May 1 6, 191 8 
Land & Water 
19 
Life and Letters mJX.Souire 
The Royal Academy 
I\ the middle of the quadrangle of Burlington House 
stands Mr. Gilbert Bayes's colossal "War Equestrian 
Statue," an ideal male figure on horseback, fronting 
the future with determination. It has not the life 
and strength of Watts's "Physical Energy," which 
once stood in the same place. It is decorative but little 
more ; its grace and its serenity are rather those of a well- 
designed piece of furniture than those of a work of vital art ; 
taste and fancy, not imagination and passion, have gone to 
its making ; and its origin, whether the sculptor knows it or 
not, is Munich, where a reproduction of it might well make 
a cover for one of the magazines of the "Secession." But 
even good taste is not a commodity to be under-rated when 
one meets it at the Academy ; and Mr. Bayes's group is 
better than all save a very few of our English pubUc 
monuments. 
4: 4: *' * ifi ^ 
The next important thing you come to is the turnstile ; 
the next the catalogue. Blazoned on the title page is 5n 
extract from Hazlitt : "Art must anchor on Nature, or it is 
the sport of every breath of folly." "Nature" is a compre- 
hensive word, and it would be difficult to find a man who 
would dispute the maxim. The Post-Impressionist at whom 
it is here aimed, maintains that what he is trying to paint 
exists in Nature ; he merely argues that there is more in 
Nature than meets the unacademic eye. And I had rather 
see a man fail in the difficult task of painting the " bottleness " 
of a bottle than try to paint the obvious surface of the bottle, 
and fail dismally at that. If the Royal Academy has 
anchored on Nature, all one can say is that the anchor has 
dragged pretty considerably. The Hanging Committee may 
be determined to set its face against new follies, but it clings 
desperately to old ones ; and the maddest of the Cubists. 
are preferable to the slavish copyists and drivelling anecdo-' 
tists who cover the walls of Burlington House. Year after 
year it goes on. Good men are constantly being elected to 
the Academy, and optimists are always hoping that the bad 
ones will die off and Time rectify all. So they hoped a 
generation ago (I commend readers to the discussions in 
the painter's Life which preceded Sir E. Bume- Jones's resigna- 
tion of the Associateship which his friends had persuaded 
him to take), and so they hope still. But the dullards take 
care that they preserve their compact majority, and the 
percentage of good pictures on the walls remains as low as 
ever. Every year there are actually more good things in 
each of several small exliibitions than among the whole of 
the hundreds of exhibits at Burlington House. It is a 
tragedy ; one caimot help feeling what the prestige of the 
Academy could do for the best of the young painters if the 
Academy were differently constituted. 
****** 
War pictures are, of course, numerous ; they may almost 
all be neglected, the best of them having the sole merit of 
giving one an idea (as good newspaper pictures do) of what 
conditions at the front are. It is impossible, however, to 
ignore Mr. F. Salisbury's vast panel for the Royal Exchange, 
representing the King and Oueen at the front. As usual 
with these pictures, it is so terrible that, were it not that the 
Academy's loyalty is above suspicion, one would incline 
to think it an insidious form of republican propaganda. 
If anything could be more amazingly bad than the main 
design, showing the King with his generals on an eminence 
— the Prince of Wales is also shown, apparently wondering 
when the painter is going to let him mf)ve — it is the appendix 
at the bottom, representing the Oueen amongst the wounded. 
More words fail me. The separate portraits of their Majesties 
(apparently studies for the great work) which guard the 
flanks are quite tolerable. Mr. Walter Bayes's "The Under- 
world." though a tliousand times better painted, and far 
more nearly "anchored on Nature," is almost equally odd. 
It is a study of the Tube during an air-raid. Puvis de 
Chavannes might have painted it had he taken to pessimism. 
