Robert Bridges
William Rothenstein
Pencil on paper
Signed and dated 1916
See below for text accompanying this portrait.
Photographically “reproduced by Mr. Emery Walker” (Preface)
Image capture, color correction, and text by George P. Landow
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and University of Toronto and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. ]
[Rothenstein does does not identify which of the “various hands” wrote the commentary below that accompanies his portrait drawing.]
It is just thirty years since the appearance of the Shorter Poems made known to a large public the exquisite lyric art of Robert Bridges. The poet was then no longer young; he had retired from the profession of medicine, and with a certain Miltonic haughtiness, a disdain of the fevers and competitions of literary life as it is lived in London, pursued his chosen art in the pleasant seclusion of a Berkshire village. Before 1890 his poems, privately printed for the most part, had been known to few. Though not acclaimed and trumpeted by the Press, the Shorter Poems won from the first a sure success; and the influence of this book of lyrics, and of its successors, has been all the more profound because not obvious on the surface. Never before was the English country, the colour, the scents and sounds of it, so truly felt and intimately pictured; and on the side of rhythmical art the book reached out to a novel and unsuspected range of music in English verse. It opened the ears of a new generation: and, consciously or unconsciously, scarcely one of the young poets of to-day is unaffected by that liberating example. When the Poet Laureateship fell vacant, the appointment of Robert Bridges was a surprise to the many; the few rejoiced that the public laurel should be worn by one who was not only a thorough and distinguished master of his chosen style but a bold and fruitful innovator. Learned in his art, Mr. Bridges is no respecter of traditions for their own sake. None has been more generous with encouragement for his juniors, more quick to seek out new talent. A famous athlete in his youth, he wears his years well. The youth of Oxford who climb Boar's Hill to seek his conversation do not sit solemn at the feet of a conventional sage, whose every commonplace is translated into an oracle: they find a man, splendid in stature, lean and leonine, ready to talk and ready to listen, paradoxical, challenging, with flashes of fun, whimsical brusqueness, confident enthusiasm for his latest scheme or for old music; and behind all an impression of deep tenderness of nature combined with a rather indolent strength and loftiness makes one understand the more how the delicacy of the poems is the delicacy only possible to power.
References
Rothenstein, William. Twenty-four Portraits with critical appreciations by various hands. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920. Internet Archive version of a copy at the University of Toronto. Web. 20 November 2012.
Victorian
Web
Artists
William
Rothenstein
Drawings
Next
Last modified 20 November 2012