peer en 2s) He Meh Sa eate: EX LIBRIS ; c. Cc. CUNNINGHAM - ALBERT RUTHERSTON a= * _— tf) » ae J i ae ? “ A os < ee i . *" y P # : - / = | Ds + C. J. HOLMES. From a photograph. SIRCHARLES HOLMES NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1924 ACKNOWLEDGMENT THANKS are due to “ Vogue” for the permission kindly given to reproduce Howgill Fells, and to those owners of Sir Charles Holmes’s pictures and drawings who have courteously permitted photographs to be made of them for the purposes of this volume. Acknowledgment is gratefully offered also to Sir Charles Holmes for the kind assistance he himself has given, and to Mr. C. H. Collins Baker, whose know- ledge of Sir Charles Holmes’s work and devoted help in the difficult task of choosing examples from it, have proved equally invaluable. All copyrights, unless other acknowledgment is made, are strictly the property of the artist. Made and Printed in Great Britain at The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. Se 21. 22. ListOF. PLATES C. J. Hotmes. From a photograph. Frontispiece. DorkING MILL. (1894). Etching. THE CHAPEL. (1895). Eéching on zinc. NortH WALsHAM. (1895). Etching. WIMBLEDON COMMON. (1900). In the possession of the Artist. THE GASOMETER. (1900). Jn the possession of the Artist. OLD SaRuUM. (1902). In the possession of the Artist. THE SHRECKHORN AND FINSTERAARHORN. (1904). In the possession of the Artist. MARCH IN THE WINDRUSH VALLEY. (1904). In the possession of the Artist ON THE Reuss, LucERNE. (1906). In the possession of the Artist. VESUVIUS FROM Batagz. (1906). In the possession of the Artist. Tue Power StaTIoN. (1907). Jn the possession of the Artist. PARHAM. (1907). Jn the possession of the Artist. EDEN VALLEY FROM MurTON PIKE. (1909). In the possession of the Artist. RIDGES OF SADDLEBACK. (1910). Replica of picture in the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.1. SADDLEBACK FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. (1910). In the possession of Reginald Cripps, Esq. BupE BREAKWATER. (1911). Jn the possession of the Artist. DuFrTON PIKE FROM BACKSTONE EDGE. (1913). In the possession of the Artst. WELLINGBOROUGH. (1913). In the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, RCSL. : Leeps. (1913). In the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.I. HoiMes STATION. (1914). Jn the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.I. A Cotton Mit. (1914). Jn the possession of the Artist. CHIMNEY IN SHEFFIELD. (1914). In the possession of the Artist. 23: 24. 2h. 26. 27 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. LIST? ORR ESE Brick Cupotas. (1914). In the possession of the Artist. CROSSFELL, EASTER SUNDAY. (1915). In the possession of the Artist. THE Pink MILL. (1916). In the possession of the Artist. WHINFELL ; DouBLE RaInBow. (1917). Jn the possession of the Artist. WHERNSIDE. (1917). In the possession of the Artist. RossetT GILL. (1917). In the possession o the Artist. ROTHERHAM : YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA F. (1918). In the possession of the Artist. STEEL, PEECH, AND 'TOZER’s. (1918). In the possession of Lady Holmes. Howelii Feits. (1919). In the possession of W. H. Woodward, Esq. THE CARPENTER’S SHOP. (1921). In the possession of the Artist. THE ALPS FROM AVIGNON. (1921). In the possession of the Artist. PAPAL PALACE, AVIGNON. (1922). In the possession of the Artist. PENDRAGON CASTLE. (1923). In the possession of the Artist. SIR CHARLES HOLMES F pressed C. J. Holmes’s fellow-artists would probably Jones that while they admit his presence in the front row of living landscape painters they also regard him as something between a freak and a spoilt child of fortune. Readily conceding his originality and conspicuous accom- plishment, they would somehow feel that he has gained his place and accomplishment by rather mysterious if not unfair means. Expressed or inarticulate their feeling might be roughly paraphrased as follows. ‘‘ Here is Holmes in this front rank, with every right to be there. But is there not some- thing rather irregular about it? He has never been to an art school, he is not a whole-time artist, and his record as an artist is chequered with suspicious adventures. In a mis- guided youth he went to Eton and Oxford ; he entered business ; he became an editor, an author and professor, recklessly exhibiting a varied and disconcerting scholarship in old- masterish fields. And as if that were not quite enough he has already directed a couple of galleries and turned into a Civil Servant. How can a fellow with this record be a ‘ pukka’ 7 SIR CHARLES HOLMES artist ? Now we are whole-time painters, students of real art schools, studio workers all our days. We are seldom seen at city banquets with bishops and judges and generals ; we do not edit magazines nor direct galleries. And yet it does not seem to have made much difference ; for Holmes’s work is indistinguishable from the genuine article. It