ABSTRACT
Observant visitors to the previous exhibitions of Miss Rice’s work will notice a very distinct advance in these new pictures alike of skill and enterprise. The contrast is facilitated by the inclusion in the present exhibition of several works belonging to the earlier period—notably Nos. 4, 5, and 33. Miss Rice has mastered her colour. It was apt occasionally either to run away with her, or to remain rather harsh and muddy. It is now her slave. She paints less preponderantly in reds and yellows. She is tackling wooded landscapes, rocks, shadow-covered valleys. Her previous sea pieces were a shimmer of sunlight on golden sand and blue water. Nowadays she paints curling foam over shingle or dark blue water patterned into eddies by the wind. In pictures infinitely more complicated than before, she puts unerring shadows and conquers infinite varieties of plane and distance. And she attempts all this because form to her no longer means principally surface-form, but roundness and substance. She seems to wish to get her hand round to the objects she paints—to express their solidity. This change is not surprising, when one remembers that the structural quality of nature and buildings and human bodies, is the quality which is everywhere attracting the young artists. No. 5, “ L’Eventail vert,” has already been mentioned as an example of the earlier ideal. Built on a framework of strong, rhythmical lines, the picture is a decorative arrangement in brilliant colouring. It is flat ; not with the symbolistic flatness of Egyptian art, but rather with the flatness of a Japanese colour-print, which is really a compromise between pattern and representation. Then turn to No. 23, “ The Market Place,” and the difference is plain. Here is even less naturalism, but infinitely more reality. The advance is in colour and form alike. There is no very bright colour in “ The Market Place,” but yet the picture has the brilliance of southern heat, and glows more than “ L’Eventail vert,” for all the latter’s orange and vermilion.
