FOREWORD 



His school was the world of real movement outside as 

 recorded in the rapid and concentrated notes and 

 memoranda made from quick observation in his own 

 sketch books. 



Though he settled down in London and painted a 

 few successful portraits, it is obvious, from what has 

 already been said, that ordinary forms of laborious 

 portraiture could never be the first interest of such a 

 temperament. In most of his sitters he found little to 

 stimulate his artistic interest ; he felt again his in- 

 stinctive dislike of the posed figure, though with children, 

 who cannot pose, he was often particularly happy. He 

 felt, rightly, that, as a rule, his first swift sketch in 

 chalk conveyed more of vitality than the finished work 

 in oil. 



It was with this feeling that he determined, in 1904, 

 to follow out a course of drawing in the studios of Paris. 

 He went there intending to stay for three months ; he 

 has stayed there ever since. It so happened that soon 

 after he arrived the boulevard opposite to his flat was 

 dug up for repair, and became mouvementS with the 

 going and coming of carts and horses, the lift and 

 heave of figures hammering and digging. Movement, as 

 always, held him at once in thrall, but it was the French 

 draught horse that really kept him in Paris. As he once 



remarked to me, the horse is interesting because it is 

 the only real nude we can see daily at work. And here 

 on the banks of the Seine, in all weathers and with 

 untiring concentration, he would watch these splendid 

 Percheron horses, which pull as much by energy as by 

 weight, struggling up the steep slopes with their heavy 

 loads of sand and stone. This it was that first inspired 

 the characteristic series of subjects that have held him 

 ever since, and have been shown year after year in his 

 paintings and drawings at the New Salon in Paris, the 

 Goupil Gallery in London, and elsewhere. 



Subject and treatment are a matter of temperament. 

 Ingres was all for pure and severe line. Chardin, to 

 take another example, liked to sit and study and con- 

 template. Most people prefer the static to the dynamic, 

 and Mr. Luard would grant that a picture representative 

 of movement makes many people uneasy. He realizes 

 that movement tends to make a picture restless, and that 

 to many eyes repose has become one of the essential 

 qualities of art. But Mr. Luard does not feel this any 

 more than did such painters as Rubens, Goya or MiUet. 

 He can paint a horse in a stable, a lamb browsing among 

 buttercups, and paint them well, and for him they 

 would be interesting studies enough, but unstimulating ; 

 and he is right in letting the personal factor overcome 



