Notes on Painting and Sculpture

Comments on the Current Exhibitions in New York

PEYTON BOSWELL

DANSEUSE ESPAGNOLE, by Louis Kronberg, which created so much interest in Paris last year that it won for him an associate membership in the Salon Nationale, is shown at the Knoedler Galleries, February 20 to March 4, in an exhibition of his recent work, most of which has been done in France and Spain. The painting—a full length, life size—portrays a darkeyed Spanish beauty in gleaming white silk with a white lace mantilla arranged in towering headdress. A touch of blue is in the ribbon that falls from her waist, and green and gold unite in the flowing pattern of the background.

The Spanish dancer is a subject not altogether new to Mr. Kronberg, but he has never given to her so much undivided attention as on his recent visit to Spain. Lolita, also in life size, is a Gypsy dancer who differs from her Spanish sister in that she dances in a costume with flowing train. Her brown shawl trails its fringe over a vivid blue skirt, which takes its swing from the motion of her slightly back-tilted body. The dusky beauty of La Linda is framed in a setting of brilliant green. Her luminous dark eyes and curving red lips are given added piquancy under her high comb, and her shawl is draped to reveal a delicious curve of shoulder. The two Gypsy girls in Jaleo are evidently onlookers at a dance. One in green plays a guitar and leans slightly forward toward her seated companion, who is clapping her hands in time to the music. A red skirt and brown shawl heighten the beauty of her own rich colouring.

But Mr. Kronberg's new interest has not led him to neglect the old. The ballet still has its charm for his brush, and while in Paris he painted Ballet Girl in White, a graceful dancer whose white form is silhouetted against an even whiter ground. The charming poise of Ballet Girl in Orange is emphasized by the brilliant colour. There are a number of others, all typical, and inimitable, and besides these a set of decorations for fans with subjects from the stage, such as Madame Butterfly, many of the ballet, and some drawn from the Plaza de toros.

RANDALL DAVEY'S absence from New York City for the past two years, which time he has spent on his ranch three miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico, has worked a marked change in his art, as may be seen by his current exhibition in the Montross Galleries, which ends on March 4. Both in subject and medium Mr. Davey has broadened his interests, for the show not only includes landscapes and portraits in oil, but also flower studies, water colours and etchings, the whole presenting an effect of Mr. Davey's having sloughed off most of his earlier manner and acquired a more personal insight, a more varied palette of lighter tones, and a more profound interest in the psychology of his subjects, whether they be men and women, or the great rugged outdoor life of the Southwestern mountains and desert.

Among his portraits the most striking figure is the Archbishop of New Mexico, who is painted in his official robes, seated in a red velvet chair, an old manuscript volume in his lap. A native type is seen in the bust portrait of the Setiora Garcia, a white-haired woman with a shawl over her head and an oldfashioned blue and white frock. Mr. Davey evidently painted this canvas with affection and it has a feeling of that direct simplicity which marks the work of the early German portrait painters. Much of this same feeling is felt in the bust portrait of Christine Hughes, the daughter of a Santa Fe banker, whose light red hair and vivid complexion makes a striking note of colour on the walls.

Equal to this canvas in brilliancy are the flower studies, notably the picture called Flowers, with a vase of dahlias on a table in the company of two old folio volumes, a painting that shows how very far Mr. Davey has carried his art forward in soundness of technique and beauty of vision. What he now regards as his "home country" and its people are shown in the studies of the Thunder Dancer and Buffalo Dancer, this last being a fearsome apparition; in the Bulls, feeding in a mountain arroyo on rabbit grass in the snow; and in the Man in Red Shirt, that has something of the austerity of an El Greco type. The fifteen water colours are all of New Mexico scenes and are exquisite in colour and handling; while the ten etchings are also of similar scenes with the variation of two studies of the native religious fanatics called Penitentes, and a lovely study of the nude.

THE noted Parisian critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, in writing of Les Peintres Cubistes, attributes to Andre Derain, who was not a Cubist himself, the conception of the idea which was later developed by that school. From the first his work bore the strong imprint of the influence of Cezanne, but he has not been content to be merely an imitator. His own investigation in the field of form and colour gave him leadership in the Fauve group and his continued development is carrying the premises of the moderns through to a significant conclusion.

The exhibition of paintings by Derain at the Brummer Galleries this month is satisfyingly comprehensive. Landscapes predominate—some of the most interesting being Italian in subject. La Route d'Albano outlines the curve of a road as it dips down and up again in narrowing perspective. The leaves of the trees that line the road are of a pale, cool green, in fact the whole picture is far from colourful.

Vue sur la Camp Romaine employs warm earth tones and a dull green with a dramatic vigour of drawing. One of the strongest in composition is L'Arbre dans I'lsle Fleurie. A great tree in the foreground stretches its branches across a vista of water and the further shore, back of which the sky is vividly blue. A still life, which he calls La Table, evinces the drawing of which he is capable. The colours are dark, the gradations subtle. Its power lies in an evident sincerity of approach, a striving for the significant in form in terms of the greatest simplicity.

CHARLES REIFFEL is not only a colourist of originality, but a draughtsman of assurance and consequently brings to his interpretation of the New England landscape a happy combination of talent. His Connecticut Landscapes, at the Dudensing Galleries, appeal first for their glowing colour— rich without exaggeration—which assembles the varied hues of autumn foliage, or the blues and purples of distant trees circling in and out among the hills, or perhaps the fresh greens of midsummer, in so spontaneous a pattern that one forgets the painstaking care given to their construction.