, yet with homely truth, the aspect of things upon an unimportant merchant vessel when a rough and shy but, one is sure, humane skipper is called upon to read the noble words which bespeak, for our dear brother here departed, a resurrection even from the changeful sea — the 'vast and wandering grave' of 'In Memoriam.' " The fact is that Brangwyn just painted the marines that 42 Contests of Criticism appealed to him most powerfully. It mattered not to him what colour or what calm days attracted Mr. Hook or Mr. Henry Moore, or Mr. Edwin Hayes. Nor had he any wish to vie with Mr. Somerscales or Mr. J. R. Reid. Having known storms at sea, under many lowering skies, the tragedy of ships was to him what the dangers of collieries were to Constantin Meunier. It was a question of standpoint determined by emotion and experience. An old fisherman from the North Sea, if endowed suddenly with a genius for art, would not paint the infinite agate of the waters off Whitby, nor the opal and amethyst of the Sussex coast. His whole nature would tell him that the mercilessness of rough waters, their terrific sublimity in agitation, their appalling heaviness when they roll into crested mountains and deep valleys, will for ever have a more memorable impressiveness than any day of peaceful glamour around our English coasts. It was in this spirit that Brangwyn adventured among the shoals and reefs of marine painting/ Moreover, at the very time when Mr. Wedmore implied — quite without meaning it, I am sure — that Brangwyn had settled down for life to a meagre palette of Anglo- French greys, other critics complained because his trips to the East had made known to him the splendour of bright tints in a clear atmosphere of searching heat. " The Buccaneers" brought to a climax this attack on his aims and methods, for it offended many writers in England when it hung at the Grafton Galleries in February 1893. ' "The Funeral at Sea" passed into the collection of the late Sir John Kelk, that came up for sale at Christie's on Saturday, March ii, 1899. The Brangwyn was bought by Lewis for loj guineas; and to-day it belongs to the Glasgow Corporation. 43 Frank "Brangwyn and his IVork The Spectator said that Mr. Brangwyn, naturally a black- and-white painter, had been letting about him with strong colours, like Mr. Melville. The Manchester Guardian sniffed, and fired out the words " garish and aggressive." The Satiirday Review was very indignant, sneering at "The Buccaneers" as an example of slap-dash painting and aggressive riotous colour that might well serve to show that violence could never be vigour. TriitJi had a different view, though not more favourable, since Mr. Brangwyn's work looked much more like a piece of mosaic pavement than a picture ; and the Pall Mall Budget hit upon another little novelty in abuse. It said that Mr. Brangwyn's production was the war-cry oi Jin-de-sidcle barbarism. As to the Daily Telegraph, it assured him that his flaming piece of impressionism, with the air left out, proved decidedly that he was following a wrong road. But here and there a criticism was favourable. The A thenceiun was certain that when the observer's eye had grown accustomed to Mr. Brangwyn's intense pigments, he would find that the picture possessed many striking, and even great qualities, which required only refining to become admirable. That was praise indeed, for the Athencsiun in those days was often as old-fashioned as it well could be. It was the Morning Post, however, that got nearest to the merit of the picture, forestalling, at least to some extent, the verdict passed at the Salon a few weeks later : — "A large work of great power is 'The Buccaneers' of Mr. Frank Brangwyn. To the sea-rovers therein is dealt out poetic justice. Their daring attack on a vessel lying in the roadstead has failed, and they strain at the oars with all their available strength the sooner to gain the shelter of 44 Contests of Criticism their own ship. But many of the swarthy-skinned crew are wounded ; the foremost rower has just been hit, and involuntarily relinquishes his efforts, while the pirates' destined prey is peppering them with its guns, and an avenging boat is in full pursuit. The incident occurs on a day when the sun blazes down with intense heat. The rocky shore, the white houses of the town, and the poplars are defined clearly where the sunlight strikes them, but their forms when shadowed are blurred with haze. The white boat and its picturesquely clad crew are relieved with sharp contrast against the dark blue of the water, whose hue, exaggerated in depth as it may appear to eyes accustomed to look on Northern seas, may nevertheless be charac- teristic of the Mediterranean. The picture needs to be seen from a sufficient distance, for the execution is of the boldest, most vigorous kind, and the colouring is intensely vivid." It was a complex problem that Brangwyn had set himself to solve: namely, how to suggest with vigorous truth the play of searching sunlight on gay colours and a boatful of brown cut-throats. It was a drama of sun- colour in full action, and