A 1921 Review of Jan and Cora Gordon Exhibition

The Westminster Gazette of Friday 25 February 1921 carries the following review of an exhibition by Jan and Cora Gordon at the Burlington Gallery, London.


JAN AND CORA GORDON. Jan Gordon's book, "A Balkan Freebooter" published some four years ago, was in many ways as interesting an illustrated volume as has appeared since 1914. The drawings of Serbian villages, interiors, and landscape had a blunt symmetry of black-and-white, a crispness of humour that made them memorable. All the greater, then, is the disappointment of finding his paintings of Southern Spain (now showing at the Burlington Galltery, 15, Green-street, Leicester-square) rather confused in colour and design. Maybe black-and-white is his medium: certainly the admirable lithographs, 72 and 74. are the best things in the exhibition—concentrated, sympathetic. the oil-painting.; "Alverca, the Vinegar-Seller " (50), stands out as constructed and luminous. In very few of the others is there more than painted sunlight. All the time one feels the artist in Jan Gordon struggling for coherence; only too seldom does he achieve it. 

Mrs. Gordon, of whose work an equal quantity is on view, is a slighter, less purposeful, talent. Her landscapes are commonplace, and, because one feels they are content to be so, their success is more complete than that of the man's work. There can be no doubt, however, that of the two Jan Gordon in failure is finer than Mrs. Gordon in achievement.


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