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THE MANSARD GALLERY 203
ever, more marked since the de Vlaminck of
which I have just spoken has as its rival on
the wall, at right angles to it, The Mill (No. 32),
by Mark Gertler. The comparison made, what
first strikes one is that the Gertler, for all its
assertion of strength and its emphatic, heavy
accents, looks flimsy beside its lightly brushed
and airy neighbour. But The Mill is not the
piece by which Gertler should be judged ;
let
us look rather at his large and elaborate Swing
Boats. I have seen better Gertlers than this ;
the insistent repetition of not very interesting
forms makes it come perilously near what
Mr. Fry calls in his preface " merely ornamental
pattern-making," but it is a picture
that enables one to see pretty clearly the
strength
and weakness of this remarkable
person.
With a greater artistic
gift, Mark Gertler's
conviction and conscience would suffice to
make him a painter of the first magnitude.
Unfortunately, his artistic gift, one inclines to
suppose, is precisely that irreducible minimum
without which an artist cannot exist. That is
his weakness. His strength is that he exploits
that minimum uncompromisingly to its utmost
possibility. Gertler is one who will never say
an idle word in paint, no matter how charming
or interesting or amusing it might be. In his
pictures you will look in vain for a single