Studio: international art (15.1899)

Reviews of Recent Publications

BEETHOVEN BY JOSEPH FLOSSMAN

{See Berlin Studio- Talk)

REVIEWS OF RECENT
PUBLICATIONS.

The Royal Academy, lis Uses and Abuses. By
W. J. Laidlay, B.A., LL.B. (London: Simpkin,
Marshall, Kent & Co.)—It is impossible to read
this book without a certain sense of disappoint-
ment. Mr. Laidlay has taken an interesting sub-
ject, one that appeals to a wide section of the
art-loving public, and has been able to bring to
bear upon it a great deal of knowledge of modern
art movements ; yet his argument fails to convince.
A strong case might really be made against the
Academy as a kind of semi-official guardian of the
interests of British art, but in stating it a much
more impartial attitude is desirable than Mr.
Laidlay has adopted. He assumes too much, and
bases too great a proportion of his indictment
upon information that is confessedly incomplete,
because practically none of it has been voluntarily
given by members of the Academy themselves.
What he has collected from outside gossip, and
288

from evidence given many years ago before royal
commissions on the administration of this institu-
tion, is scarcely adapted for the purposes of a book
that professes to provide a settlement of a vexed
question affecting artists at the present moment.
If he had made himself more sure of his facts, and
had treated them with less bias and less from the
point of view of the counsel for the prosecution,
he might have given us a treatise of great value ;
but, as it is, his book leaves matters exactly where
they were.

LEATHER-WORK BY GEORG HULBE

{See Hamburg Studio- Talk)