Author Archives: picturesinpowell

We already know Barnby’s opinion of St. John Clark’s taste. Now Mark Members, dismissed as St. John Clarke’s secretary, tells Jenkins, ” I can say without boasting that I had done a great deal to … improve St. J’s attitude … Continue reading →

Jenkins attends the Isbister Memorial Exhibition “partly for business reasons, partly for a certain weakness for bad pictures, especially bad portraits.” [AW 113/106] He reflects: “Pictures, apart from their aesthetic interest, can achieve the mysterious fascination of those enigmatic scrawls … Continue reading →

Quiggins surveys the Templer’s cottage. “His eyes continued to stray over the very indifferent nineteenth- century seascapes that covered the walls; hung together in patches as if put up hurriedly… ” [AW 87/ 80] The tradition of painting the sea must be … Continue reading →

In a protracted exchange with Nick, Barnby insists on the truth-telling ability of painting over writing where women are concerned: “Writers always seem to defer to the wishes of the women themselves.”  Nick replies, “So do painters.  What about Reynolds … Continue reading →

Driving to the Templer home on a snowy night with Templer,  Mona, and Jean,  Nick writes of Mona, “ . . . she jumped out of her side of the car, and ran across the Sisley landscape to the front … Continue reading →

At his weekend visit to Peter Templer’s, Nick once again meets Peter’s sister Jean, now Jean Duport.  “Once she had reminded me of Rubens’s Chapeau de Paille.  Now for some reason––though there was not much physical likeness between them––I thought … Continue reading →

Jenkins, waiting to meet Mark Members at the Palm Court at the Ritz Hotel, gazes on a South American family seated in front of the fountain. “Away on her pinnacle, the nymph seemed at once a member of this Latin … Continue reading →

When Isbister died, one of the death notices called him “the British Frans Hals.” [AW 36/30] We will start with an art history quiz: Which is true of Hals (Dutch ~1582-1666)? A. He, along with Rembrandt and Vermeer, is one … Continue reading →

Barnby and Jenkins are discussing the prospect of St. John Clarke writing an introduction to the book on Isbister’s paintings. We have already learned some of Clarke’s artistic tastes from his comments on the Keningston Garden statues. In the dialogue, … Continue reading →

Jenkins discusses St. John Clarke’s interest in art and his suitability to write an introduction to The Art of Horace Isbister: “That a well-known novelist should take on something that seemed to call in at least a small degree for … Continue reading →