May 9, 191 8 
Land & Water 
The Royal Academy : By Charles Marriott 
THE only way to get the Academy into proper 
perspective is to regard it as an institution, as one 
thinks and speaks of "the opera." Otherwise, 
there is great risk of doing injustice both to the 
Academy and to art. The two things/- are not 
opposed, any more than "the opera" and music are opposed, 
but it is in the nature of things that they should be separate 
considerations. It ought to be obvious that an exhibition 
cannot be at the same time a social function and a fully 
representative exhibition of contemporary painting, sculp- 
ture, and architecture ; because most of the things that 
matter in these arts are brought forth by needs and impulses 
which have nothing to do with social seasons. 
By far the greater number of works — at any rate, in paint- 
ing — at the Academy are done "for the Academy," and that 
gives them a more or less definite character irrespective of 
quality. The only legitimate grievance against the Acadcm\' 
is that, granting this general character in kind, it has not, or 
does not seem to have, a very high standard of craftsmanship. 
But lack of a high standard does not necessarily mean a 
prejudice against good work. Like every other institution, 
the Academy invites three fairly well marked attitudes of 
appreciation. There is the first which takes everything on 
trust because it is "in the Academy," there is the second 
which rejects everything for the same reason, and there is 
the third of the open mind which assumes you are as likely 
to find good pictures at the Academy as elsewhere. 
Because it is an institution, with traditions and conventions 
of its own, the Academy cannot be expected to present a 
very profound or direct expression of contemporary life. 
Before an impulse or an event gets into the Academy it has 
to be ,translated into Academy form. Therefore you do not 
expect nor do you find in this year's Academy any adequate 
interpretation of the war. There are plenty of war pictures, 
of course ; but they are much more like the war pictures of 
many successive Academies than they are like what is going 
on in France and Flanders. They are competent of their 
kind, but they are very definitely of a kind. Once and for 
all, the photographs at the Grafton Galleries have set the 
standard of. what sort of pictures we want so far as the actual 
facts of warfare are concerned. 
So far as I could judge in' a confessedly hasty visit, the 
only work in this year's Academy which attempts that with 
any success is a piece of sculpture : " War Equestrian Statue," 
by Mr. Gilbert Bayes, in the Quadrangle. A small personal 
accident may help to suggest one great merit of this work. 
On entering Burlington House, I passed it by without seeing 
it at all, though it is on the colossal scale and light in colour ; 
and it was not until a colleague asked me what I thought of 
it that I knew it was there, though I had seen it before in 
' the sculptor's studio. This means that Mr. Bayes has pro- 
duced for monumental purposes a work in sculpture which 
really takes its place in an architectural setting as if it had 
always been there. Overlooked or underlooked in passing, 
the work — designed to be carried out in bronze for the 
National Art Gallery, Sydney— only gains in dignity and 
power with deliberate examination^ Within the hmits of 
the realistic convention in which it is conceived it is real 
sculpture, and not merely a colossal reproduction of a svm- 
bolical figure on horseback. 
