Return to Art Nouveau

Around 1914 Long returned to painting symbolic subjects in an Art Nouveau style. About this time he attended the South London School of Technical Art in Kennington, which had a reputation for its Art Nouveau ceramic work.

And in 1913 he had visited the town of Bruges, a place that had been given a symbolist presence by the Belgian writer, Georges Rodenbach, and depicted in the evocative paintings of the Belgian symbolist artist Fernand Khnopff.

At this time Long may also have come under the influence of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which performed in London from 1911 to 1914.

These new symbolic subjects in an Art Nouveau style have some of the qualities of the earlier works, the pastel palette, the rhythmic flow in the composition, and the evocation of a magical, fairytale place.

They are imaginative landscapes seen at the close of day and suffused with soft gentle light. But in these later Art Nouveau works Long simplified the compositions.