is, in fact, a very funny thing that a man who has never done any regular recognised ‘ grind’ at drawing or painting should draw and paint so well. This short-cut business is hardly fair or moral, and may have a most demoralising effect on the young.” | One of the purposes of this little essay is to calm these fears and dissipate these doubts. In baldly recording Holmes’s career, so far, I shall not only strip him of all glamour and mystery, but I shall also prove that instead of giving cause for wonder, apprehension or subconscious soreness, Holmes is by no means an abnormal case. And we shall conclude that ~ any student who will submit himself to the rigid and continuous discipline which Holmes has undergone for some forty years will richly deserve what fruition comes to him. | Charles John Holmes was born on November rith, 1868. His father, a clergyman, and his uncle Sir Richard Holmes, both had a considerable amateur bent for water-colour paint- ing. ‘This for our purpose is important, because we may justly regard their habit as the jutting rock or eddy which at 8 SIR CHARLES HOLMES the start gave young Holmes’s interest its direction. Many boys regard art with active contempt, many regard it with amiable indifference and some with curiosity. Holmes, who was in the last category, was incited by his father’s and uncle’s attitude towards art to nourish this curiosity until it waxed into something stronger. From a school at Canterbury he went, in 1883, to Eton as a Colleger. His budding interest in art was strong enough to keep alive at Eton, where I suppose the bracing winds of Philistia were just as nipping as at other public schools in the eighties. He managed to keep up his drawing, making now little essays in the manner of Turner or Copley Fielding, now dry little experiments in tree drawing. The foliage of elm trees specially engaged him. But the most important experience he had at Eton was Ruskin’s Modern Painters, which he gulped down with the faith of a disciple. This confirmed him in his cult of Turner. I will leave it to more observant eyes to detect the spark of genius in these Eton drawings, which are quite unaccomplished schoolboy efforts, dry and fiddling in touch and for the most part totally impersonal. The important points about them are this same ordinary inferiority and their persistence, which indicates that drawing was becoming Holmes’s chief concern, apart from the things which, as a normal contentious schoolboy, he was bound to take into account. SIR CHARLES HOLMES A holiday in the Lakes in 1886 gave him opportunities for applying to Nature what he had derived from Ruskin, Turner and such odd prints and pictures as had come his way. Several very conscientious little paintings were made in sepia and Payne’s grey of sunset effects over lakes and mountains, some based on Nature alone, others distilled through his memory of Turner. In 1887 Holmes went with a scholarship to Brase- nose College, Oxford, and that autumn visited Scotland, where his penchant for romantic scenery was of course intensified. In a little drawing of Dunolly done at this time we can just see, unless I am deceived, the crude germ of his much later style. In the blue rounded mountain-tops, strongly silhouetted, there is a hint of his later pallette and simplification. And in another of Loch Tay, with a viaduct across the foreground, and rather stark mountains against a whitish sky, we see the remote ancestor of a picture now lent to the Tate Gallery by Mr. Velten. As a rule, all these water-colours were derived from line drawings made from Nature, and coloured on the principles of Turner as applied to the remembered effect. I mention this because it throws some light on an enormously important part of Holmes’s education—the training of his memory. ‘To the uninitiated there is something almost in- explicable in the memory which he now possesses. But the explanation is quite simple. From the age of about fourteen 10 SIR) CHARLES HOLMES he has in turn filled a reservoir of impressions by ceaseless observation, and then as ceaselessly drawn on it by memory. Thus constantly checking and cross-checking he has tempered an unusually efficient instrument. I understand from him that any one can do the same. In 1887 Holmes discovered the pre-Raphaelites in the Manchester Loan Exhibition. In consequence one sees in the drawings of that date a new idea of the range of colour. By now he had been continually “ messing about ”’ in line and water-colour, mainly in crude emulation of Turner, for some four years. Naturally his work begins to improve, so that the drawings done during his Oxford days, between 1887-89, are less dry and scratchy, and express a certain amount of plein air and light. They are still quite ordinary and amateur, and save on occasions have no clear relation to his later style. The point, again, is that their number increases, and that every walk he took seems to have produced