"The Under World" 
By coincidence, though I prefer to tiiink that it is some- 
thing more, another work in the Academy, also large in 
scale, which keeps its place is by the sculptor's brother, 
Mr. Walter Bayes. The first thing that strikes you in looking 
at "The Under World" is that it looks as if it had been 
painted for the Academy not as an institution, but as a 
building. It is there. This, too, in spite of the fact that it 
is neither obviously "decorative" in intention nor hung in 
a space that suits its proportions. The reason why it keeps 
its place and looks, so to speak, "natural" there is that 
irrespective of ail question of merit it is a genuine painting 
as "War Equestrian Statue" is a genuine piece of monu- 
mental sculpture. In either case, an architectural relation- 
ship is implied. "The Under World," which represents a 
Tube platform during an air raid, makes no attempt to 
interpret or sum up the war, though it does express the 
practical response of the LondcJner to " f rightfulness "—very 
much as if the people were sheltering from a thunderstorm — 
but' it does give an incident of the war a memorable charac- 
ter. The figures are individuals, but they are dealt with on 
the typical side which every individual h;is. They lie, sit, 
or stand as they would in actuaUty, but now hot by accident 
but in the swing of a design, and the colours of their clothes 
though likely enough are coaxed into harmony. There 
could hardly be a better illustration of the province bf the 
painter in dealing with actuality that is entirely unaffected 
by the splendid possibihties of photography. And if you 
come to examine the reason why you will see that it is all a 
matter of the modifications of reality that become a transla- 
tion into paint. Tlie difference in result is that between 
historical and journahstic truth. Say what you like, history 
implies human consideration and judgment in terms of a 
particular art. Look for comparison at "Their Majesties 
King George V. and Queen Mary visiting the Battle Districts 
of France." In spife of the historical incident, and the 
august figures, and for all its accuracy in detail, it achieves 
only journalistic and not liistorical truth ; and neither its 
architectural purpose — the Royal Exchange — nor the device 
of a predella gives it an organic relationship to any building 
that could ever exist. i^" 
The only picture besides "The Under World" dealing 
directly with the war which seems to me to have more than 
Academy value is "The Battle of Bourlon Wood, 30th Nov- 
ember, 1917," by Mr. W. L. Wyllie, R.A. Its value as a 
bird's-eye view lending intelligibility to written or spoken 
descriptions of the battle is only enhanced by the picture 
above it. Through a mistaken zeal for what is called "art," 
Mr. Wylhe has sacrificed some of the advantages of a plan, 
which photography cannot compass, to realistic representa- 
tion of appearances, including atmosphere, which photo- 
graphy can nianage better than any painter that ever lived. 
If Academicians only knew, it is the devotion of so much 
skill to such ends that drives so many of us to the crude 
experiments of young rebels. But as between Nas. 319 
and 320 there can be no question which picture will have 
the gratitude of posterity. 
But, to leave the surface and come to the heart of things, 
there is no picture in the Academy more truly significant of 
the fact that " there is a war on " than "The Winter Evening," 
by Mr. F. Cayley Robinson. Whether or not the picture 
was so intended by the artist is entirely irrelevant. The 
probabiHty is that it was not ; that it came from the mysteri- 
ous deeps of personality under pressure of events. However 
or whenever inspired, it is the picture that, in one form or 
another, lives in the secret heart of every soldier in France 
and Flanders ; that even those of us who stop at home are 
more and more possessed with : the domestic interior. To 
call the idea sentimental is to write yourself down a fool. 
It is, in cold fact and passionate truth, what the war is all 
about ; the still centre of all that noise of battle. All our 
sounding phrases about war aims, the freedom of democracy, 
the self-determination of peoples, can in the last analysis be 
reduced to this : the preservation of the private hearth for 
the free exercise of the sacred rites and affections that make 
it the altar of humanity. Here and not in the forward 
trenches is the true "listening post" of the war as a whole ; 
and it is' from here and not from headquarters that the 
soldier takes his orders. 
Ostensibly the five people in Mr. Robinson's picture are 
waiting for the kettle to boil ; actually they are nursing the 
flame of all human endeavour in peace and war. Except 
that the figures happen to look reflective there is no obvious 
attempt to dwell upon the poetical idea of domesticity ; it 
is all a matter of taking tilings, material and familiar things 
in particular, for what they are worth to the imagination ; 
so that they become "the" table, "the" chair, "the" cup 
and saucer, instead of merely examples of those articles. 
Since Chardin there has not been a painter who could get so 
much human significance out of still life as Mr. Cayley 
Robinson. Lest the remark be misunderstood, he gets it all 
by strictly pictorial means ; by spacing and proportion, and, 
above all, by the actual handling of paint. The common 
saying that such and such a musician makes his instrument 
"speak" might very well be applied to Mr. Robinson's use 
of his material. 
Under cover of the institution there are several other 
pictures that bring life into the Academy. There is, for 
example, Mr. Spencer Watson's jolly " Mary and Guido," 
and there are the landscapes by Mr. Cameron, Mr. Adrian 
Stokes, and Mr. Arnesby Brown. And, without knowing 
the intention of the artist, I am prepared to say that Mr. 
Clausen's still-hfe painting "A Corner of the Table" is 
eminently a war picture. 
