. Frank Brangwyn and his work. 1911 . Monets work. Now thispassion for light goes too far; it is a sort of drunkenness,and painters have something better to do than to over-excite their optic nerves. Brangwyn understood this from the first, for he made noexperiments in light and colour unassociated with difficultproblems of design and character-painting. It was fortu-nate that he chose this different road. Had he trainedhimself to be content with sketches and notes, he wouldhave feared the risk of trying to pass from rapid impres-sion into a completed picture; like many a clever studentwho pai
. Frank Brangwyn and his work. 1911 . Monets work. Now thispassion for light goes too far; it is a sort of drunkenness,and painters have something better to do than to over-excite their optic nerves. Brangwyn understood this from the first, for he made noexperiments in light and colour unassociated with difficultproblems of design and character-painting. It was fortu-nate that he chose this different road. Had he trainedhimself to be content with sketches and notes, he wouldhave feared the risk of trying to pass from rapid impres-sion into a completed picture; like many a clever studentwho paints well in a life-class and fails hopelessly in acommissioned portrait. Brangwyn, then, has never lookedupon his work as light and colour only, but as colourand light in their relation to other problems of art; andhe believes, quite justly, that a painting should alwayslook well and be attractive as a black and white. Not80 Q V O o o ^ t-^ ts S Q ?i Z ^ t^-i >s ^ 1 *1 w ? a 1^ h =^. Characteris tics only ought it to be distinctive in its form, in its design,but its presentation of life and character needs dramaticsensibility. In other words, a painter should be emo-tional in many ways outside his passion for subtletiesof atmosphere. Take the question of landscape-painting and considerit largely, keeping in mind any works of Brangwyn thatyou know well, whether Eastern subjects, or glimpses ofthe Thames through wreathing smoke, or a romance ofold houses felt with an emotion akin to that in Piranesiand Mer}on. Landscapes of this kind are not onlyhuman ; they have their own literature, inasmuch as theycompel us to feel and think, to pass from their value asthings observed to their poetry as historic backgroundsto the drama of human life. Merj^on has such a feelingfor old architecture that some of his etched plates are(juite uncanny with awe and pathos, as if bygone genera-tions haunt ancient homes in presences unseen, thatMeryon enables us to feel. This comes from a
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