a drawing which in turn begat various experiments in colour. ‘Turner seems to have been laid aside for the moment, and something more like David Cox or Collier is the goal. So efficient had his memory become that some drawings of the Windrush exhibit subtle niceties of out-of-doors tone, light, wind and movement. For example, the glancing light and motion in a willow tree, and complicated skies, crowded with little cirrus forms, very II SIR CHARLES HOLMES accurately seen, were perpetually on Holmes’s mind at this period. And in the summer of 1889 he produced his first industrial landscape—Preston—a small but unmistakable pro- genitor of his well-known industrials. To close this school and college record I will note that in a few experimental instances Holmes was using a strong pencil outline in his water-colours ; not as the remains of the preliminary outline sketch, but as a superimposed contour with a special purpose. It should be borne in mind that so far he had not come across Japanese prints. On the other hand in 1889 he began to notice Constable, making a drawing of a Stour oil landscape, lent by a Mr. Miller to an exhibition in the Preston Corn Exchange. That autumn Holmes entered Rivington’s publishing business in London, and formed a habit to which he is still slave. He adopted as a motto “‘ Nulla dies sine linea,” and set apart half an hour after breakfast every morning for drawing. Confined to office all the week he devoted most of his Saturdays and Sundays to walks in suburban country, Wimbledon, Mitcham, Barnes, Richmond, Banstead, and the like. Each walk produced drawings which became the material for the daily half-hour’s exercise. By now his constant use of the pencil had resulted in a gain of expressive line. It is worth remarking that the pencil drawings in the sketch books are 12 SIR CHARLES HOLMES more advanced and interpretative than the resultant water- colours, though, pari passu, the use of wash is steadily im- proving. Residence in London carried with it access to the National Gallery, a place which Holmes haunts still. Crome seems to have impressed him at this date. Among the numerous drawings of this time those which I have called remote progenitors of Holmes’s later style became more frequent. But he had not yet formed a manner. Casual observation of a Corot, recollections of ‘Turner and Crome, and sometimes reversion to the amateur style of his Oxford days, are notice- able in the drawings of this period, round about 1890. Now he. joined an amateur sketching club, known as the Victoria Drawing Society, which promoted regular exhibits and mild competition. Having left Rivington’s in July, 1890, he was engaged at the printing office of Ballantyne from the autumn of 1890 until February or March, 1891. During the summer he worked in Edward Arnold’s publishing business, and in August visited Holland, there making carefully minute pencil drawings. ‘That winter he studied the antique at South Kensington, setting himself time limits of from two hours to fifteen minutes in which to make a drawing. A fresh course of Modern Painters led to ink drawings of plant form and a renewed appreciation of Turner, while Reynolds’s Dis- courses prompted a short series of ambitious essays in figure * SIR CHARLES HOLMES composition in the grand style. It is just worth record that in 1892 Whistler attracted Holmes’s momentary regard. ‘The sketch books of these years, say 1890-93, are filled with experi- ments in various styles—pen and ink copies of Charles Keene and Du Maurier, pen and ink drawings in Pennell’s and Abbey’s manner ; delicately thorough studies of leafless trees, foliage and trunks; suddenly personal technique succeeded by transient ventures in the manner of others. But by 1893 the personal manner is increasingly frequent, and a quantity of summary notes made on buses or in the streets show how habitual had become the practice of swift notation. Thus Holmes eventually acquired the requisite speed of eye and hand to catch the essential elements of a subject seen from the train window. A few highly finished still-life paintings in water-colour were done at this time. In 1892 a change of business had a profound effect on his artistic career. He rejoined the firm of Ballantyne as book- keeper, and at the desk proper to that office made the acquaint- ance of Ricketts and Shannon, then publishing The Dial. This apparent accident gave him the benefit of professional advice and eventual introduction to the world of art and letters. And in persuading him to learn to draw by means of etching Ricketts did him a great service. The etchings fall between 1892 and 1897; there are some eighty-five plates, 14 SIR CHARLES HOLMES which bring home to us the amount of discipline in draughts- manship which Holmes underwent. They reflect various influences—that of Rembrandt, Haden, Legros, Holroyd and Strang ; but in the most important Holmes’s own personality is the chief