Autumn Anemones (By Miss Alice Argyles)details

The Annual Exhibition of Paintings on China at the galleries of Messrs. Howel and James, in Regent Street [London], has already become quite an institution. [...] “Autumn Anemones,” by Miss Alice Argyles, has a merit of colour that is of course lost in our illustration (page 393). The effect of the pale rose-pink flowers on a delicate grey ground is very plesaant. The painting is a little black in the shading of the petals, and the composition is scarecely sufficiently ingenious for a decorative panel. There is space “to let” above the topmost flowers, and below, the leaves are rather crowded, and one of them is even cut off by the margin instead of beng designed within it. We mention this, not because we think the panel unworthy of the prize givenby the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg Strelitz, but because the decorative idea seems to be so little grasped by amateurs. There seems to be a notion prevalent that it is a neasy thing to do decorative work; yet nothing is less frequent than design that is truly decorative. (p. 394)