[From Manx Quarterly, #25]

MANXLAND I N LONDON
MR. HOGGATT'S SUCCESSFUL SHOW.

A rare opportunity was missed by those Manx people in London who love their Island, or who have even the most rudimentary appreciation of art, and yet failed to visit the exhilarating exhibition of itlanx Land and seascapes which has just concluded at the Hampstead Art Gallery. To step inside the dooms of the admirably appointed and well-lighted little gallery in Finchley road, N.W., was to be transported from the roar and bustle of a busy London thoroughfare into the calm and restful atmosphere of your Island, and to see it in all its varying moods through the eyes of your brilliant Islander artist, Mr William Hoggatt.

For something well over a dozen years, Hoggatt has been observing, with an artist's eye, every nook and corner of the land of his adoption, and has been noting down his impressions with an inspired brush. Long before he made the Island his home, long before his student days in Paris, far-seeing critics and sympathetic lovers of art recognised that his drawings hold promise of a great future. Although still a comparatively young man, he has long since justified those prophecies. But Hoggatt was in no hurry to be great, and he has always eschewed the sensational methods that have won notoriety, if not fame, for so many Chelsea cheap-jacks. He is a shy man-he won't mind an old friend saying he is a ridiculously shy man --and he chose rather to bury himself in his charming little cottage in Port St. Mary, and to paint not to startle, or pander to, the public, but to satisfy himself.

Year after year, this works found their way into exhibitions in the Provinces and in London (including, of course, the Academy), to say nothing of private collections. But until last month he had never attempted to conduct a "one-man show" in London. The venture was a bold one, but one entirely justified by results, whether these be judged from the artistic or financial standpoint. He had a most excellent press, and critics, artists and buyers were attracted in gratifyingly large numbers to the Hampstead Gallery. This exhibition of "Tone Harmonies," comprising some fifty or sixty works in oil, pastel and water-colour was almost certainly the most, representative collection of 'Manx landscapes ever seem in London, and one cannot but regret that the London Manx Society did not organise a pilgrimage to Hampstead to admire, and possibly to acquire some of them.

The water-colours predominated so far as numbers are concerned, for there were only four large oils and about a dozen pastels-the last named a medium in which Hoggatt excels. But in each, one caught a glimpse of typical Manx land scape. Here a view across the Cnrragh, there a wide sweep of land and sea from Port St. Mary to Langness, here a restful evening on Laxey beach, there Ravensdale 'Glen. Or, if you prefer it, there is Spanish Head ("the sea-gulls paradise"), or Kirk Michael aglow in the freshness of the morning, or Castle Rushen nestling snugly, in the haze of a quiet evening. Elsewhere perhaps it is only a busy farmyard scene, or a windswept stretch of health glinting under an eloquent sky and bathed in a brilliant, almost intoxicating, atmosphere. But always, always, it is the Island.

It seemed almost a pity that the whole collection could not be acquired and kept intact to refresh and reinvigorate jaded Londoners, or better still, to form part of a national collection for the Isle of Man. But those who visited Hampstead towards the close of the exhibition know that by this time the vast majority of them are hung in now surroundings. The number of sales that were effected was one of the features of the exhibition. Half-a-dozen are now on their way to South Africa, and some have gone even further afield. Others have been acquired by North of England admirers, and well over a score are decorating the walls of private houses in and around London. A few have been purchased for re-sale, and are now to be seen in Bond-street. In short, the whole exhibition has dispersed, and only a remnant returns to the Island from wAkich they were snatched.

The Island has a right to know Hoggatt better than it does.

N.