thing. Most of these plates were etched from pen and ink drawings in which a free and sweeping line, and great attention to minute detail of architecture or tree form are conspicuous. ‘These pen and ink drawings are pro- fessionally accomplished in style and very different from the literal and amateur standard of most of the water-colours produced so far. For examples of the etchings see Plates 1-3. At about this date, say 1895, we can rule a line, dividing the groping and amateur productions of Holmes’s beginnings from his later, personal style. In other words, it had cost Holmes ten years of unaided experiment and general failure to reach the technical accomplishment of a three years’ art student. Into those ten years of spare-time work he put as much labour as the average keen student performs in his three years, with, I think, more profitable thought. For each tiny step he took was in the main due rather to his own reasoning and dis- covery than to a “‘tip”’ handed on by an expert practitioner. Every solution of a problem was, in Holmes’s case, something of a reasoned scientific achievement, dearly bought by months 15 SIR CHARLES HOLMES of experiment. From this hard training and personal dis- covery was developed his capacity to write, many years later, his Notes on the Science of Picture Making. The last step he took in reaching emancipation seems a large and sudden one. This is not unusual ; impetus once gained, pace seems to gather out of all proportion. But Holmes gratefully insists that the length of this last stride is largely due to William Strang, who with a diagram or two, so far as I can judge, finally opened Holmes’s eyes to the interpretative projective possibilities of line. Of course if Holmes had had the privilege of sitting under distinguished Professors in Gower Street he would have been made aware of this function of line in ten weeks, instead of ten years. It was, however, reserved for William Strang to give at the critical moment the most important push to Holmes’s development. Most of his earliest sketch books have been kept in order. No. XVII is dated 1898. I single it out because it probably is the first to which considerable value, on artistic grounds, will be attached. It records visits to Arbury, Dornoch, Lucerne ; Biasca, Florence, Pisa, Padua, and Verona. ‘Though in many ways its level is passed in important oils and water-colours of subsequent years, yet to my mind it has a novelty and fresh- ness, the zest of a first free flight, which give its little drawings —they are perhaps six inches square—a remarkable and 16 SIR CHARLES HOLMES enduring value. It is almost impossible to recognise in them the Holmes of 1892. | Picking up neglected biographical threads we note that in 1892 Holmes had entered the publishing business of John Nimmo ; there he stayed till 1896. ‘Then he went to the Vale Press as manager. In 1899 he was in the Dedham country gathering material for his book on Constable, and paid a second visit to Dornoch. In 1900 drawings of Alresford and Itchenstoke occur, in 1901 of Bourton-on-the-Water and the Salisbury country where Holmes was occupied with Constable, and in 1902 of Cobham, Exeter, Risington, and Oxford. So far we have reviewed Holmes’s immature and accom- plished production in line drawing, an investigation taking us to 1902. ‘Ten years earlier he had begun to experiment in oils. For the sake of brevity we will group together as Holmes’s earliest period all the works done between 1892-1901. Few relics of this tentative phase remain, but they show that as regards personality and freedom of expression his first oils were considerably behind the contemporary drawings and etchings. The oils are low-toned, almost monochrome and now brown in colour, because they were painted on a raw umber preparation. Various influences are evident, mainly those of Gainsborough, Wilson, Rembrandt, Crome, and Constable, on whom he published a monograph in 1901. The B 17 SIR CHARLES HOLMES very earliest relics, mostly painted over older pictures, are thickly painted. But by 1900, when he began to exhibit at the New English Art Club, Holmes was able to retain the surface of his canvas unclogged with paint, and to get a fair Wilsonian impasto where he needed it. By now, too, he was gaining a freer style of drawing with his brush, expressing the contours of trees with sure free line. This is seen in Wimbledon Common (Plate 4) and in March in the Windrush Valley (Plate 8), painted in 1904. The mention of three pictures typical of this dark but distinguished early period must suffice: The Gasometer (Plate 5), The Barn and Wimbledon Common (Plate 4), all of 1900. ‘These indicate the simple, grave mood and telling spacing of his first efforts. In 1902 an attempt was made to reach a higher key, and the use of viridian in place of brown greens appears. At this point Holmes was struck by the potential utility of Daumier’s style, if applied to landscape painting. The Old Sarum of 1902 (Plate 6) is an impressive result of this investigation. This interest in Daumier was, however, no more than a fortification of the theory and practice which had been slowly developing in the sketch books. I will note here that though he had published monographs in 1897-8 on Hiroshige and Hokusai, Japanese influence does not appear in his work till some years later. 