London, May 8 In, going to the Royal" Academy year by year, one is apt to pass through three' phases. The frst, if you care for pictures at all, is one of delight and surprise, when there is hardly room in one's catalogue for all the marks of appreciation, Then comes a stage when one seems to find certain sameness. "Oh yes. that's a raiideso" you say, or "she always paints that sort of thing But in the third stage you realize that the Academy is a very great institution, containing a great deal of beautiful, "sincere "and imaginative work, and that, although there are British painters' who never send pletures to it yet, judged only by what hangs at Burlington House, British art need fear no comparison abroad. So you may spend delightful hours at the Academy, your only sorrow that you cannot afford to perpetuate some of your pleasure on your own walls.
By common consent this year's exhibition is very good, some say the best for many seasons. It is peculiar {in one respect, namely, that architect ture has come into its own. Instead of drawings, we have a scale model in wood, some ten feet long by four feet or five feet high to the top of the dome, of Sir Edward Lutyens' design for the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Liverpool. It really dominates the whole exhibition, In a restrained Renal-sauce style, the whole building is eon-rived {o lead the eye upwards to the central dome, the various parts mass-Ings one above the other in impressive crescendo. It is a superb work and unquestionably puts Sir Edward Lutyens among the great architects of story.
Apart from the cathedral, we are {old by some that the feature of the year is the contributions of Mr. Stan ey Spencer, ana. We shall be "well advised," says "The Times." to spend good deal of time before them "because it is reasonably certain that in 50 years' time he will be recognized one of the very few contemporary painters who have really counted in the history of English art."
Against that Let me put a quota~ tion from Mr. Frank Rutter, certainly no ignoble critic, writing in the "Sunday Tim As soon's as he begins to be my-tical and paint visions he has only Imagined Mr. Spencer seems at once forget all that he learnt at the Slade, His forms become loose, incoherent, and unconvincing.
"Is it perhaps the unfortunate exam plo of Blake that has persuaded so Tony artists of talent that bad drawing is a necessary preliminary to the expression of the spiritual in art?"
So what can the ordinary poor fellow think? There can be—no doubt that Mr. Spencer has an extraordinary command of colour and design. Without apparently aiming fat brilliance, they are almost uncannily vivid and seem to leap at you out of the frame. But after some years of earnest seeking, I still cannot understand the purpose of drawing people with heads never seen outside A-museum of monstrosities, arms like sausages half as thick asthe body, hands four or five times normal size, and bodies in postures only, assumed {in the agonies of hydrophobia. Such ig what Mr. Spencer treats us to in "Souvenirs of Switzerland." "Parents!
Resurrection," "Villagers and Saints." And even the "Times" critic, though he devotes nearly half-a-column of adulation to his favourite, is forced to confess that he does not know what the artist is driving at.
Not Much "Modern" Art Apart from these there is not much "modern" art. The Academy has recovered from its wild ting in that direction of three or four years ago. But several pictures are clearly infuenced by so-called modern methods, particularly some landscapes, in the use of wide flat stretches of colour, hard-looking at first, but somehow To my mind one of the most interesting rooms is that in which are collected mostly small pictures by unknown artists, (perhaps achieving their first entry. "Here is an adorable view of Dinham Bridge, Ludlow (David Pare), some fields in the Cots-wolds (W. K. Hudson), a bit of Pol-petro (W. Todd Brown} toneme but a few that one longs to possess. And one has a secret belief that they might prove a better investment than the parables of Mr. Spencer, Others have thought so too, as the little red labels on the frame' show.
The Royal Family Among the portraits, nothing 1 think is more vital and charming than Mr. Oswald Birley's "Duchess of York." It is really fascinating and says everything that popular fancy Quite jussily thinks of her. Mr. Birley has also had the honour of painting the King, a simple and very effective portrait which I like better than any Thave seen before. Here is both a King and man of character. not the dreadful dummy so often depicted.
'Mr. Simon Elwes' portrait of the Princess Royal is also very pleasing, and Miss Cathleen Mann has done an admirable portrait of Prince George. Clearly she said to herself "I am not going to think of this man as Royalty" and lo, Royalty is there all the same, yet very much alive and human In dark suit and club tle.
Of other portraits 1 shall not soon forget Sir John Lavery's picture of Miss Diana Dickson, seated leaning against the end of a sofa, with one slender foot tucked up behind her, in a large shady hat and filmy dress of 0 bubble iridescence, and behind a curtain of mingled blue-green and soft strawberry pink. I do not, fam never likely to, know the lady, but the picture alone might be a lifetime's treasure. I wonder what her great-great grandchildren living in chromium plate and rustless.steel~ houses dressed in hygienic uniformity and subsisting on aseptic tablets concentrated vegetables will think of Its graciousness and freedom contrast with their own hard State-regulared lives.
The Bishop of Exeter, Lord William Cecil, is another wonderful portrait, the very man in every touch. by Mr. Meredith Frampton. And there is tone I dare not name because I am sure the artist painted the lady in savage irony, a perfect type, which simply shrieks "at you, "I'am county, county, county, and you will kindly' not forget it."
The pictures by Mrs. Annie Swynnorton make one realize what a great artist was lost by her death. "The Gipsy Girl." in particular a black-haired child approaching through a heavy avenue beyond which a corner of a cornfield is just seen, slays in one's memory. There is the same sort of legendary feeling in Mrs, Swynnerton's painting that one finds in Watts.
Of the hundreds of other pictures, tone can but mention one or two, representative of separate classes—ihe "Fish Stall," by Frederick Dawes, two women chaffering fora lobster, a marriage in Southwark Cathedral by Campbell Taylor, one 6f the best of all his interiors; Munnings' beautiful sluely of Mr. W. W. Astor, on horsewk, with the Oxford University draghounds, a bunch of New Forest ponies by an open stream, by Tal-mage, "Wind and the Sea" by Robert Allen, a perfect seascape. Iam expert, the ideas that these pictures present are assuredly not new. But What Is there in the world that is really new? It is the artist's personality and sincerity that count, and in dozens more, with the few' named, there is something delightful, something one could come to again and again with fresh pleasure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.