i8 
Land & Water 
June 13, 191 8 
A Realist: By Charles Marriott 
|H 
m^ 
■■[ 
K 
H 
^H..H 
m'' 
IH 
' 4^^L 
',t 
■ 
ti 
1 
Bantam 
IN a sense, and 
a good sense, 
Mr. Eric Ken- 
nington is the 
most realistic 
of tlie artists ofticially 
employed upon the 
war ; but the word 
"realistic", has come 
t(i mean so many 
d i ff e r e n t — and in- 
compatible — t h i n g s 
that it has to be used 
with, some caution. 
As a rule, what is 
meant by a realistic 
writer or painter is a 
man who affects a 
tiresome fidelity to 
tlic look of things 
and disclaims any in- 
terest in their pur- 
)>ose, but at the same 
time leaves you to 
suppose that he knows 
all about it. Most of 
us are heartily sick of 
that sort of realism, 
the "slice of life" 
realism, of which somebody wittily said that it is no more 
like Hfe than a slice of beef is like a cow. 
On the other hand there is the realism which, while it does 
not worry much about the look of things, is frankly and in- 
tensely interested in their character and purpose. This is 
the realism of the pre-Raphaelites and of Mr. Eric Kennington. 
As a rule a realist of this kind neither disclaims nor 
pretends to any judgment of the ultimate meaning of things ; 
he simply forgets all about it in his delight in things for their 
own sakes ; and it would be extremely difficult to tell from 
Mr. Kennington's pictures, now on view at the Leicester 
Galleries, Leicester Square, what he thinks abq,ut war. 
What you can tell is that lie is enormously interested 
in his fellow creatures, and in everything they use and 
wear, down to the last button on the last gaiter. The great 
value of Mr. Kennington's 
work, from the point of 
view of interpretation, is 
that it interprets the war in 
detail. Nobody else has taken 
such pains to show exactly 
what the men and their wea- 
pons and equipment are like. 
Not what they look like, for 
that is begging the question, 
because the same people and 
things will look different in 
different circumstances, tf and 
for getting the look of a 
person or thing in the circum- 
stances of the moment there 
is nothing to beat the camera. 
Art being before everything a 
practical matter, it is worth 
while examining this question 
pretty closely. If you com- 
pare Mr. Kennington's draw- 
ings and paintings with 
photographs, you will see 
that the great difference is 
that he shows you what the 
thing is like all the time. 
There is a popular notion, 
due to a misunderstanding of 
Impressionism, that this is 
bad art, but the popular 
notion is wrong. The artistic 
merit of realism is to be ex- 
planatory. Anybody who has 
had to make both drawings 
and photographs for scientific 
purposes — say to illustrate a 
book about birds — knows that, 
contrary to expectation,photo- 
General Sir Pertab Sin 
graphy is an imperfect means of showing the permanent 
facts of structure, though it is unrivalled for representing 
appearances. In order to show how the thing goes you have 
to make a drawing. The ironical truth is that photography 
kn ocks the stuffing out of what is generally ca lied " realism, ' ' but 
leaves the merits of pre-Raphaelitism absolutely unto'uched. 
Again, if you compare the work of Mr. Kennington with 
that dt Meissonier, you will notice another great difference. 
Meissonier shows you all the details of uniform and equip- 
ment, but he does not really show you liow they are made 
and put on. The defect of Meissonier is not that he finished 
his work too minutely, but that he finished it imintelligently. 
He shows you the speck of light on the buckle, but lie does 
not show you hov\^ the buckle fastens. To put it in a prac- 
tical way, a person who had to make a working as distinct 
from a museum model of uniform and equipment, from a 
picture by Meissonier, would very soon lose his temper ; he 
would find that exactly the information he wanted was mis- 
sing ; whereas with a picture bj' Mr. Kennington he would 
find no difficulty at all. He would be able to see exactty how 
everything buckled or buttoned up. Whereas Meissonier was 
interested mainly in showing how "like" he could make 
everything, Mr. kennington is interested in the things them- 
selves, and how they go — which is interpretation. It im- 
plies, as Rossetti said, "fundamental brain-work." 
Not that the merits of Mr. Kennington's work are limited 
to still-life. Some of his portrait studies are almost dis- 
concerting in their reality. Coming upon them suddenly 
you feel inclined to say : " I beg your pardon, I don't know 
your name, but •." This is particularly true of the hos- 
pital studies ; to look at them is almost an intrusion, not 
on account of the circumstances, but because of the individual 
reality of the men. That is a consequence of Mr. Kenning- 
ton's intense interpst in character. He shows you what the 
man is like all the time, and not only since he put on khaki. 
From the point of view of interpretation this is extremely 
valuable. It brings home the richness and variety of our 
wonderful army. It is an army not of machine-made soldiers, 
but of men whose characters have been formed in a hundred 
different occupations ; in the mine and the foundry, on the 
railway, at the forge, in the office, the workshop, and the 
studio. The courage, patience and responsibility that you 
see in their faces, have risen to the occasion, but they were 
not created by it. You can follow Mr. Kennington's men 
off the stage of the war, and 
see them about their tasks 
again, confirmed in their 
characters, though with a new 
sense of comradeship as a 
result of their great experi- 
ence. 
Probably no other artist has 
given such a solid texture to 
his impressions of the person- 
nel and equipment of the war. 
You feel that each of Mr. 
Kennington's men answers to 
a name,and that every belt and 
water bottle represents so 
much human skill and labour, 
so that you are reminded of 
the effort at home. Think- 
ing in thousands, we are apt to 
forget all this, and it is well to 
have a detailed statement to fill 
out the summaries of other art- 
ists. Not that Mr.Kennington 
is incapable of a general state- 
ment ; his landscape studies 
show him to have a good sense 
of design, and a grasp of con- 
ditions as distinct from facts. 
But it is for his treatment of the 
facts that we are most grateful 
to him. He shows that thej^can 
be dealt with in a realistic man- 
ner without descending to imi- 
tation, and that if you get 
character, you get something 
decorative in itself. Best of 
all, he proves the vitality' of a 
peculiarly native movement in 
painting. 
By Eric Kennington. 
gh, G.C.S.I., etc., etc. 