18 SIR CHARLES HOLMES In the summer of 1903 Holmes married Miss Rivington and travelled in Switzerland, drawing as he went—the Rigi, the Myten, the Wellhorn, and so forth. While at Appleby in August he accepted the editorship of the Burlington Magazine. This step was singularly important in his artistic career because he found it impossible to divorce the theories, research and discoveries incidental to the output of an energetic editor from the pictorial production of that same editor’s spare time. The discoveries he made in analysing old masters, or in investigating such phenomena as sale-room prices, fashion in pictures, reputations of schools, etc., were not locked up in the editorial attic, at the end of the day, but taken home and applied in his studio. Hence we find in his work from now on an increasing interplay of intellectual criticism and practical experiment. Pictures of 1903-4 are the Portsmouth Road, now in New Zealand, and the Shreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn (Plate 7). In the latter, with its radiant airy key, exact spacing and comprehension of the mountain mood we see, as far as his oils are concerned, a new Holmes. But the clue to this apparently novel manifestation is in the earlier sketch books, culminating in that of his 1903 Swiss trip, and in his sym- pathy with Hokusai and Hiroshige. These sketch books show the slow evolution of his grasp of essentials. His particular a SIR. CHARLES HOLMES method of using Nature, which I have described, had developed a quick and summarising eye and an unusual memory for salient lines and structure. From the schoolboy drawings up to the present there is no break in the continuity of Holmes’s development. If the casual tributaries which from time to time have swelled the main stream of his art be noted: if we bear in mind that after a late spring—he was thirty-two when he began exhibiting —he rapidly advanced towards maturity—his Shreckhorn is but three and two years later than the Gasometer and Old Sarum respectively : if, moreover, we constantly allow for the logical, inquisitive, and shrewd nature of his intellect, which is always analysing phenomena and worrying out their causes and effects, Holmes becomes one of the most explicable people. I have detailed his development so far, refusing the reader any solace of philosophical reflexions, because it seemed important to record such facts and information as usually are neglected till first-hand evidence is no longer available to light up an artist’s obscure beginnings. Now we can relax and wallow in theory and ethics. Fortunately for us Holmes has crystallised his ethics of art in Notes on the Science of Picture Making, published in 1909. ‘These notes originally served as material for lectures given from the Slade Professor’s chair at 20 SIR) CHARLES HOLMES Oxford, to which Holmes was elected in December 1904. We have earlier evidence of his endeavour to reduce criticism of pictures to something like a demonstrable science, in an article in the November 1904 number of the Burlington Magazine. In September 1906 he began a series of sketch books devoted to the discovery of how to transmute transcripts of Nature into good art. ‘Taking old sketches as material Holmes began to experiment in chalk, wash, and colour, intent on reaching some conclusion as to what should be the form which would satisfy his creed. This creed, as I have said, is reduced to black and white in Notes on the Science of Picture Making, published more than two years later. Few books on the practice and principles of art are as sound and stimulating. As regards these sketch books I will note that on an average each contains about seventy experiments, and that every year since 1906 has produced two books. Here I can but “ pot’”’ certain of his conclusions which more particularly bear upon his painting. Foremost of all is this: ‘‘ The artist’s personal experience must be emphasised by emotion, or the result is not art.” As regards the expression of this emotion precedence is given to this: “ Pictorial design is Emphasis subject to pictorial conditions.” Apeing the camera leads nowhere ; a pictorial symbol must be used which has a relation both to Nature and to Art; if we neglect the relation 21 SIR CHARLES HOLMES to Nature our work will be shallow and mannered; if we neglect the relation to Art it will be bad painting. This symbol must have vitality to preserve the impression of something alive and sentient. For example, pen lines seize only the essential features ; they state them