he wished to make of it a decorative whole. If R. L. Stevenson had described it in a story, speaking of the white boat, the heavy blue waters, the wonderful red flag at the stern, and the character of each sea-rover, no critic would have com- plained ; but no sooner was a scene of astonishing action made real in its own artistic medium, than its author became a target in England for sneering rebukes. To Brangwyn, whose eyes were still attuned to the radiance of the East, it seemed best to work mainly 45 Frank "Brangwyn and his Jl^ork with primary colours, placing them side by side in such contrastive harmonies that they lost their crudeness and united into atmospheric reds, blues, yellows, whites, and browns, all transfigured by scorching sunlight. To compose with pure pigments, as if they were bright flowers to be made into a perfect bouquet, needs a very subtle eye for colour ; and I am sure that Brangwyn succeeded, however melodramatic his work may have seemed to critics living in grey London. As to his brushwork, it was in keeping with his subject. What accord would there have been between delicate technique and the actions of ruthless pirates? Is Caliban to have a dainty language in the British art of painting? Some London critics implied as much as that. Then the picture went to Paris, and was welcomed there as a revelation. Fashions sprang up in Brangwyn reds, and people flocked to see his buccaneers, till the carpet on the floor of the gallery was worn out all around that one painting. By critics, also, with just two or three excep- tions, Brangwyn was welcomed with enthusiasm, and most painters rejoiced in him as a new young master with courage enough to do fine things in his own way. M. Besnard was not pleased, and M. Gustave Geffroy saw in "The Buccaneers" a ragotit of Delacroix and Manet, but he was promptly corrected by other writers. M. Kersant told him that Brangwyn was strong enough to be loyal to himself, and that his methods had no resemblance with those of Delacroix, as a visit to the Louvre would prove to any observer. Apart from this, there was not in the whole Salon a picture that possessed the intensity of colour and life flashing from Brangvvyn's paint. " Oh 1 les bons 46 Contests of Criticism Boucaniers. Qu'ils sont vrais dans leur sauvagerie et leur grossieretd voulues ! Comme on les devine, ce qu'ils t^taient, aussi prets a ccorcher un homme qu'un boeuf, pillards intrcpides et joyeux, hdros de sac et de corde ! " That was the general note. The painter was judged from within the atmosphere of his work ; he was not whipped and ridiculed because he had dared to treat a des- perate scene in a rigorously dramatic manner. M. Ldonce Bdnedite still remembers with delight the impression made upon him by "The Buccaneers." As a member of the purchasing committee he hoped that the picture would be bought for the Luxembourg ; two other members shared his enthusiasm ; but the majority chose a work less modern in its audacious outlook, that could not surprise any person. And they were right. It is not the business of any State to encourage at once a new and successful departure from the routine of academic painting. A conservative outlook among officials enables the public to revise first impressions and to wait for further evidence. I note, then, that " The Buccaneers" was seen again at Paris in 1907, in Georges Petit's rooms, at the time when the picture was purchased by M. Pacquement from its first owner, M. Stany Oppenheim ; and I am told in a criticism by Maurice Guillemot that although the picture had been very much imitated, the enchantment of its colour remained, and was still, as in 1893, a surprise. This opinion is confirmed by M. Henri Marcel, who says: "The pure tones in this picture were extraordinary, and amazed and disgusted the Philistines, but its reappearance at the Salle Petit last year showed whose judgment was the right one. The passage of fifteen years had softened its violent contrasts, and the 47 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork astonishing Tightness of its harmonies of colour had allowed it to age without the development of a single dissonant note.' M. Gaston Migeon, in 1893, was among the admirers of the new Brangwyn ; and so were M. Roger Marx, M. Ary Renan, and M. Raoul Sertat. Ary Renan was amazed that the painter could pass with ease and success from "The Funeral at Sea" to "The Buccaneers." ''Comment, dis-je, est-il possible que ce soit le meme M. Brangwyn qui nous dblouisse aujoiirdlmi ? Les rouges, les b/eiis, les tons heurtds et sfirs de sa nouvelle toile sojit tout simplenient d'une incomparable niaitrise, et Idcole romantique na jamais rien fait de plus puissant T Raoul Sertat was equally enthusiastic, praising the picture as a striking symbol of that instinctive belli- gerency in man, that drives him even into crime for pleasure, because he desires to be active in the thick of dangers. " Rarement, en vdritd, vit-on cette fureur et ce bonheur de vivre mieux exprimds que par le peintre des Boucaniers, dent le style, suivant de prds son inspiration et s'y appropriant avec une merveilleuse soupiesse, se ddchatne, cette fois, en une irrdsistible vdhdmence, oh les coups de brosse fougueux, les colorations cJiaudes et sonores, fortes et radieuses, concourent a Veffet le plus passionnd et le plus vibrant^ But, meantime, British protests were heard even from Paris. I find one written in a Belgian paper, and attributed to a British writer with a Scotch name. Another appeared in the Fortnightly Review. It told the world that Brang\vyn's picture "scarce deserved the unstinted praise being lavished upon it in Paris " — a point that the French critics were very well able to decide for themselves. 