Identifier: frankbrangwynhis00spar (find matches)
Title: Frank Brangwyn and his work. 1911
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Sparrow, Walter Shaw, 1862-
Subjects: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir, 1867-1956
Publisher: Boston : Dana Estes
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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re their kinsmen. Themendicants in Brangwyns etchings are of many types,some sketched with irony because they are shammingto be lame or blind, while others belong to the un-doubted shreds and patches of humanity who findwarmth and solace in dirt, and whose clothes are aseloquent as their faces and hands. Nomads, too, have a peculiar interest to Brangwyn;the nomads that visit fairs and earn their bread aswrestlers or jugglers or musicians; and in one magni-ficent plate, The Cathedral Church of Eu, he groupsthese wayfarers with their booths in the historic shadowof a vast old building. The sun illumines the mediaevalarchitecture, and below, sketched with an art as typicalas Daumiers, is a little Kermesse busy with humanpuppets, whose little amusements go on from age toage, and grow not a bit older than that grand history inchiselled stone. 2. Modern Life and Work.—There are many artists inEngland who do not even try to interpret the great human196 THE SAWYERS.From an Original Etching.
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Etchings : and Summary of Characteristics realities that they see around them. Their art is not evencity-bred ; it stays at home, it occupies itself with problemsof indoor light, and mistakes virtuosity for life and itstime-spirit. This school has many friends among thewriters on art, but it has no staying power. Virtuosityis not at all likely to hold the field against the greatactions of mankind interpreted by such masters as Millet,Meunier, Degroux, Brangwyn, Laermans, La Thangue,Clausen, Legros, and other members of the democracy ofart. But there is one point that we must keep in mindwhen we are told that the interpretation of contemporarylife is sure to triumph over virtuosity. The time-spiritacts in two ways on those who represent it in the finearts. In some it produces a conscious striving, while inothers it finds temperaments so well prepared for it thatthe time-spirit seems to be the artist, doing its workthrough human agents or mediums. Millet was deeplyconscious of what he w

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