It is wonderfully keenly seen in places ; but it is so large, 
it does not hang together ; and its realistic ugliness is the 
work of a clever reporter in paint than of an artist. It had a 
red label on it, indicating that it had been sold. It cannot 
be supposed that our enterprising Underground Railways 
are going to use it as a poster ; let us hope that it has not 
been acquired for the National War Museum. If some stout 
fellow of a profiteer has actually purchased it to embellish 
his home, all I can say is that I trust I shall never be asked 
to dine with him. Mr. David Jaggard, who last year did a 
good study of a "Conscientious Objector," has gone one 
better this year with a raving Bolshevik, backed by a blood- 
red banner, the red of which has got into the inside of the 
Bolshevik's extended mouth, giving him a truly terrifying 
appearance. There is great vigour in the painting, but it is 
crude and raw. It makes no pretence to be anything but 
hideous (there is no question of a "new kind of beauty" 
here), and it can only be recommended to the attention of 
the directors of Madame Tussaud's. Older wars are less 
conspicuous than usual ; I did not notice even one picture 
of Cavahers and Roundlieads. The Hanging Committee 
must have been nodding. "Stories in paint" have also 
diminished in numbers. Mr. Jolm Collier confines himself 
to portraits. No Academy, however, would" be complete 
without a picture of somebody or other prostrating himself 
or herself at the foot of the Cross. Sometimes it is a knight 
in armour, sometimes a fashionable lady, sometimes a figure 
which, in the absence of clothes, one cannot socially place. 
This year it is a ballet-dancer ; the picture (by Miss Margaret 
Lindsay Williams) is called "The Triumph." What does 
Mr. Sargent think when his colleagues fill many square feet 
of wall with things like this ? 
There are a few good' or pleasing pictures, conspicuous 
among them being several small still-lifes. Mr. Arnesby 
Brown's "The Little Village" is charming ; and it is pleasant 
to see him getting away from the rut (populated, in his case, 
with blue cows) into which he seemed to be getting, as mem- 
bers of the Academy almost always do. Mr. D. Y. Cameron, 
with an intensely cerulean "Waters of Lome," also departs 
in colour, if not in subject, from his customary track ; he is 
one of the finest artists we have, but I do not think he entirely 
succeeds in this picture, which is vaguely inharmonious. 
Mr. Charles Sims's "Landscape" — a great block of dark 
foliage— is very agreeable ; and the flesh-tinted Grjeco- 
Roman statue which he sets against a mountain background 
and calls "The Piping Boy," though not up to his old stan- 
dard, shines by comparison with what surrounds it. Mr. 
Glyn Philpot's "Adoration of the Kings" is brilliantly 
painted, but would be tiring to live with ; judging by their 
faces, his monarchs needed all the religious influence they 
could get. Mr. Harry Watson's "A Morning of Pleasure" 
is an effective effort in the out-of-focus sun-spotted genre ; 
and Mr. Sydney Lee's "The Limestone Crag" an interesting 
reversion to the methods of James Ward. 
Mr. Sargent does not exhibit. Nor does Mr. Brangwyn. 
Nor does Mr. Orpen, who has recently been doing first-rate 
portraits of soldiers at the front. Mr. Qiausen, happily, 
does ; his "Sleeper"— a nude woman asleep with her cheek 
on her knee — is very undemonstrative, but one returns to it 
with growing admiration after walking round the room in 
which it is. His work is always too quiet to get its full 
effect on those bellowing walls ; a really representative one- 
man show would surprise some of those who tend to overlook 
the beauty and variety of the work he has been doing for 
thirty years. Mr. Cayley Robinson's "Winter Evening" 
would be completely satisfying if it were cut in two, and 
only the figure by the fire retained. The portraits, as a 
body, do not attract attention ; few of them being remark- 
ably good in execution or notable in subject. Sir John • 
Lavery, who is painting below his old form since he became 
a fashionable artist, does not succeed with Mr. Asquith, 
who is not verj' firmly taken in a not very characteristic 
aspect. Mr. Fiddes Watts's "Lord Finlay" is better; it 
fs not credible, however, that Lord P'inlay can always look 
so wise as that. Mr. Charles Shannon's portrait of himself 
painting is good ; he is holding a brush in his mouth, and 
one is at Hberty to guess that he has just fetched it out of 
the water for Mr. Charles Ricketts, who would do as much 
for him. 
The sculpture galleries are a relief. .They contain much 
that is workmanlike and notliing that is offensive. But 
enough of this list. The one consolation one found, when 
looking for the few needles in that immense haystack, was 
that amongst the comparatively few pictures which had been 
sold at the time of one's visit were virtually all the good 
ones. It reminded one that there is a public for good art. 