48 W t-H to W > < X ■s I? 4 4 •n Contests of Criticism I might close here my review of the seafaring pictures in Brangwyn's first period, but I find in the Times of October 29, 1892, welcome reference to another picture that disturbed our English writers on art. It was called " Slave Traders," and represented a group of Arabs seated on the deck of their dhow, the sun beating fiercely upon a white cabin and the gay colour of the men's dresses, with a brilliant note of red in the burnous of one figure. The Times considered this in every way a brilliant per- formance : " Taken altogether, it is the most interesting picture at the Institute; the only one, perhaps, that seems like a promise of great things to come from the painter of it. Mr. Brangwyn, who knows the sea as only a born seaman can, has till now painted only scenes from our northern latitudes, with ships tossing on the grey waves, and sea and sky gloomy and lowering. His work has always been full of ability, but it has been monotonous and always sad in colour. But now it seems that some kind fate has taken him southwards, and shown him the sunlight blazing on the coasts of Africa ; and he has painted a picture which, for glow of colour, beats any- thing here, anything that an Englishman has ventured upon for a long time." Contemporary with this work was a companion picture, " A Slave Market," showing yet more clearly Brangwyn's transition from menacing storms at sea to vivid sun- light on shore. It was hung at the Royal Academy in 1893, with another painting, "Turkish Fishermen's Huts." The " Slave Market " set reviewers by the ears. R. A. M. Stevenson was betwixt and between : " We cannot over- look the great change which has come in the aspect of G 49 Frank "Brangwyn and his IVork Mr. Brangwyn's work. His 'Slave Market' glows with the most vivid colours, laid on frankly, and without much attention to value. We admire, but suffer from the absence of light and air, which prevents our finding our way about the picture." This sort of thing used to be said in France about the brilliant and able pocJiades that poor Regnault exhibited at the Salon, for it is always difficult for western and northern eyes to accept in a paint- ing the insistent East, its glare and its flashing tints. The Manchester Gitardian, unwilling to be oriental with Brangwyn, acted as a surgeon, performing an operation with self-assurance, and then bandaging the wound with care and self-satisfaction : " Mr. Frank Brangwyn has . . . sud- denly passed from the green-blue-grey tonality of Newlyn to the flaming scarlets and unmitigated blues of Africa. His colours are splendid enough in their way, but they are the colours of stained-glass windows, not of paintings. In this ' Slave Market,' for instance, the total lack of atmos- phere in a scene of outdoor sunlight renders the assault made on the eyes by the fiercely red draperies and the wall of blue sky intolerable. Mr. Brangwyn is even here by no means le premier venu, and when he has sown his wild oats he will no doubt return to a saner style of treatment." What this critic would have said had he seen the slave market itself, sweating in a sunlight that almost seared the eyes, who can say? It is a pity that artists cannot hold a sort of annual tribunal at which all their principal reviewers would be obliged to attend, for the pleasure of explaining and confirming their printed opinions. What fun there would be ! And if any critic broke down under cross-examination, he could be sent 50 Contests of Criticism home all alone in a taxi, so that no cruel eyes might watch the slow and painful return of his wounded self- belief. The Athenaumi mourned over Brangwyn, giving some reasons: "This artist, who has done much for us at sea and on shipboard, and brought large knowledge to aid very clear views of nature, has, we hope only for a time, left the mists and stormy weather of the northern seas and English coasts for the fier)' lustre of the Medi- terranean, the contrasting splendour and dark shadows of Algerian streets. His 'Slave Market' belongs to the same category as his ' Buccaneers,' and is pitched in the same high keys of light and most fervid colours. He has added Arabs and others, in vivid yellow, green, white, and red robes, attending the selling of negresses, whose naked blackness is good colour, while the dark bronze of the other nudities in the market is creditable to Mr. Brangwyn's taste and judgment. A