Evening star., 1936-02-29

GOTHIC STYLE AND GARGOYLES
John Taylor Arms Be Represented in Exhibition Opening
on Monday the Corcoran Gallery of Ar-Later Show
ing of Beauty in Ship Subjects by Gordon Grant.

craft Of which he has made q pro-
found study. None Is q greater lover
of the sea and ships than he. Mr..
Grant is coming from New York to
attend the pre-view.
Harold Weston,s Virile Paintings.
VERY strong. virile and out Of the
ordinary are the paintings by
Harold Weston, now on view at Studio
House. OF course there are many ways
of painting. but there are compara-
lively few painters who do not follow
convention. If not tradition. Mr.. Wes-
ton is one Of these. His work is unlike
that OF any one else. He has quite
unconsciously, one may believe, de-
veloped a mode quite his own, and
naturally held to 1t. In the midst of
much forced originality, this seems
perfectly genuine, in fact almost naive.
Presumably he paints the way he does
because he sees and feels things in
this way. None could doubt his sin
cerity.
He shows a great variety of subjects
Landscapes. figures, portraits, the in
terror OF factory. shipyard, still
life. interiors. One Of the portraits
Is of himself as reflected in the little
studio mirror on his easel. He is
lighting his pipe and the match flares
brightly. Another portrait is Of q
carpenter who does odd Jobs for him
in his Adirondack village home. He
Is pictured in plaid jacket seated In
a room on the walls of which hangs
an Oriental rug. A third and very
vivid portrait study is of a man lying
down: only the head and hands are
painted, and that portrait Of the body
clad in Lumber Jacket"
These are not smooth, sauve exam
pies OF portraiture, but rough and
rugged as hickory stumps, or rock
beaten by the elements. They have in
them a measure of the elemental
they possess no subtlety save that of
stark realism. which is sometimes
used as screen. The landscapes are
somewhat of the same order, though
even more simple and conventional
lied. Evidently, to Mr.. Weston. pat
tern is Of chief concern. This leaning
he traces back to the teaching Of
Denman Ross at Harvard, for Ross
was great Orientalist and deeply
interested in design.
In two Of Mr.. Weston's oil paintings
that of shipyard and the long
panel depicting the interior of an
automobile factory-there is, strangely
enough, a touch of Chinese influence,
which may. he explains, have come
through a three-year sojourn in the
Orient. Possibly it is a matter of
color-more likely, however, of de-
sign. These two paintings are as
smooth in surface finish and as care
fully wrought in detail as his other
works are loose and broad in treat
ment. The shipyard is quite lovely
in color, whereas the factory is of
greatest interest because of its pat
terning of unconventional shapes. In
1t too, however. there Is a nice repeat
of yellow and a pleasing harmony Of
yellow, blue and brown In modulated
tones.
The still life studies are, in turn,
varied. One is of a pair of snow
shoes, stood upright against a wall
very realistic-another is of a crock
OF ferns on a table seen below the
level OF the eye and in shape perspec-
tive. while third is Of a handful of
partridge feathers on a brown gray
cloth-a study in these tones-very
beautifully rendered.
! thoro lie mir ~
boy sitting on high stool washing
his hands at porcelain wash basin,
his back to the observer-the charm
of which is in the lighting effect-the
transcription of simple values-and
in addition two interiors without fig
ureS-one of hallway, unadorned,
painted wall, board floor; the other
OF a much-used old-fashioned stove
seen in the corner Of an inner room
through two open doors. The allure
to the painter in these subjects may
not be obvious to the lay observer, but
it is the artists business to discove.
beauty in unlikely places and make 1t
manifest. Mr.. Weston disclaims pri-
mary interest in the ability to find
expression-in other words, painting
for paintings sake-and insists, quite
rightly, that back Of the urge must
be the expectation that what he is
doing is not only worth while at the
moment, but will be of continuing in
terest to others. After all, If this
were not so, painting as an art would
inevitably come to an end.
Mr.. Weston in this exhibition shows
not only oil paintings, but water COL
ors. paintings in gouache. The latter
are as different in style from the for
mer as could possibly be. They are
for the most part landscapes, rather
lyrical in quality, none too close to
. nature, but of the substance thereof