Collectable very good.
PREFACE
LIKE Gaul, this book is divided into three parts and, like Cæsar, readers will invade it from the far or southern end. No one is likely to pick it up without
looking first at the third portion, where reside reproductions of some hundred
A number of people will be led thence to
consult one or other of the artist's notes and, after reading some of them, to
and thirty pictures by Russell Flint.
read more. These notes form the second or middle third of the volume
Whether, from this point, any stout traveller will press on into the flat, uninviting country of the first or northern portion is more doubtful.
Yet the divisions overlap and interlock, the book is a whole. It tells the
story of a painter making, by his own unaided efforts, his way in the world; it
in
reproductions of those pictures which are the excuse for this publication,
So far, so complete. But for such an abomination as a Preface some better
apology than mere complacency is needed.
The following pages furnish an
account of the artist's rise rather than of his so to speak spread. This
omission is largely remedied by the acknowledgments below. His output has
been prolific, and no stage has passed, in nearly forty years, without growing
recognition. The distribution of his work is correspondingly extensive, and
although the illustrations are mostly of fairly recent work, few photographs
of earlier examples being available, the choice, when selection of suitably
characteristic works had to be made, was enormous. In the end, the thanks
of publisher, artist, and author become due to the following: the Birmingham
City Art Gallery; H.M.S. Conway; Eton College; the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull;
the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston; the Kelvingrove Art Gallery,
Glasgow; the National Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; the Newport
(Monmouth) Art Gallery; the Norton Art Gallery, West Palm Beach, Florida;
the Rochdale Art Gallery; Southampton Art Gallery; the Royal Society of
Painters in Water-colours; the Fine Art Society Ltd.; The Medici Society
Ltd.; Messrs. Frost & Reed Ltd.; the Ackermann Galleries, Chicago; the Rt.
Hon. the Earl of Moray, M.C.; the Rt. Hon. the Viscount Leverhulme; Lady
Stewart Sandeman; the late Sir J. J. Burnet, R.A.; Sir Robert Rankin, Bart.,
M.P.; Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, Bart., K.T.; Canon H. T. Bowlby; K. F.
Banner, Esq.; Mrs. G. T. Black; Mrs. M. G. Black; McGough Bond, Esq.;
Wellington R. Burt, Esq.; V. Chaplin, Esq.; John Chapman, Esq.; Earl
Christmas, Esq.; R. E. Danielson, Esq.; A. C. Davy, Esq.; Mrs. T. S. Dewey;
S. H. Ervin, Esq.; Mrs. Fox-Bourne; Robert Fraser, Esq.; J. E. Gardner, Esq.;
R. C. Greig, Esq.; Guy P. Harben, Esq.; William Randolph Hearst, Esq.;
J. E. Hodgkin, Esq.,
Julius B. Hyam, Esq.; Andrew G. Kidd, Esq.; Mrs. A.
Kenneth; James McDiarmid, Esq.; F. Cope Morgan, Esq.; J. C. Myers, Esq.;
William Powell, Esq.; H. Roberts, Esq.; John Robertson, Esq., J.P.; Mrs.
Watson Rutherford; R. Sanderson, Esq.; Dr. John Shanks; T. B. Simpson, Esq.;
A. Brian Stothard, Esq.; J. C. Sword, Esq.; F. Newton Trier, Esq.; H. Giles
Walker, Esq.; Miss I. G. Walker; E. M. Weatherby, Esq.; Robert Wetherill,
Esq., Jr.; and Messrs. Bimson, Fleischmann, Macdonald and Schroeder.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
To a generous reception, politicians wave, actors bow, generals salute,
cricketers touch their caps; but pianists play another little piece, and writers,
it seems, write another little preface. This book, presenting reproductions of
one man's pictures, with his own intimate notes about them; a brief sketch
of his career; and no syllable of æsthetic or metaphysical expounding—this
book followed a bygone mode. The reader was left to enjoy or to criticise,
just as he liked, in his own way. The quickness with which he mastered his
surprise at, and responded to, this approach is gratifying, of course, but surely
it is also healthy. It might even be called significant, if that word had not
become sacred to pictures whose significance is in doubt.
Â