powerful kaleido- scopic effect is, not without harmony, produced by these means ; but we confess to thinking that the unity, sim- plicity, and energy of his pictures of Atlantic subjects are far superior to barbaric splendours such as these, and we hope Mr. Brangwyn will soon think so too." Why compare opposed subjects ? Is day bad because night is welcome? Is the East unfit to be painted because northern themes are attractive ? Another critic regretted that there were no outcasts among the slaves to be sold. " They are mostly Hottentot Venuses," with " none of the pathos that would be dis- covered in a group of fifty-year-old coal-miners or chain- makers of our country. A gang of English wage-slaves 51 Frank "Brangwyn and his JVork after twoscore years of wage-slavery would present a far more tragic group than Mr. Brangwyn's ebon beauties." But this critic, after wandering so far from the picture before him, rejoiced that "The Slave Market," when compared with a similar work by Edwin Long, R.A., stood out "as a solid graphic composition of masterly colouring, against a weak and meretricious composition of feeble colour." Why, then, did he ask for something else ? Did he expect a young painter to be perfect ? It will be noticed how very rarely the painters inten- tion was considered. He was little more than a boy in 1893; but because his gifts were riper than his years, he was often treated as a master who had fallen short of his usual mark through inattention to his usual methods of work. And I have dwelt upon these matters, giving quotations, because the first contests of criticism are more difficult to bear than any others. Youth longs for the hope of encouragement, just as plants thirst for water and the sunlight. 52 CHAPTER IV CONTESTS OF CRITICISM : SUN-COLOUR AND RELIGIOUS ART WHAT the French call the orientation of modern art is a subject of great interest to all students of painting. It began, tentatively, among Englishmen of the eighteenth century. John Webber, R.A. (1752- 1793), sailed with Captain Cook on the eventful last voyage in 1776; and William Alexander (1767-1816) visited China in 1792 as draughtsman to Lord Macartney's mission. Several painters went out to India, like William Danicll, R.A. (1769- 1837), but they carried England in their paint-boxes, and came home with very little oriental light and colour. W^hen Brangwyn exhibited "The Buccaneers" and "The Slave Traders," J. P. Lewis, R.A. (1805-1876), and poor and great William Muller (181 2-1845), were the only painters of the East whose works attracted much attention, and it was often asked why Brangwyn did not work in the manner of J. F. Lewis, whose rendering of details could not be excelled. The people who put this question would have been ashamed to ask why a lion was not a leopard, or a nightingale a full-fledged eagle. Of course J. P. Lewis is excellent and delightful in his own way. Usually with transparent colours he 53 Frank "Rrangwyn and his IVork painted quickly on panels, finishing a given part at each sitting ; the ground upon which he worked was a hard and polished white surface specially prepared for him ; and as he belonged to the same school that made Frith and the early style of David Wilkie, he gave infinite, loving care to his treatment of details, never acquiring that freer vision and more robust style that came to John Phillip in his Spanish journeys and studies. Phillip is to be placed among Brangwyn's lineal forerunners, side by side with William Mtiller, who gained from his travels in Egypt, in Greece, and in Lycia, an outlook in art and an amplitude of style that will ever be remarkable in British schools. Miiller, so to speak, was the Brangwyn of 1845, but he did not live long enough to overcome official opposition. The Royal Academy, like the British Institution, treated him as a sort of riotous innovator — a person who could not e.xpect to be tolerated in London. Meantime, artists went to Miiller for lessons, like David Cox, who sat at the feet of the young master, and spoke of him always with unstinted enthusiasm. Miiller died at the age of thirty-three, leaving a brave record of good work in water-colour and in oils. He delighted in vigour and in size, like Brangwyn ; his colour was very fine, and he worked with marvellous freedom. Behind his large picture of " The Eel-Pots," painted in a single day, Miiller wrote : " Left for some fool to finish ! " — words that Brangwyn might use in connection with many of his oil sketches. I cannot help thinking that if Muller and John Phillip had been remembered by London critics between 1891 and 1895, fewer attacks would have 54 Sun-Colour and T^ligious ^rt been made on Frank Brangwyn, for it would have been clear then that he belonged to a tradition in British art. Even M. Ldonce Benddite, who has gi\'en much time and thought to the study of Brangwyn's work, has failed to discover among his predecessors in England any direct ancestor in the orientation of his outlook and style. In France, on the other hand, where oriental painting has been one of the principal founders of the modern