with the utmost possible clearness, the very swiftness of the strokes echoing the vigour of the draughtsman. But the painter, instead of concentrating on the essential features of his design, may bury them under a mass of trifles, and instead of stating them swiftly and fluently may work them up to a conventional polish. The creed of emphasis and selection of and concentration upon essentials does not imply a denial of Nature; for how can an artist recognise essentials unless he knows his subject by heart? All point work naturally seizes on contour and © structure. The perfect pictorial symbol suggests life and vigour by the seeming ease and swiftness of its execution, which are gained only after great labour and long practice. But this swiftness is admissible only in treating essentials ; if they are not grasped the result is shallow mannerism. But there are other things besides Vitality. There is Infinity. The quality which separates the true draughtsman from the clever drawing master is an intense sympathy with 1 Cf. Leopardi’s comment that the appearance of carelessness in poetry is beautiful, but it is the result of art and labour. 22 SIR CHARLES HOLMES the exquisite refinement of Nature. We can only hope to interpret Nature by symbols; but they will not be symbols of Nature if they have not something of her infinite variety and subtlety. To inspire our symbols with vitality we must set them down quickly ; but we must have ever in our minds the character and complexity of the things those symbols represent. We must know, love, and respect Nature, never relying on mere dexterity of hand, mere habit of touch. Though we may temporarily deceive by an appearance of vigour, in the end — our emptiness will be recognised. This in brief, and crudely put, is the programme which from about 1905 Holmes has adopted. It will be fair criticism to say that the more completely, in all respects, he has carried out his programme the more successful has been his art. As regards the emotional quality of Holmes’s art this, perhaps, should be said. ‘To many landscape painters a picture is, as it were, a passive plate on which the emotion derived from Nature is spontaneously reproduced. They hardly apprehend pictorial devices as active agents, with a vitality of their own, which may enhance the expression of the artist’s original emotion. They do not to any marked extent recognise that in rhythm, colour, proportion and emphasis the artist has independent, if contributory, means of so intensifying his expression that the emotion inspired by 23 SIR CHARLES HOLMES Nature can be rendered in deliberately heightened terms. To Holmes, -on the other hand, the possibilities of these technical properties as independent agencies, capable of this intensifica- tion, are only second in importance to the spontaneous emotion aroused by Nature. It is not enough that an undefined enthusiasm is excited by Vesuvius from Baiae (Plate 10), by a barn and trees at Parham (Plate 12) silhouetted against the sky ; by the piled remoteness of Rossett Gill (Plate 28); by the sinister and stricken character of Industrial districts—for example, Brick Cupolas (Plate 23), a Chimney in Sheffield (Plate 22), and Leeds (Plate 19), or by the romantic massing of The Papal Palace (Plate 34). Holmes is aware that the actual placing and proportion of the features in Nature, the mutual incidence of horizontals, diagonals, and perpendiculars, as for instance in Holmes Station (Plate 20), and the relation of reposeful to unquiet passages have an intimate bearing on the enthusiasm aroused. In short, he is conscious that emotion is raised to a higher temperature by one arrangement of spacing, rhythm, and proportion than by another. No trouble, then, should be spared to achieve in the expression of this emotion the mot juste of rhythm, tone, colour, and pro- portion. For instance, the Burning Kiln (1914), in the Tate Gallery, was determined after many trials, some with a light sky, some with a longer picture, others with different emphasis 24 SIR CHARLES HOLMES and spacing. I think that if we asked him to pick out the picture which in many ways seems to him most successfully to combine the Infinity and Vitality of mood and execution, he would select Saddleback from the South-west (Plate 15). It is clear that Holmes’s appreciation of the vitally expres- sive property of line, strengthened by his admiration for Chinese and Japanese art, determined what symbol he should use. His mature water-colours are the logical development of the style he had evolved in line drawings by 1895. His oils, starting in the manner of Crome, Wilson, Gainsborough, and Corot (see Plates 4, 5, 8, and 12), began in 1904, in the Shreck- horn, to change into a more personal style, akin to that he was then hammering out in his water-colours. Henceforward, starting from On the Reuss (Plate 9), we find in oils and water-colours alike a frank use of the line symbol, emphasising