File:Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent (1908) (14770834821).jpg

Identifier: fiftyyearsofmode00phyt (find matches)
Title: Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Phythian, John Ernest, 1858-
Subjects: Painting Painting
Publisher: London, G. Richards
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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and, grey figure with the bowed head does but hide thelight for a moment, that the splendour of its shining maybe the more intensely realised. This the picture says withthe utmost impressiveness; and precisely because, still torefer to it in terms of speech, not a word is wasted in thetelling. It is exactly the same with the picture reproducedhere, Love and Life. At once, as soon as he has seen herplight, Love has sped down to where dim-sighted Life isstraying near the perilous edge of the precipice, and he isnow gently leading her from darkness and danger up tosafety and the light. Here also there is nothing too littleand nothing too much, that either way the story should failof its desired effect upon us. Of course, Watts was not always at his best. Some ofthe subjects he treated were less easily than others to bedealt with by pictorial art. Even in respect to the purelyartistic side of his work he was not always at the same levelof accomplishment. He ventured too much for that. His
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LOVE AND LIFE G. F. WATTS PAINTING IN GREAT BRITAIN 305 life-work as a whole leaves us with a feeling of inequality,of incompleteness, much more so than does the work ofmany who have never gained the heights that he did. Hisreach exceeded his grasp. He would not limit himself tothat which he could say with perfect utterance. The manshows himself in his work to have been greater than hiswork. To follow him in detail through his work is impossiblehere \ and besides, I have attempted it elsewhere. The burdenof his pictures, it has already been said, is Love, and thefew that have been mentioned testify to this. He hasshown us much of healthy and beautiful life. He was notblind to the splendour of the universe in which we live,nor to the beauty of the world in which one scene in thedrama of our life is being played. He faced the greattwin-tragedy of sin and death, and proclaimed that onlyagainst lovelessness could Time and Death and Judgmentprevail; while Love would spring up triumphant wh

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