school, M. Bdnedite finds several masters with whom Brangwyn has an elective affinity, mentioning Delacroix, Decamps, and the brave Dehodencq, whom Brangwyn knows only by name, and who played with sonorous effects of colour like an organist with notes and chords. It is quite true that Brangwyn would be more at home among these big Frenchmen than he is at exhibitions in London ; but you will find a certain kinship of temperament be- tween him and .several Scotch painters, for the Scotch have been original colourists from the days when they invented their plaids. John Phillip I have mentioned, and to him we may add Sir William Allan (1782-1850), who visited Turkey and other countries. As to Sir Henry Raeburn, who, like Turner and Bonington and Holland, owed much to the Italian sunlight, he delighted in a play of brush that appeals very strongly to Brangwyn, and I have often wished that a great ex- hibition could be held of all those British painters who have brought into our schools some influence or other from sunny countries in Europe and from the East. A great many of our artists have inherited their birth- right of sun-colour away from the British Isles. 55 Frank "Brarigwyn and his If^ork It was in " The Buccaneers " that Brangwyn showed for the first time with success what he had newly learnt from the East, passing on rapidly to other experiments — " Trade on the Beach " (bought by the Luxembourg in 1895), "The Scoffers," "The Adoration of the Magi," and " The Miraculous Draught of Fishes." These two last pictures bring us to a series of w^orks that I do not care to describe as scriptural, because Bible art is associated with time-honoured con- ventions ; but they were and are religious within those modern limits that have been made familiar to us by Francois Millet, Max Liebermann, and Professor von Uhde. When Millet was asked to paint for the Pope a picture of the Immaculate Conception, he did not swerve from his usual style, but chose for his model a humble peasant girl, and, reverent in the manner of " The Angelus," strove to reach poetry and mystery through the door of the life that he knew well and loved best. Was not religion an essential in his own life, and therefore present and modern ? True, modernism in sacred art has been carried too far by some artists, as by Jean Beraud, but it marks an attempt to make Bible subjects less remote from to-day, and so more contemporary with ourselves. It is always far and away better than the rose-tinted and honey-sweet prettiness that Bouguereau and others have imported into a biblical art very much valued in copyrights ; and sometimes it has notes of pathos, of deep and touching sincerity, that will last as long as any religious picture by Portaels or by the late Mr. Holman Hunt. Brangwyn's contributions to this movement were tenta- 56 Sun-Colour and "Religious ^rt tive, but they had great interest, though our English critics very often missed their merits. Perhaps they were right to complain of the " Eve," exhibited at the Grafton Galleries at the same time as "The Buccaneers." Not only was this Eve very fleshy in a Rubenesque way, but she lacked the impersonality of Rubens ; and as Brangwyn placed his Eve in a tangle of tropical fruits and foliage, and was more concerned with the vagaries of real light than the great Fleming ever was, he used greenish re- flected tints in his flesh colour. Several critics objected to this, and one of them asked : " Once admit an emerald Eve, and how can a puce Adam be resisted, or a mauve Abel, or a cobalt Cain?" The Saturday Review happened to be more favourable, saying that the picture " had a certain decorative distinction and qualities of tone and colour that are distressingly absent from 'The Buccaneers.' " After all, the picture was just a study of the nude seen in the light of a tropical wood ; there was no need to introduce the Serpent. Criticism needs no pro- vocation, for unkind words are easier to write than kind. The National Review declared that a modest amateur might say to himself that were he Adam, and Mr. Brang- wyn's Eve the tempter, there would have been no Fall ; and the same modest amateur might go so far as to hint that he could find surpassing skill, but little creative art, in Mr. Whistler's well-known " Lady Meux." How clearly those old times return with these boome- rangs of criticism ! When Brangwyn, in 1893, exhibited at the New Gallery his Adoration of the Magi, " Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh," critics had quite a good time, so opposed were they in their verdicts. That a young painter H 57 Frank "Rrangwyn and his Jf'^ork s in his twenty-fifth year should have chosen so difficult a subject and placed it in a deep and mysterious moonlight was a thing to be encouraged. It showed a determination to grapple with the biggest problems that painting offers for solution. Yet here is the criticism that the Spectator published: "Readers of Heine will remember his dream of a bas-relief of Balaam and the Ass, in which the Ass was an excellent likeness. Now, in a Nativity the Madonna ought to be