the essentials of structure and contour, and suggesting the ease of a swift line drawing. In such examples as Parham (Plate 12), Ridges of Saddleback (Plate 14), Bude Breakwater (Plate 16), Dufton Pike (Plate 17), and the Industrials (Plates 18-23), ranging from 1907 to 1914, we see at once the justification of this choice of symbol when backed up by consistent treatment throughout. By no other symbol could the external qualities on which Holmes then set most value have been so well expressed—elemental structure, 25 SIR CHARLES HOLMES simplification, and emphatic pattern. In no other way could such economy of means have been achieved. By themselves, though, these qualities would not have been enough. It is easy to recall works possessing all, which yet fail to illumine. For we ate not conscious that behind them is a mind which has apprehended higher and deeper meanings. But these pictures show that the qualities in Nature to which Holmes responds— the things which seem to him to matter most—are not ordinary and obvious. And, what is more important still, he succeeds in communicating to us something of his more sensitive percep- tion and deeper knowledge, thus extending ours. So that henceforth we see the forms and silhouettes of mountains, furnaces and shafts with a richer comprehension of their significance. Specialists on dimensional questions will immediately detect in these pictures of, say, 1906-10 a tendency to design from side to side rather than from front to distance. Holmes, too, was aware of this result of what may be called the Japanese method. In Eden Valley (Plate 13), painted in 1909, we have an early instance of his determination to carry his design back into the distance. Broadly speaking this intention marks the difference between his work of thirteen years ago and that of to-day. If we compare Ridges of Saddleback (Plate 14), painted in 1910, or Bude Breakwater (Plate 16) of 1911, with 26 SIR CHARLES HOLMES Dufton Pike (Plate 17), Crossfell (Plate 24), Whinfell (Plate 26), _ Whernside (Plate 27) of 1917, which in my judgment is one of his finest and most personal achievements as a colourist, and Howgill Fells (Plate 31), of 1919, we see at once how much more sculptural, projective and recessive his work has become. And reference to The Carpenter’s Shop (Plate 32), of 1921, shows us how much more complex and rich his later designs have become, in comparison with the single-motif com- positions of his earlier works. In his mountain, architectural and industrial subjects Holmes has created types. His mountains, barns, and factories will not be confused with those of any other original painter. Occasionally, in for instance The Pink Mill (Plate 25), which does not at first sight fit in with the accepted ‘“‘ Holmes,” we encounter a surprise. His Industrials fall into two main groups. Although his Power Station (Plate 11) was painted in 1907 we do not get a sequence of such subjects before 1913. To that time belongs the Industrial Sketch Book, in Sir Michael Sadler’s possession. ‘The other large group falls round 1918 and is chiefly due to the commission Holmes received to paint a munitions factory for the Imperial War Museum. In our illustrations of his Industrials we recognise again le mot juste of spacing and proportion, and the special rightness of his choice of symbol. Short experiments will demonstrate that 27 SIR: CHARLES HOLMES the science underlying the placing of each stack or coil of smoke, the proportion of masses, and the relation of restful spaces to spaces troubled by belching fumes and harsh, staccato lines, is singularly just. By as much as we change his spacing and proportion, by so much we weaken the effect. These Industrials strikingly reveal also that experience of profounder meaning to which I have alluded. Once we have seen Holmes’s Leeds (Plate 19), with its drenching gloom and feverish move- ment, its stagnant streams and turbid, sluggish sky ; when we have apprehended the sinister power of his Brick Cupolas (Plate 23), relentlessly to endure in a stricken and deserted land, and grasped the significance to modern life of that deadly iteration of mechanical units, so masterly exposed in Chimney in Sheffield, the aspect of industrial landscape is for us full of new meaning. In A Cotton Mill (Plate 21) the mitigating power of gentle sunlight is recognised. For a brief hour of summer afternoon, spellbound in the sunny haze, mill and wharf yield up their grimness to take on a classic, Claude-like mystery. In Rotherham: Yorkshire Campagna F (Plate 29), one of a Campagna series, done in 1918, a similar benignant and passive spirit presides. Against the deep blue of summer the lazy mass of steely smoke, so menacing against a leaden sky, surprises us by its exquisite and gracious beauty. The water- colour of Steel, Peech and Tozer’s Works (Plate 30), made in 28 SIR CHARLES HOLMES 1918, typifies the lighter and more economic touch of Holmes’s