BRITISH COLUMBIA ARTISTS  

"B.C. Society of Fine Arts - Annual Exhibition All This Week"

Pictures in Fine Arts Exhibition (First Notice)

Vancouver Province, May 7 1924

     One of most notable features of the present exhibition of the British Columbia Society of Fine Arts is the great vitality of most of the work exhibited. This applies equally to what may be called the less-informed pictures and to the best work in the rooms. It demonstrates that the desire to express something and to express it beautifully is very much alive in Vancouver. Among others of its features this is evidence of prosperity and a greater opportunity for leisure to study cultural matters.
     There is, as usual, a preponderance of landscape as befits a community so abundantly blessed with this kind of outdoor inspiration, there is good portrait work, the "still lifes" are above the average good, while the etchings and pen drawings merit especial mention.
     In the arrangement of the walls the hanging committee has achieved as near an approach to perfection as the diversity of their materials permitted. There is very little room for the occasional complaints of artists that their delicate work has been slaughtered by too close a juxtaposition to stronger or more flamboyand matter.

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     Among the portraits a head of Raymond Pelligrew, by Margaret Wake, is a notable child study, round - almost sculptural - full of the mischievous life of childhood, potential and compelling.
     "Miss L.O. Thompson," from the brush of Dorothy Thompson, is a fine, dignified piece of work. It has restraint, character and that sense of virility that lends so much charm to purely feminine faces where intelligence is added to form.
     The animal pictures of Kate A. Smith (Mrs. Frank Hoole) have captivated Vancouver picture-lovers for several years and her contributions to this exhibition serve only to strengthen an achieved reputation.
     In subject and composition, as well as in the able handling of light and color, her "Church of St. Germaine l'Auxerrois, Paris," stands out as one of the most real pictures of the year. It is a picture as distinct from a mere painting: while it does not actually tell a story, it presents the setting for many stories. It is historical as well as of the present, its architecture and atmosphere are not merely incident to the horses in the foreground, but rather there is a blending of the whole into a fine moment.
     In "A Happy Family" the same artist adheres to her better known style of a purely animal presentation. It is a family of pigs and one appreciates the glow that must come to their owner when he reflects that "them hawgs" will sell well, which is a commercial success, and cure better - which is an artistic one. Everything is painted but the grunt.

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     Among the larger landscapes the "Dawn on Lake Moraine," by J. Williams Ogden, does actually bring the mind to a memory of dawn; it has that feeling of a happy respite before the battle of the day that very old and very young people share to the exclusion of the busy middle-aged taxpayer. Other notable pictures from this artist are a fine canvas of Capilano Canyon, and a still larger impression of the Lions - from Capilano - also. These have a delicate appreciation of the lighting and atmosphere of these well-known scenes that give them a new appeal.
     Mrs. Stateira Frame again contributes to our knowledge of brilliant color schemes with her usual calisthenic pigmentation. In these excursions into modernity, however, she still clings at times to the outworn fiction that the existence of perspective should be acknowledged, even if it is not actually introduced into the picture.
     No. 12 is a good picture; it is by Duncan Davidson and represents a village in North Devon. It is quiet and kindly like its subject; it has a softness of tone and an effect of the cohesion of finely-divided union that usually comes rather with tapestries than with paint.
J.B.

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