a possible likeness, and bits of likeness to other parts and people in the scene must have very extraordinary merit to excuse so essential a defect. The picture has merits and ability, but it is a shocking Nativity." What Balaam has to do with all this one cannot say, unless that critic wished to imply that he could develop fair long ears like Bottom the Weaver. Certainly he ought to have known that the young painter's subject and its lighting would have taxed the powers of a Veronese or a Tintoretto. The composition, too, did not try to evade difficulties ; it sought for them as problems to be solved for the sake of exercise and know- ledge. An easy type of composition would have placed the Virgin on our left, well in the foreground, but not too near the frame ; then the Magi would come down the picture towards her, showing their full faces. Brangwyn chose a far more difficult setting. The Madonna, dressed in white, is seated in the middle distance, a little towards our right hand, a verandah trellised with faded vines overhead, and behind a grey house shimmers in faint moonlight. St. Joseph stands near, leaning against one of the wooden posts that support the roof of trellis-work. He is plainly a man of the people, a humble carpenter, but his features are unattractive in profile ; they seem rather outside the 58 Sun -Colour and T^ligious z4rt painter's sympathy and emotion. From the brown earth near St. Joseph some tall white lilies grow ; and a negro boy, who accompanies the Magi, carries an offering — a big golden bowl. The Magi themselves, having passed up the picture from our left towards the Madonna, stand erect, one in profile, the others with their backs turned to the spectator. They are stately and quiescent figures, clothed in picturesque Moorish robes, and around them the moon- light plays as a ghostly presence. Beyond the Magi, in various attitudes of curiosity, are other pilgrims. This being the theme, try to imagine to yourself its many difficulties. You have to make real in paint a subject that brings you into competition with a great many noble old pictures, all familiar to educated persons ; and a good many of Brangwyn's reviewers were as vexed as they would have been if some young poet had asked them to review a play of his own called "Hamlet" or "Othello." The Stcxndard was among a few exceptions, admitting that, whatever the picture lacked, it was nowhere marred by insincerity of intention or flippancy of purpose ; in colour it had the fascination of an ordered reticence, and in line that dignity which counted always for so much as an element in style. But listen, now, to the AtJiencciini : " Another ambitious mistake on a needlessly large scale is Mr. Brangwyn's version of the Adoration of the Magi, really an ill-composed group of life-size lay figures, nearly all back views, heavily draped in colours of low keys : a shadowless, flat and feebly toned example which possesses none of the vigour of his ' Slave Market ' at the Academy. It is a pity so good an artist has thrown himself away so completely." 59 Frank "Rnitigwyri and his J Fork From this attempt to browbeat a young artist I wish to pick out one word, because it tells you at once how small was the amount of original observation that the fault-finder thought necessary in art criticism. He speaks of the figures as " flat," not knowing that moonlight invariably produces an effect of flatness. Brangwyn knew this, while a good many of his critics did not. Max Nordau, on the other hand, like Leonce Bdncdite, understood the young painter's aim, and described his researchful effort as a night-piece reposefully coloured and marvellously deep. It is true that several foreign critics thought the Magi inferior to the Buccaneers, but there was no need to com- pare unlikes. Moreover, it is not at all difficult to explain why this picture has defects here and there. The painter, when he started his work, was, I think, like a modern Bassano, painting with a countrified simplicity and rever- ence ; but no sooner did he come to the gilded haloes than his emotion underwent a change, those ancient symbols of the Divine being somehow at odds with the rusticity implied by a carpenter's life and work. Later, when he endeavoured to paint the Magi, he began to feel in sym- pathy with that austere reserve, that haughty and calm self-control that belongs to many peoples in the East. If Brangwyn had chosen the Adoration of the Shepherds his first emotion would have lasted throughout the subject, and his picture would have been finer and more sympathetic, as well as much nearer to the real bent of his genius. " Rest," another religious piece, is a Holy Family, new in feeling, vague and fascinating. Mary, with the Infant Jesus asleep in her arms, sits on a well-side shaded by trees ; she is wrapped in contemplation over her Child, 60 Sun-Colour and T^/icrious zArt while a passer-by stops and drinks water from his hands. Mr. George Moore reviewed this picture, taking for his standpoint the minute subtleties of atmospheric treatment that the French Impressionists were trying