DLA095-0059 Transcription

‘Changing Taste in Art Revealed in “Lord Roberts” Exhibition’, Dundee Courier, 24 October 1924

People who visit the exhibition opening in Victoria Art Galleries, Dundee today, in support of the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops Fund will not only be furthering a good cause but will be conferring a genuine pleasure upon themselves.

Not for a long time has a collection of pictures so full of interest and so glowing with fine colour been available to picture lovers, and the fact that the 300 choice paintings have been assembled in Dundee and its immediate surroundings shows how rich a treasure of art the city possesses.

“New Art.”

The exhibition curiously illustrates how great are the changes in pictorial tastes or in the development of art. The great gallery represents roughly the art of the eighties, the time when prosperous Dundee came under the spell of paint—not having yet fallen under the spell of petrol. All is sober, “douce,” and every picture tells a story. In the second gallery, devoted to impressionists, the effort is different, and a modern Hamlet might well stand in the vestibule between the two rooms and exclaim, “Look here upon this picture and on this!”—though which is the “fair mountain” and which the barren moor must be left to the individual conscience. Whatever else it may be, the new art is brilliant decoration, and its exponents have “flung roses, roses riotously,” and put the “pale oat lilies” out of mind.

One thing the great gallery demonstrates is that the first favourite of the period was Sir J. Lawton Wingate, and there is almost a surfeit of Wingate’s skies; they are exquisite indeed, but if one had a gorgeous sunset every evening one would cease to look at the glowing west.

Frugal Meals.

Dutch “interiors” come second in popularity, and the recipe for them is simple; three peasants around the table in a dimly lit kitchen, regarding—with a pious gratitude that is most commendable under the circumstances—a bowl of potatoes, potatoes without “point,” above the title “A Frugal Meal.” Only once has the formula been departed from—in the exquisite “ Supper Time” by Van der Tonge, hung behind the platform in which the artist has sought for a rich pattern and a high colour scheme with rare success.

“M’Taggarts” come next in succession, and it is a joy in itself to follow the development of the artist from his early small studies, through his middle period when quite solid fishing boats battle with seas crisp with foam, to that latest period when diaphanous children looked out upon soft sunlit seas as unsubstantial as those in fairyland forlorn.

Raeburn Gem.

Many gems diversify this central scheme. There is a stately Raeburn the portrait of Mrs. Tyndall Bruce of Falkland, probably the last portrait that Sir Henry Raeburn painted; a charming girl by De Lazlo [sic], painted with the brush of a courtier [6807]; several George Henrys, demonstrating the fact that a man may handle colour and yet be able to draw; an “Estuary of the Scheldt,” by I. Campbell Noble, with a delicious billowing sail. There are “Calves” by David Gauld and “Horses” by A. J. Munnings—and where will you find such horses and such calves—also there is a picture of “Golf,” unlike any golf seen at St. Andrews; it is played upon the ice by men in quilted coats and beautiful masked ladies and the balls are driven, not into inadequate holes, but towards posts easily discernible. The picture is Dutch, of course, executed with loving Dutch fidelity and clarity.

“A Spanish Noble,” by Velasquez, is an outstanding subject, and is on loan from Lord Kinnaird. It is not quite the Velasquez of “The Maids,” but still a striking work, the tapestry which the nobleman is pushing aside being a notable example of early “Impressionism.” As for the man himself, like the portrait in the “School for Scandal,” he wears a “damned disinheriting countenance,” and he carries what looks like an unpaid bill of alarming urgency, but he is a virile man; Velasquez has chosen to insert his signature on the edge of the document just as Tintoretto places his on the lip of the water pot in “Cana, of Galilee” and Reynolds “went down to fame” on the fringe of Mrs. Siddons’ garments.

Among the Moderns.

The single wall givEn to the modern French school and their British followers is hung so well as to display the brilliancy of their work to greet advantage. Most of the great names appear—Alfred Sisley, Vincent Van Gogh, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, and Lucien Simon. A striking landscape by Mr. Leslie Hunter forms the centrepiece, and Mr. Maclachlan Milne also shows that the new art can be interpretive of Scottish scenery.

A well-chosen collection of etchings will give much pleasure to collectors in this branch of art, and it alone would repay many visits to an exhibition which needs no other recommendation than its own excellence.

11/11/2007