later water-colours. ‘ But, surely, we have thirty-five plates to illustrate Holmes’s ‘development from 1894 to 1923. Convinced by some experience that most people have a healthy objection to the text of illus- trated books, the writer can the more readily commend his reader to apply to these plates for all zsthetic information. One point only keeps us from completing our summary of Holmes’s biography. In his Confession of Faith, already quoted, while warning the artist against burying the essential features of his design under a mass of trifles, he stresses the need of sympathy with the exquisite refinement of Nature: “‘ We can only hope to interpret Nature by symbols, but they will not be symbols of Nature if they have not something of her infinite variety and subtlety.’’ Reviewing Holmes’s output one is often struck by an unusual and personal subtlety of tone, colour, and atmosphere. For example, we would be prepared to swear that A Cotton Mill and Leeds, Howgill Fells, Crossfell (Plate 24), and Whinfell (Plate 26), with their instantaneous quality of light and shade, or The Alps from Avignon (Plate 33), with its complicated sky and its plain crowded with various detail, must have been painted on the spot or from elaborate studies. The essential features of such designs, and the salient impressions of colour, tone, and atmosphere are noted on the 29 SIR CHARLES HOLMES spot with a vigour and swiftness of line drawing probably unshared by any of Holmes’s contemporaries.: But for the rest he relies on memory. And so quick and trained is his percep- tion of what he needs, so sensitive and retentive his memory, conscious and subconscious, that he seldom fails to endue his symbols with Nature’s fluid subtlety. By thus relying on his first deep-bitten impression of essentials, he is spared much of the temptation to amass irrelevant blurring detail. We broke off our summary of Holmes’s biography at 1904, when he was Editor of the Burlington Magazine and Slade Professor at Oxford. ‘That year he was elected member of the New English Art Club, the only Society he joined till 1924. In 1909 he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery in Mr. Lionel Cust’s place. In 1914-15 he enlisted in the R.N.V.R., serving as A.B. in the Anti-Aircraft Corps. On the retirement of Sir Charles Holroyd in 1916, he was made Director of the National Gallery, and knighted in 1921. Besides his Hokusai and Hiroshige (1897-8), his Constable (1901 and 1902), and the Notes on the Science of Picture Making (1909), he has published Pictures and Picture Collecting, Notes on the Art of Rembrandt (1911), The Tarn and the Lake (1913), short works on Leonardo da Vinci and Constable’s drawings, and The National Gallery: Italian * In one day’s excursion he can make forty working drawings. 30 SIR CHARLES HOLMES Schools (1923). In 1924 he became an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colour. The following public galleries have works by him: The Tate Gallery, British Museum, Manchester, Johannesburg, the Ashmolean, Oxford, and the Melbourne Gallery. In general Holmes finds the material for his work in the North Country, his present base being Appleby. For future reference, however, the following dates and exceptional locali- ties should be noted: 1905, Bude; 1906, Italy—the Abruzzi —Naples, Orvieto; 1907, Littlehampton; 1911, Tenby ; 1914, Lyme Regis ; 1921, South of France. X. B. PALA) ‘Suwa = *(¥V6QI) “TIIN DONIMUOd ‘I alviIg >i ¢ RS Ee: iim Sc itor a, se seat FG Be bn To, “A Be Wf “Le ZA TEKS Sainte GEE, Rag ee aan = = LA AD, ss SVEN kr i| Dee | | ye ‘iad A OO. Bice aN Po SG wt, > Sh x Be. Oy. 4 e. OB ELE G7 3G d Tos ge oy a a Aral a ote UES Te 2a = Bh e ; a acer et oe oe eee Be { - = kK eT ry eau eee — ~ ps : sey 8 \ 302 A Wh ‘ . rs cb es i> Air ea a Lae a a. ty sae NN ia iy (Ogle ‘ay O57 } f , 4 “ 5 Bay: ang Pettey OS a ¢ c xi ‘ = . ’ ty e é PLaTE 25. THE PINK MILL. (1916). Oil. In the possession of the Artis'. ‘asuay ay1 fo uorssassog ayiur 770 °(4161) “MOGNIVY AIGANOdG ‘TIAANIHM ‘92 SLvIg —s ae ~~ ¥ iit f PLaTE 27. WHERNSIDE. (1917). Oil. Inthe possession of the Artist. : ’ x =a . ro ° « J ’ “ ik ’ i ' i 4 ~¢ Pf . ’ ‘ ; ‘ > 4 - 5 ~ ¢ } 5 ‘ ‘ * > ed eagle a= heey als = el 4 i Pi . , # ¢ a - 7 PLATE 28. ROSSETT GILL. (1917). Oil. In the possession of the Artist. iH ysiay ay) fo uorssassog ayy ut “220 *(8161) “At WNOVdWNVO ANIHSMUOA ‘WVHUAHLOM 62 aLvidg ‘samjoH Apu] fo worssasseg ay; uy “Buimbap anojoo daw *(Q 161) SdaZOL GNVY HOWHd “THALES +0F aLVIg “Dsqy “pavompooy *H *M fo uorssassod ay. uy "10 (6161) TSE AI KOWWNONSE UE “cay henty ope Sayer eee nie eee ae ee oe * . ISMAY ay fo uogssassog ayyut “0 “(1761) “4OHS SMALNAdMUVO AHL ‘“2f aLvig NONDSIAV WOU SdIV AHL “€€ alvig - a eae ve a _— . P n < < / . 7 ® * ] “ j ‘ i ’ - \ = . b : PLATE 34. PAPAL PALACE, AVIGNON. (1922). Oil. Inthe possession of the Artist. PLATE 35. PENDRAGON CASTLE. (1923). Oil. Inthe possession of the Artist. iia