to make popular. He said : " This picture is an example of the Glasgow school of painting ; and the method of that school seems to be a complete suppression of what is known as values. By values I mean the black and white relation of tones, the relation of this shadow to that shadow, of this light to that light. Aerial perspective and chiaroscuro are attained by a delicate perception of and a delicate distribu- tion of values. Now, if you look at ' Rest ' you will see that values have been systematically ignored ; there is therefore neither light nor air in the picture; its beauty is that of a Turkey carpet. But a Turkey carpet is beautiful and harmonious, and so is Mr. Brangwyn's picture." I cannot follow Mr. Moore entirely in this analysis, for a photograph of the picture shows that the painter's aim was entirely decorative, and that the relations of tone, translated into black and white, give a most interesting result. The Standard was of this opinion seemingly, for its critic admired "Rest" because "its great quality of massiveness " had a " beautiful and delicately studied relationship of part to part," and because " its balance of low tones" went hand in hand with a "large decorative effect." "Rest" to my eyes needs but one thing: more attention might have been griven to the choice of a model for the Virgin, because painters ought never to forget that each historic ideal of womankind has formed for itself an ideal beauty that artists may treat variously, but never 6i Frank "Brangwyri arid his JVork with such character as recalls the day-by-day realism of life. For any ideal held by mankind is imagination, is poetry, sanctified by long inheritance. From existing portraits we may suppose, for example, that Mary Queen of Scots was not beautiful, but no artist ought ever to dispute the old and popular belief in her loveliness. Joan of Arc, again, as typified by Bastien Lepage, has fine rustic character, but never in this world will that realism be accepted by the chivalry of men. Joan must stir all hearts with her radiant face and bewitchinsf fervour ; no artist can create a beauty too noble for her, as she belongs for all time to a universal admiration that forms vaguely exalted ideas of womanly graciousness. The Welsh peasant who said of Queen Victoria, in grievous dis- appointment, "Ah, but her face is just a mother's, look you," is an example of the yearning for something unusual that accompanies all popular idealisations. Yet modern art, misunderstanding this matter, has offended against a good many ancient and lasting ideals. It has forgotten that there are times when realism must rise from Mother Earth like a lark from its nest, and be near at the same moments to the dual points of heaven and home. But if Brangwyn in his Virgin Mary had not enough confidence in his imagination, he certainly discovered a winning type of motherhood. Turn we now to another religious painting, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," a work not without defects, but noble in conception. When this subject first occurred to him, Brangwyn consulted one of his most helpful friends. Dr. Tom Robinson, of London, who said, "Yes, and why should not Christ be strong enough 62 Sun-Co/our and T^ligious zArt physically to draw a net?" With this hint in mind the painter made some studies, only to find that his mind and hand recoiled from the perils of trying to represent the Saviour as the principal figure in a picture. It would be better to think of Christ as a distant spectator of His miracle, and from this standpoint the painting must be judged. " The Miraculous Draught of Fishes " was first ex- hibited at the New Gallery in 1894, and then at the Paris Salon of the following year. It was, perhaps, the least tentative of the larger religious pictures that Brangwyn painted in those early days. In London, to be sure, it was too often criticised as if its painter had suddenly weakened, after an experience of thirty years ; but he was gradually being recognised as a leader of our young painters, perhaps because his great successes in Paris were valued by Englishmen. M. Ary Renan had said a strong word for him in the Pa// Ma// Gazette, after speaking about the bizarre antiquity that our Academic school was then trying to revive. It was not the heroic antiquity to be found at the British Museum, said Ary Renan ; it was a little decadent antiquity, a powdered and patched anti- quity, curled and tawdry, mere fashion and imitation. "Where must you go in London to find a conscientious painting of life and light, of man and nature? Are there painters of reality? Are they all lumped together among the rejected whose acquaintance I should be so pleased to make?" It was at this point that M. Ary Renan remem- bered Brangwyn, and though he recognised that so young a man must be immature and uneven, he made haste to say : " No matter ; the eye is happy before the frames of 63 Frank "Brangwyn and his Jf^ork this new-comer ; the eye opens and takes in a real joy. In France we shall be sincerely disappointed if Mr. Brangwyn does not keep the promises