Page 57 - Studio International - November 1966

out of reach. emphasis of tonality on the principal subject of the picture
The middle one of the three Sartorii, John Nost, is the —the horse (this is usually called Stubbs's inability to
exact counterpart of a minor minor-Impressionist, and weld foreground and background tonally together). And
he can be left at that. The third, John II, is only repre- these turn out to be indestructively effective props for the
sented at Waddington's by two paintings. So I prefer to naive painter. It's as though a master had invented a
concentrate on the first and best-represented of the three, do-it-yourself kit. Sartorius can hardly go wrong. Even
Francis. The distinction I want to make about him is one when he's not being particularly adept, a kind of
between 'primitive' and 'naive', taking the 'naive' painter amateur subtlety of placing, of shapes, of 'presentation'
to mean one who can be stylistically dependent on a of the subject, occurs. As in the splendid Damper, got by
strong original, but whose unsophisticated versions of Spectator, where the background (two long, flat bands of
the original still draw strength from it. green and blue, demarcated by two small white posts),
Francis Sartorius's best paintings, in fact, probably say by not showing as horizon under the horse's belly, seems
more about the amazing art of Stubbs than anything to 'fill in' a massive rectangle beneath it, giving the
they accomplish on their own account. In Stubbs him- animal's leggy elegance pictorial stability.
self there are such qualities as the occasional almost But felicities of this sort, even if they hold one's interest,
Chardin-like colour and modelling, or the subtlety of don't add up to anything urgent, like a case for re-
contours, of enclosed shapes, of figure/ground relation- appraisal. Yet in one respect, how modern the show
ships, to declare the presence of a searching pictorial looks! It's built out of one motif, one brand-image, as it
intelligence. Sartorius has none of these. He has certain were, with variations, just like nine out of ten exhibitions
props of the Stubbs style, such as a ranging of everything of 'recent paintings by...'. And the motif—that splayed
in planes parallel to the picture-plane, a low horizon yet formal silhouette against bands of sky and turf—is in
offering the maximum of silhouette (this was admittedly itself memorable, one of those ikon-images in art which
probably a natural phenomenon at Newmarket), a forced can survive almost any handling. q

bition of his work earlier this year. The most the London
Justin Knowles public has seen of him was four works in this year's New
Generation exhibition at the WHITECHAPEL GALLERY.
When a British artist exhibits abroad the public at home The ROYAL MARKS GALLERY, New York, is showing his
may miss altogether a sizeable part of his development. work early in 1967, however, and Justin Knowles has
Justin Knowles is a young 'dimensional painter' who has thrown open his studio so that most of the works which
not had a one-man show in London as yet, although the will go to America can be seen. His studio show—at
GALLERIA CADARIO in Milan organized a successful exhi- 227a Maida Vale, London, W.9—runs until November 6.

Illustrated here are some recent works. The sphere and box are
fibreglass, the cone and flat objects canvas on stretchers. They
are painted in acrylic.