modulated handling of colour, which is low in key here, although Appelbee’s colour can be rich. His work is full of lyricism in a minor key. He is a conscientious artist, fastening on almost anything as subject-matter and transforming it through sheer painterliness into a thing of beauty. Leonard Appelbee’s wife, Frances MacDonald, is another artist of integrity and promise.
John Craxton is essentially a painter with a poetic vision. Line assumes the greatest functional importance in his drawings: defining space, forming pattern and building up a super tension of atmosphere. The emphasis is almost entirely on the emotive possibilities of line and colour in combination. His use of colour is comparatively simple; his linear technique is force
ful and complex. At his best Craxton produces an effect of great beauty and gelid clarity by this tautness of fine and sense of design; at his worst he seems cold and sterile. Natural features of landscape are reduced to essential shapes and patterns (Gustave Moreau:
“What is the importance of nature in herself? Nature is merely an opportunity for the artist to express him
self. Art is the intense pursuit of the innef feeling through plastic means alone”.) We know by now that nature can be violated and brought by a “sublime deformation” to a permanent beauty. But not enough people realize that all forms are perfect in the poet’s mind: they are compounded from nature and imagina
tion, and in the case of Craxton result in a singularly pure relationship of fine and colour that is often, but not always, determined by natural form.
Michael Ayrton says that his “chief love and influence has always been the painting of Flanders, with particular devotion to Brueghel, Van der Weyden and Rubens’ landscapes”. Of the modems he likes Rouault and Graham Sutherland, and “detests Picasso—with fervid admiration for him”. Ayrton believes that his own painting is gothic rather than itahanate.
He has much in common with John Minton, and the work of both these artists reminds me quite often of various drawings by Wolf Huber, the sixteenth-century German artist, whose drawings were inspired by scenes in nature but transformed on paper into a work rich in fantasy, writhing with decorative fine that at times
Above:
ROBERT COLQUHOUN “Portrait in Albyn” (Lejevre Gallery)
Right:
ROBERT MACBRYDE “Marrow and Fruit” (Lejevre Gallery)
John Craxton is essentially a painter with a poetic vision. Line assumes the greatest functional importance in his drawings: defining space, forming pattern and building up a super tension of atmosphere. The emphasis is almost entirely on the emotive possibilities of line and colour in combination. His use of colour is comparatively simple; his linear technique is force
ful and complex. At his best Craxton produces an effect of great beauty and gelid clarity by this tautness of fine and sense of design; at his worst he seems cold and sterile. Natural features of landscape are reduced to essential shapes and patterns (Gustave Moreau:
“What is the importance of nature in herself? Nature is merely an opportunity for the artist to express him
self. Art is the intense pursuit of the innef feeling through plastic means alone”.) We know by now that nature can be violated and brought by a “sublime deformation” to a permanent beauty. But not enough people realize that all forms are perfect in the poet’s mind: they are compounded from nature and imagina
tion, and in the case of Craxton result in a singularly pure relationship of fine and colour that is often, but not always, determined by natural form.
Michael Ayrton says that his “chief love and influence has always been the painting of Flanders, with particular devotion to Brueghel, Van der Weyden and Rubens’ landscapes”. Of the modems he likes Rouault and Graham Sutherland, and “detests Picasso—with fervid admiration for him”. Ayrton believes that his own painting is gothic rather than itahanate.
He has much in common with John Minton, and the work of both these artists reminds me quite often of various drawings by Wolf Huber, the sixteenth-century German artist, whose drawings were inspired by scenes in nature but transformed on paper into a work rich in fantasy, writhing with decorative fine that at times
Above:
ROBERT COLQUHOUN “Portrait in Albyn” (Lejevre Gallery)
Right:
ROBERT MACBRYDE “Marrow and Fruit” (Lejevre Gallery)