THE ART OF JOHN CRAWFORD WINTOUR.
THIS painter may be said to occupy a position among Scottish landscapists that is in some respects unique; and, if we would trace the sources of his art and its methods, if we would rightly place the man, and clearly define his position among his contemporaries, it will be necessary to take account of certain phases of modern art that are other than Scottish.
The present is a fitting time for attempting such an estimate as we have indicated, for a very fairly representative collection of nearly one hundred and fifty of the works of Wintour is at present before the public in the gallery of the Messrs. Dott, Edinburgh.
Enough, perhaps more than enough, has been said as to the influence of Constable upon the land- scape art of France. We all know that the sturdy Englishman won fame and decorations on the further side of the Channel at a time when he was little regarded on his own ; and we are ready to believe — indeed we know indubitably — that ' The Hay Wain ' and ' The Small Waterloo gave power- ful stimulus, and even definite direction, to the work of those younger Frenchmen who studied and praised them when they were visible in the Salon of 1824. But the painters who were tluis stimu- lated, and the men who surrounded and followed them, went on to produce work different enough from that of Constable. Were we unacquainted with the records of Art in France, were we unable to trace, link by link, its historical sequence, it might be difficult to guess that the landscape of Rousseau, that the landscape of Diaz, was descended in directest line from the landscape of Constable. The painters of France had been roused from the stupor of habitude and routine ; the art of Constable, with its 'ivid flash of novel insight, had startled them into a perception of new aspects of nature, in which lay unsuspected artistic pos- sibilities. These fresh possibilities they proceeded to develop, each in his own way, with a ])erfect care for those qualities of harmonious tone and colouring which have been and will always be dear to the masters of every period, but certainly "itli little of that painful effort after demonstrable accuracy of natural tone and relation in wjiich so many of the younger Frenclnnen are now weary- ing themselves in vain, and which — lioweer interest- ing as a scientific experiment or as a student's exercise — has but slight connection ^^•ith anything that may be rightly regarded as final art. A somewhat similar history, a somewhat similar absorption of the mind of Constable, and re-utter- ance of it in fresji and varied ways, may be traced in the work of more tlian one English landscapist — is visible, for example, in the art of Cecil Lawson ; though he, like other Englishmen working on simi- lar lines, was faithful in a more literal and rigid manner to the example of their prime master and ' first begetter ' than were the landscapists of France. But in Scotland the art of Constable has been, until the very last year or two, practically un- known ; has been, certainly, entirely inoperative, either as stimulus or guide, upon any of her land- scapists, with the single exception of Wintour. He, like the Frenchmen, had his period of submis- sion to the master, a period of yet more complete identification tiian was theirs with the scope, aims, and methods of Constable's art. And then — still like the Frenclimen, though working independently of them, and in entire ignorance of the results which they had attained — he passed on to express himself in more original and individual fashion than hitherto ; adopting however, all unconsciously, a method which is not without kinship and likeness to that charac- teristic of the ' romantic ' landscapists of France. Trained in the 'Trustees' Academy' under Sir AVilliam Allan, Wintour began liis art upon the old Scottish lines that were current at the time. Por- traits at first occupied him, portraits that showed neither freshness of method nor yet fresli power and insight enough to justify a technique that was tra- ditionary and outworn, or — as we should rather say — to make us forget the technique altogether in our contemplation of what that technique expressed. He busied himself, too, with figure-subjects, and the earliest of these in the present exhibition — the ' Prospero and Caliban ' and the ' Puck and the Fairies ' — show in their pronounced colouring some effort after the typical excellences of Etty. A later picture, 'The Cottage Door,' wliile perfectly atrocious in its mis-shapen and ill-drawn figures, contains an excellent, broadly treated vista of land- scape distance, delicately expressive handling of foliage, and, especially, a delightful passage of tone in that touch of rosy grey given by the bird-cage tliat is placed among the quivering leaves.
We then pass to a second period of Wintour's art, to that represented by delicate and refined water-colours like 'At the Mill Sluice,' and 'Boys Fishing,' which, however, want that certainty of crisp, telling touch, and that emphasis of definite, strongly-struck colour which charm us in such of the painter's rather later essays in the same medium as those which represent, in a singularly attractive and artistic fashion, various of the quaint castellated houses of Perthshire and the north.
