Page 66 - Studio International - July August 1973

to be found lounging near the long bridge of the and inside, the iron-bound coffers of John Paul
Potomac after their humiliating defeat at Bull Jones and his vials of strange Walt Whitman
Run. Brady and O'Sullivan, the fine Civil War concoctions. What is pendant overhead but
photographers, were wildly at work, some fair strange lady of bygone times
nevertheless, and their corpse-shots affected the arranging a meeting with the police astrologer,
painter in no small measure. His paintings of the missing cop of Dr. Love ? Does she mean to
this period, including Defiance: Inviting a Shot inquire whether the warm love planet will shine
before Petersburg, Virginia, and the popular auspicious upon her clean future ? Her gallant,
Prisoners from the Front, must rank among his weekly on slide trombone, has been advised of
best work in oils. her coming and has as a normal consequence
`It's a band!' they all shouted. 'A band of bribed the wizard, who has just won his
Indians !' Cometh Whitman, with whom, more sergeant's stripes at Gettysburg.
possibly than Mark Twain, may be compared All of this time, believe me, I have been
Winslow Homer. Grand visions now yield trying to describe as well the efforts of the
their musick to new and practical problems. No apparent retired blacksmiths whose work is
dainty rhymes or sentimental love-verses for reproduced in American Primitive Painting.
you terrible year//Not you as some pale poetling The Quilting Party, oil on wood, c. 845, is
seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano/But as a representative, let us say, and a great example of
strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, Pittsburgh perspective. Do you know what I
advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder/etc., mean ? Our fancy must paint the sequel. Will the
etc. false astrologer prophesy smooth things and
My best friend, lying in a Norwegian bath sendthe lady away, all unconscious of his true
tonight, insists that Winslow Homer was heavily personality, with a smile curving her lips and a
influenced by the Impressionists. I at first resist soft blush making her lips more roseate ? Or
and attempt to refute this notion. But the War is will the oracle deliver, in sombre tones,
finally over, and it is 866, and Winslow Homer warnings of coming dangers and disasters — of
has painted something he calls Croquet Scene. `change that poisons, time that kills' —till the
Manet lurks in the mallet like a spook in a lady melt in tears and the mask and all disguise
walking-stick. Corot has just fainted on the be flung aside and the sudden laughter that
lawn, while Degas demands a little drink of shakes the cobwebs of the antique den be stilled
water from a man in a kind of straw boater. I by the pressure of happier kisses ?
have no eye at all and need another bath. TIMOTHY CRAIG
Leave off: the greased pig contest and the
corn roast are yet to come. Oh, there'll be some !
I like boys, let's put it right up front, I like Diffuse reflections
'em! Winslow Homer did boys to perfection. Courbet: The Studio of the Painter by Benedict
In Snap the Whip, 872, we get a nine-boy Nicolson, 98 pp., 54 illustration, in colour.
wonder without benefit of shoes. Who needs Allen Lane. £2.25.
'em ? Who needs 'em with all that Red Badge, Marcel Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bari by
Scarlet Letter, Watermelon Boy, exasperated her Bachelors, Even by John Golding, 116 pp.,
Corot, badass lobster red to keep you warm ? 64 illustrations, in colour. Allen Lane. £1.85.
The same red, of which the Police Band have
been so fond, and which appears in The Benedict Nicolson has given an efficient
Carnival, 1877, a darky number if ever there summary of the available material and a lucid —
was one. if at times rather slow-paced — key to a reading
Believe it or net, I have another friend, and he of Courbet's monumental work, whose
liked a phrase, 'sad tides of American history', detractors, revealingly represented in
I believe it must have been, which I earlier Appendix II by Richard Redgrave's chauvinist
employed in connection with the artist under contemporary criticism, can dismiss it as merely
discussion; that is, Winslow Homer. That a jig-saw of well-worn symbolic figures and old
phrase of course occurs in connection with the portraits. But Courbet's own characteristic
painter's so-called marine period, his final swagger to Champfleury that what he called
locked-up period which allies itselfto former (in his 1855 exhibition guide) 'this real
efforts in such instances as the masterly Breezing Allegory', 'will prove to you that I am not yet
Up, which contains the remnants of the Snap dead, or realism either, for this is realism',
the Whip bunch, a boatload (a doryload, I gives the crucial clue on how to view what
meant to say) of down-east Huck Finns. Nicolson aptly calls a 'claustrophobic stage'.
Winslow Homer was true without being It defines the unhappy schism between
primitive. In one of his final works, Kissing Courbet's own complex, composite allegorical
the Moon (who wouldn't ?), we have a touch of intentions, and those hard-liners of Realism
the tender and of the humorous. Love and fun such as Proudhon, for whom the painting was a
have taken possession of the grim magician's betrayal of political and social commitments to
den, and we might almost fancy that the dusty which Courbet probably never wholly
oceans were about to blossom into rosebuds, subscribed, and against which he was certainly
that dimpled cupids were at play among the reacting by 1855.
serried rows and lofty piles of ancient waves, Meticulously deferring to all his sources,
that quaint tricksy elves must be lurking beside, Nicolson is amusing on Courbet's 'Assyrian
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