
May 12, 1923] 
said of an impressive study of huge Atlantic waves 
close at hand, with a tiny ship in the background, 
558 (Henry Hudson, 1607, by Norman Wilkinson) ; 
but what the message is in 15 (Little Dancer, by Glyn 
Philpot) is less obvious: it is perhaps the beauty of 
_ gradations of subdued colour. So also the piece by 
the same artist, 170 (Penelope), and 34 (Youth, by 
_F. Cayley Robinson), and in a drab monotonous way 
155 (Hayling Island, by Oliver Hall). There are others, 
on the contrary, who use vigorous contrasts instead 
of gentle gradations. Such are 36 (Rocks, Tregiffran, 
by Robert M. Hughes), 53 (Sennen Beach, by Laura 
Knight), and 234 (Wiltshire Downs, by Edward Buttar), 
and even more impressive as an appeal to the sense of 
beauty of colour, saffron with blue shadows and pink 
sky, 151 (An Autumn Evening in the Western Highlands, 
by Adrian Stokes), and 264 (Seagulls Nesting, by 
Charles Simpson), a vision of the colours of spring. 
_ Not always satisfying are these schemes ; 366 (Sons 
of the Sea: Polperro, Cornwall, by John R. Reid) 
makes one think of the artist’s colourman rather than 
Nature’s beauty. 
One of the striking features of the pictures by the 
well-known artists is the sensation of vivid illumina- 
tion. Marked discontinuities of light and shade give 
the effect, obviously desired, in 25 (Arines on the 
Battlefield of Vitoria, Spain, by James P. Beadle), 
72 (Glebe Place, Chelsea, 1922, by George Henry), 
175 (Lovers of the Sun, by H. S. Tuke), 278 (Market 
Jew: Thursday, by Stanhope A. Forbes), and 174 (An 
Italian Lemon Garden, by H. H. La Thangue): in the 
last the discontinuities are perhaps too strong for real 
pleasure. There is a wonderful sense of luminosity 
from discontinuity of colour alone without very marked 
shadows in another picture by the same artist, The 
Mill Stream (64), and also in 336 (The Finish, by 
Harry Fidler). 
A juxtaposition of colours that one may call iri- 
descence is artfully used to convey the sensation of 
local luminosity in 126 (Golden Summer, Cornish Coast, 
by Julius Olsson), and 191 (Surf-bound Shore, by the 
same artist), and 565 (The Coastwise Lights, by Harry 
Van der Weyden) ; also, but less successfully, for the 
illumination of the misty atmosphere of a setting sun 
of vast dimensions in 379 (The Fading Day, by Fred 
Hall). Some artists boldly paint a parti-coloured 
background and let the spectator regard it as sky if he 
please. That is noticeable in the colour scheme of 19 
(The Trojan Women, by Charles Ricketts), in 226 (The 
Sons of Ellis Hajim, Esq., by Charles Sims), and 229 
(Brood Mares and Foals at Southcourt Stud, by Alfred 
J. Munnings). 
As a fellow-student of Nature one cannot but feel 
that the sky must be a very exasperating part of an 
artist’s subject unless it is all blue, or all grey, or all 
pink. When there are clouds with definite shape and 
movement the representation of Nature’s varying mood 
is very difficult. The natural sky, even when it is most 
complex, is not chaotic ; it has lines and touches that 
suggest order, a horizontal alignment, a characteristic 
shape, the detail of an outline, but so subile and so 
transient that, while the student is meditating its 
features, they are gone. Apparently only the more 
noted artists challenge the heavens with a presentation 
of this subtle order in disorder, and not with complete 
NO. 2793, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
JJ}. nT = 
—————— 
643 
success. 
137 (Tilty Church, by George Clausen) shows 
clouds of easily recognised shape, but lacking the 
characteristic detail of outline. The most successful 
skies succeed by evading the real problem. The 
beautiful picture of The Port of London (213), looked at 
from above, by W. L. Wyllie, makes an atmosphere of 
native smoke and excuses the sky. Almost the same 
artifice is used in another picture by the same artist, 
A Storm is Coming (217). Details are also avoided by a 
general ‘‘all-overishness”’ in 162 (The Lowlands of 
Holland), 310 (In from the Sea), both by Robert W. 
Allan, and 370 (A Grey Sea, by the Hon. Duff Tolle- 
mache), and in a beautiful Scottish snow picture (124) 
by Joseph Farquharson. The challenge is evaded in 
236 (Summer Morning, St. Ives, by Charlton Fortune) 
by filling up the sky with seagulls ; but it is deliberately 
taken up by Arnesby Brown in quite a number of 
pictures—3 (September), 79 (The Swing Bridge), 130 
(The Waiting Harvest), 148 (The Watch Tower): the 
disorder is there patent, but the whisperings of order 
in a disordered sky are missing. No more successful 
in this respect are 178 (A May Morning at Southcourt, 
by A. J. Munnings), 203 (The Mountain Stream, by 
Lewis T. Gibb), 335 (Dover and Castle from the North, 
by Frank P. Freyburg). 
There is a peculiarity about natural skies ; without 
any effort one is conscious that one is watching either 
the plan of an extensive layer or the elevation or profile 
of individual clouds. It is only occasionally that one 
gets that sort of satisfaction out of a picture. It is 
yery nearly complete in 207 (“ If the clouds be full of rain, 
they empty themselves upon the earth,’ by Frank Walton), 
in a picture by R. Vicat Cole, and in 484 (Tintagel, 
by Algernon Talmage). One misses it in 199 (The Blue 
Pool, by the late Mark Fisher), and in 259 (Before the 
Ruined Abbey, by Sydney Lee). It has ofien been 
remarked that the Greeks and Romans had no names 
for the forms of clouds which we have learned to 
recognise so easily. The exhibition suggests that the 
reason lies very deeply set. 
As one leaves the galleries the questions as to what 
message the artists meant to convey and whether they 
have succeeded recur. Among the pictures most satisfy- 
ing in answering both questions at first sight we may 
name 47 (The White Sands of Scilly, by Julius Olsson), 
124 (“Some gleams of sunshine mid renewing storms,” 
by Joseph Farquharson), already mentioned, 333 
(Green-clad Hills, Lake of Annecy, by Terrick Williams), 
and 636 (Winter Evening, Engelthal, by Adrian P. 
Allinson). 
Judging from experience outside, one might have 
been afraid that the Academy of 1923 with its 
multitude of portraits would have been a nightmare 
of horn-rimmed spectacles: it is not so. There is 
only one specimen, Portrait of the Painter, by the 
late Sir J. J. Shannon. The pervading influence 
of the War has also passed away except in the 
sculpture rooms and in the satiric picture by Sir 
William Orpen. 
Scientific worthies are not very conspicuous in the 
collection. There is a bronze bust of the late Dr. 
Ludwig Mond, and one of the laie Sir James Dewar 
(by G. D. Macdougald) ; also a marble bust of Sir J. J. 
Thomson, by F. Derwent Wood, as well as the portrait 
by Fiddes Watt. 
