L A N D A N D WATER. 
uecemuui 4, lyi^. 
ROGER FRY'S PICTURES. 
Bv Desmond MacCarthy. 
M' 
MK. Kouia n<v. 
"Y first impression in the 
Alpine Club Gallery, 
where Mr. Ro^er Fry 
held his exhibition, was one 
x' brilliant eolour ; scarlets, 
greens, blues, yellows — not a 
shadow to be seen anywhere. 
Mr. Fry's pictures made a gay 
decorative vjftect on the walls. 
Whoever the visitor might be, 
provided on ( nleiing he stood 
and looked round him, instead 
of at once taking a catalogue 
and walking up to some picture, 
he could hardly fail tt)have been 
exhilarated. Perhaps, too, in 
some cases his exhilaration 
may have been increased by 
feeling : " So, in spite of the 
war, in spite of everything, art 
actually is still alive and kicking " ; for Mr. Fry's work 
is especially adapted to bring that, at any rate, home. 
And for two reasons. In the first place, "he has stood 
sponsor in F:ngland for the most aggre.ssivc. the most 
bitterly contested movement in art, and practised its 
precepts, and in the second he is (in contrast to his 
attitude as a critic this is striking) as an artist, curiously 
tentative and experimental. 
Wlien the visitor to the Alpine Gallery left his post 
in the middle of the room to examine the pictures one bv 
one, he must have been struck bv the various degrees of 
" Post Impressionism," ashc 
would probably have called 
it, shown in them. The 
" dose " in different pictures 
differed in an ascending 
scale from sketches in the 
case of which it had only 
simplified natural forms, in 
which " atmosphere," or the 
ghost of it, lingered and 
perspective remained, to 
pictures which were purely 
abstract designs ; coloured 
stjuares, curves and oblongs, 
superimposed on each other. 
\\'henever Mr. Fry has ex- 
hibited this variety has been 
noticeable. Though the pic- 
tures shown may have all 
been, in fact, the work of 
the same year, the exhibi- 
tion, as a whole, has always 
had the air representing 
the periods of a long career. 
The total impression, how- 
ever, has never been that 
the pictures were the work 
of a painter who coidd be 
any artist but himself. On 
the contrary, there has been 
visible always, running 
through all Mr. Fry's work, 
a sense of beauty, strongly 
individual and easy to 
identify. 
The visitor now, catalogue in hand, with nose close 
to the canvas, must soon, too, have made another dis- 
covery, one which may, or may not, have annoyed him ; 
namely, that the pictures were not all painted. In many 
cases pieces of painted paper or book-binders' paper, 
liave been stuck on and worked into the design. There 
is a bull-dog, for instance, made out of an odd brindled 
paper; only the blue background and the post against 
which this generalised creature leans its jowl, is painted. 
The background of the portrait of Queen Vict(jria (also a 
picture which is as abstract and as personal as a caricature, 
without, however, the intention of caricature) is made 
out of a mottled malachite paper. In the big picture, 
the picture of three Prussian officers, which at once catches 
the eye, and has appealed most to the imaginations of those 
who have been to the exhibition, the figures are cut out of 
paper and painted in. In this case the bareness and 
angularity of the design intensifies extraordinarily the 
impression of force and ruthlessness which the cloaked 
figures. make on the imagination.. The fact, too, that 
they are not in a picture, are standihg nou'h'crc ; -dufl'^txii- 
ab'stractions, .makes this impression • deeper: -If ,• the 
Germans triumph they might like' to hang this picture in 
Berlin ; iftheylose, they would probably like to destroy it'. 
■ Nothing was more inevitable that the " Post Im- 
pressionist " movement sfiould quickly find expression 
in. the. applied ai^ts : for the doctrine was that we should 
derive from, a picture precisely. the same kind of ;esthetic 
emotionas we may from a .jar or a carpet. .Some. of 
these products, were exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery ; 
and' it'' is now at the Omega Workshops, 33, Fitzroy 
Square, that a selection of Mr. Fry's pictures.>'re still 
to be seen. Thie --French houses of Pbiret and Tribe 
discovered years'" ago that the^ movement was fertile in 
new- .designs for pottery, furniture and upholsteiy ; in 
Austria and Germany, too, firms followed suit. Only 
England, which had led the way fifty years ago witli the 
Morris, movement,' lagged behind.. " This is a difficult 
coli'n'try. to move,", as Disraeli remarked .to Mr. Hyndman, 
who ;^called on > him ' to • convert him to Socialism ;; and 
tektile manufacturers • are '- a ', particularly • difficult section 
of', the nation to move. " The Omega' '^^'orks^lop "is 
the lajit, of those perennial attempts (so necessary if 
estabhshed designs are not, through constant plagiarism 
of each other • to, become 
utterly jejune) to bring the 
manufacturer in touch with 
artists, who are acquainted 
with the technical limita- 
tions W'hich the 'pro.cess of 
manufacture imposes on de- 
sign. Some of the Omega 
printed linens and carpets, 
both hand-made and loom- 
woven, arc admirable. Mr. 
Fry has also revived the wider 
less mechanical processes in 
pottery and created a dis- 
tinct type of wear with the 
white-tin glaze of old Delph. 
Three Men in long Military Cloaks. 
Mr. Roger Fry was asked 
by the Editor oj Land 
AND Water to explain 
himself and his ideas to 
the readers of this jour- 
nal. He has availed 
himself of the oppor- 
tunity in the folloicing 
letter, though as he 
observes, lahether an 
artist can ever elucidate 
hiins^'j is doubtful. 
THE artist who makes 
bold to exhibit his 
works to the public is 
proverbially touchy about criticism. This is because he is 
dimly conscious that in doing so he is as it were ' making 
an exhibition of hiniself ' ; he knows there is something 
indiscreet, almost indecent in the act. Especially at 
such a time as this he may quite rightly feel that it needs 
some apology. Perhaps those painters who are conscious 
of pleasing the public may not have this feeling of difti- 
dence. But as the majority of serious artists do not please, 
th(\y usually take an innocent satisfaction in siipposing 
that they paint for posteritv. 
."To me there seems something of pretension, however 
harmless, in this attitude. I find it more likely that 
posterity will be attending to its own creations than 
