The Studio july 15. 1910 [antikvár]

Sir IVilliam Quiller Orchardson, R.A.SIR WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A. BY A. LEICESTER-BURROUGHS.By the death of Sir William Quiller Orchardson the world of art has lost a unique figure. His loss creates a void never adequately to be filled; certainly, never for those who, like myselfj derive an enjoyment not short of rapturous from the contemplation of his works. Great men are with us, and other great men the future will give us, but Nature has broken one of her beautiful moulds, for she rarely, if ever, repeats her more magnificent designs. I think the passage of time will bring our loss very keenly home to us, as year by year we miss the accustomed pictures, so fine in conception, so full of thought, so consummate in their execution, and the noble and ennobling portraits of the men and women who are happy to go down to posterity recorded by such an exquisite hand.It is difficult to imagine greater individuality than that which speaks from all the dead painter's canvases. Other great men have founded schools and have had hosts of followers, and in somé cases the pupil has excelled the master. This is something unthinkable in the case of Orchardson, for it can be truly said that he, and he alone, could achieve those great results of hisby the means which he adopted.Picture to yourself, for one moment, an "imitation Orchardson." Think of his tenuous subtlety translated into flimsy fatuity, his golden tones faded to vacuous browns and yellows, his dainty drawing reduced to indeterminate sketchi-ness! And this would almost certainly be the result of such an attempt to follow the master. His genius compelled him to use means for his ends which, described, would seem to be wholly incapable of such attainments as his.It is not the least remarkable feature of his artistic personality that his pictures are admired so