he is giving in his art." The tone of that criticism gave the painter heart to work on, despite all opposition. He was told by one writer that "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes" was a big picture pretentiously conceived, that the disciples in it were effective, but in an Algerine pirate sort of way, and that the figure of Christ was painfully weak and conven- tional. Well now ! Christ was represented in the distance ; and as the picture was lighted by an after-glow of sunset growing dim and misty, the Saviour was intended not to be seen in the composition, but felt there as a vague presence. It is very pleasant to remember that Mr. C F. Watts was delighted with Brangwyn's intentions, and followed his doings from year to year. " I always admire your work very much and look out for it," he wrote on September 30, 1894. " I hope you won't give up your grand schemes of colour," he added the following day ; and again, "I think your treatment of broad masses of colour just the right thing for fresco." And here, too, are the opinions expressed by an American artist and writer, Mr. Lorado Taft, on "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes " : — "The picture was delightfully novel and individual in its point of view. The iridescent hues of the fishes were repeated in some sort throughout the entire canvas. Though in a sense an arbitrary or fanciful scheme — a dream picture — it was yet, withal, the work of a man whose every touch expressed vigour and confidence. I liked it. And what is considerably more important, the big French artists did likewise. Our good friend, Raffaelli, told me 64 Sun-Colour and "Religious Jirt that there were just two pictures aux Champs Elysdes that interested him — Henri Martin's big decoration for the Hotel de Ville, and Brangwyn's Peche Miraculeuse.'" {Arts for America, December 1897.) From the Paris Salon Mr. Taft came to London, and saw the Royal Academy and the New Gallery (1895). At both he found a picture by Brangwyn. "Rest" hung at the Academy. " There was nothing of the conventional religious painting in it, but still, in a way, it suggested the Holy Family. It impressed me as something weird and mighty, like a great half-hewn block in Michael Angelo's workshop, as it might have looked in the evening dusk ; only here, again, was a charm of rich colouring. Portions recalled possibly Vedder's chocolates and greys, but instead of using these tones monotonously, they were flecked here and there with rich warm accents, as though a flood of orange and gold and colour of flame had been poured over the figures and foliage, while the background had a dull glow of live coals. Coming, as I had, from the realism of the French, and already well wearied by the indescribable fatuity and feebleness of the work around me, I turned to this triumphant canvas with a feeling of refreshment and pleasure difficult to describe." The New Gallery came next : — " I had scarce stepped into the principal hall when I became conscious of yet another of these strange, fasci- nating works. It was at the other end of the room . . . and when I reached it ... I was indeed in the presence of one of the masterful pictures of our time. The impres- sion was something tremendous : a great gaunt figure of a dying man seated upon a platform of rock, his emaciated I 65 Frank ^rangwyn and his JVork body supported by a rude wooden post. Opposite him, and subordinate, a priest and a young acolyte, who offer the agonised fanatic his last communion. A second glance and one perceives through the unusual perspective of the scene that its Subject — and we as well — are supposed to be elevated to a great height ; our lone sufferer can be no other than St. Simeon Stylites of old, upon the elevated column which he fondly hoped would bring him nearer God. Away down a dizzy depth and stretching to a far horizon were the streets and buildings of the city which the saint had renounced years before, and in the yet more distant distance a wall of darkening mountains and the blue waters of a shoreless sea. All was bathed in the golden haze of sunset, and it was glorious with colour and power. How it spoiled the little works about it ! How thin and artificial they all looked ! . . . Can the author of St. Simeon be a Londoner, a brother of the men who paint these things? " This criticism can be put side by side with most of those that appeared in English papers. Its standpoint is different — more objective, free from dilettante prejudices, and responsive to vigour of treatment and to fine new schemes of colour. The ardent young American and Mr. G. F. Watts at the age of seventy-eight were greatly moved by the same qualities. But it is right and necessary for me to say that the picture of St. Simeon Stylites caught Brangwyn in two moods, and that he made a mistake when he departed from the composition of his original sketch.^ Here St. Simeon was alone, dying in complete solitude, 1 It was purchased by Mr. William O. Cole of Chicago. The other picture bangs in the Gallery of Modern An at Venice. 66 Sun-Colour and T(eligious