Passing Days by John Melhuish Strudwick, as engraved in the Art-Journal of April 1891, p. 97. [Click on image to enlarge it.] The engraving stands at the head of George Bernard Shaw's comments on this and other early paintings by Strudwick.
"J.M. Strudwick" [excerpt]
In "Passing Days" a man sits watching the periods of his life pass in procession from the future into the past. He stretches out his hands to the bygone years of his youth at the prompting of Love; but Time interposes the blade of his scythe between them; and the passing hour covers her face and weeps bitterly. The burdened years of age are helped by the strength of those that go before; and then comes a year which foresees death and shrinks from it, though the last year, which death overtakes, has lost all thought of it. As a pictorial poem, this subject could hardly be surpassed; and it is not unlikely that it will be painted again and again by different hands. Indeed, the painter himself has recurred to it, though with an entirely new treatment, in "A Golden Thread," purchased for the public under the Chantrey Bequest in 1885....
Transcendant expressiveness is the moving quality in all Strudwick’s works; and persons who are fully sensitive to it will take almost as a matter of course the charm of the architecture, the bits of landscape, the elaborately beautiful foliage, the ornamental accessories of all sorts, which would distinguish them even in a gallery of early Italian painting. He has been accused of imitating the men of that period, especially one painter, whose works are only to be seen in Italy, whither he has never travelled. But there is nothing of the fourteenth century about his work except that depth of feeling and passion for beauty which are common property for all who are fortunate enough to inherit them.
In colour these pictures are rich, but quietly pitched and exceedingly harmonious. They are full of subdued but glowing light; and there are no murky shadows or masses of treacly brown and black anywhere. As to screwing up his palette to the ordinary exhibition key, and thereby unfitting his pictures to hang anywhere except in an exhibition with every other canvas there at concert pitch, he has always cheerfully allowed his pictures to take their chance of being glared out of countenance in the Grosvenor or the New Gallery sooner than play any varnishing-day tricks with them. As he progresses, and his scheme of colour becomes subtler and more comprehensive, it gets rather lower in tone than higher, although his design becomes broader, and shows signs of that evolution which is most familiarly exemplified by the growth of Perugino’s style in the hands of Raphael. It is impossible to foresee what sort of work Strudwick will be turning out ten years and twenty-five years hence; and this article, therefore, may as well stop here as make any pretence of completeness. But it may at least be said that some of the fruits of Strudwick’s first manner are so beautiful that any change must involve loss as well as gain. [Shaw 101]
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Bibliography
Shaw, George Bernard. "J.M. Strudwick". Art Journal (1891): 99-101 Hathi Trust Digital Library version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 8 April 2014
Created 8 April 2014
Last modified
26 September 2025