Echo and Narcissus by Solomon J. Solomon

Echo and Narcissus

Solomon J. Solomon

1895

The Studio (1896)

“His Echo and Narcissus last year he seemed to go further than he ever has be- fore in the direction of sentiment and emotion. This picture, however, despite the almost painful yearning which was expressed in the face of the neglected nymph, was very far from being only an illustration of a sentimental story. It was drama- tic, certainly, for it presented a certain effective combination of different shades of feeling and realised a situation which was not without a touch of tragedy ; but even then the pathos and personal interest of the incident depicted, strongly as they were made to appeal to the student of emotions, were not the motives which seemed to an artist to have had the chief influence upon the shaping of the picture. [Baldry's discussion continued below.]

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“There was perceptible in it much more intention to arrange in pleasant relation one to another the various parts of a design than to think out and set down in due order the sequence of a story. The grouping ot the two figures and their placing on the canvas, the distribution of the leafy masses of the background and of the flowers which gave a sparkle of colour in the foreground, the lines of the nymph's drapery and of the limbs of Narcissus, were really the things of chief importance in the scheme. That the emotional accident should have been more obvious than usual was, we may fairly believe, less an outcome of any access of desire on the part of the artist to pose as a tragedian in paint than the result of his having chanced upon a particular passion which more plainly than any other is intelligible to the majority of mankind. ” — Baldry, The Studio

Bibliography

Baldry, A. Lys. “The Work of Solomon J. Solomon.” The Studio. 8 (June 1896): 1-11.

Last modified 21 December 2010