Page 53 - Studio International - March 1966

Bevan then, is important in two ways, he was a
notable artist and he was, so to speak, an art

historical curiosity. Of the young men who gathered
around Sickert at No. 19 Fitzroy Street in the years
between 1904 and 1910, the most celebrated and
the most typical are Harold Gilman and Spencer
Gore; both were disciples of the great man and both
were ignorant of, or at least untouched by, the
momentous events that were then taking place in
• Paris. Robert Bevan joined them in 1908 ; he was
older than they; he had known Gauguin and he had
painted pictures which, in their flaming exuberance
• of form and colour, belong not at all to the school of
Whistler and Degas, but rather to the Fauves or to
the Expressionists of central Europe.
If he had cared to do so, Bevan could have carried
tales of modern painting which would have amazed
• those conscientious apostles of obfusc tonality.
He may in fact have made his influence felt and have
played a certain rôle in that awakening process
• which culminated in the Post-Impressionist
Exhibition in 1910. Whether he did so hardly matters
to anyone but scholars; it is, however, profitable to
consider whether he was the kind of man and the
kind of painter who was likely to be an influence on
others. It would seem that he was not; his, one
supposes, was a deeply eccentric and profoundly
taciturn character. We may picture him, a quiet
• young man amidst the young energumènes of Pont
Aven, going off on his own to beat out flax with a
Breton peasant, retiring with a pack of hounds to the
• foothills of the Atlas, riding through Polish forests to
fall into the hands of the Tsarist police, living
obscurely and penuriously on Exmoor, but still
• managing to ride to hounds, and retiring eventually
with a Polish wife to Swiss Cottage. But it is hard to
imagine him preaching, proclaiming, or theorising.

Despite his early essays in pictorial violence he is,
essentially, a quiet painter. Although his biographer
. thinks otherwise it appears that he felt the influence
of Sickert; certainly, like all the Camden Town
artists, he was excited by the abrupt angular
• geometry of Post-Impressionism. But whatever he
took he used with a calm reticent gravity of his own
The principal value of this book lies in the clarity
• with which it shows us how great he could be in his
own manner. It forms a worthy monument to a
„ very fine painter.
Quentin Bell

In brief
The Selected Letters of Josiah Wedgwood
Edited by Ann Finer and George Savage
Cory, Adams Et MacKay 70s.
This book provides a fascinating glimpse into
industrial and social conditions in the eighteenth
century. The editors have added connective and
explanatory material essential to an understanding of
Wedgwood's important rôle in the creation of late
eighteenth century classical taste, not only
in this country but also on the Continent and
in the United States.

Decorative Wedgwood in Architecture and
Furniture by Alison Kelly Country Life 70s. Above
In this extremely readable and well-illustrated
account of Josiah Wedgwood's architectural pottery, Femme nue assise, a pencil drawing by Alexander Levy explains in his introduction, so as to emphasize
Alison Kelly discusses an aspect of eighteenth Archipenko, one of the 131 drawings illustrated in the informal and relaxed response of the artist to
century manufacture about which little has so far The Artist and the Nude: An Anthology of Drawings, his model—'more often than not the artist draws the
been said. Her book may serve also as a source of published by Barrie and Rockliff at 50s. The nude for his own pleasure'. The book is well
inspiration for today's designers looking for majority of the drawings are by 19th and 20th produced, and a number of the drawings illustrated
unusual decorative materials. century artists, and have been selected, as Mervyn have not hitherto been reproduced.