The Studio may 14. 1910 [antikvár]

Mr. Róbert Anning BellMR. RÓBERT ANNING BELL'S WORK AS A PAINTER. BY T. MARTIN WOOD.When Mr. Anning Bell exchanged the restric-tions and embarrassments of design in coloured plaster or glass for the freedom of a liquid state of painting in oils, tempera, and water colours, his art itself won a freedom which, while still decora-tive, was perhaps in a sense new to modern decoration.At the time that outline was in process of becom-ing nothing to the impressionists, it was almost an obsession with the decorative designers. An arbitrary line, like the leaded line in glass work, necessary nearly always to meet the conditions of applied design, was carried into oil and water-colour paintings as an indispensable convention. And when the subject was abstractly Gothic in inspiration this line seemed all the more inevitable. In Mr. Anning Bell's art, however, when it became pagan and a little more gay, this convention seemed to embarrass the freedom of movement of his figures, like stiff ecclesiastical robing, andalmost without his knowing it, though we wátched it, his more pagan subjects slipped the outline altogether, becoming almost impressionisticand here it is interesting to reflect that impressionism borders the realm of illusion, which is where imag-inative art begins.Viewed in the Gothic spirit, ideál realms are super-sensual and apart from us, while in a pagan mood there can be familiarities between gods and men, and frivolities without irreverence. Too light a touch were unworthy of cloistral senti-ments, and one can almost see in the leaded line a symbol of the restraint which the priesthood had imposed. The tendencies that to-day follow the Gothic revival are an outcome and not a reaction. Rigid lines are falling away, not being forced down, but surrendering as life itself moves religi-ously to freedom. We seem to see the happy maidens of Mr. Anning Bell's art issuing forth into the open, with their bows and arrows in their hands, pretending to be Amazons, but not belong-ing to the early world, having the reflection of altar lights in their eyes, and the restraint of those who have once followed in solemn proces-