Studio: international art (22.1901)

Studio- Talk

in Belgium, received official encouragement last year
at the Royal Academy, for the subject of the design
in the round—Samson being Bound by the Philistines
—was well fitted to confirm the students in
their defects. Vigour and manliness of style in
art need no help from Philistines, nor yet from
Samson. What they do need is grace, imaginative
distinction: and this essential quality is best
cultivated in a school by asking all the advanced
students to express an imaginative idea in all their
studies from the life. Besides, it is easy to produce
a striking effect by an attempt to realise such in-
opportune subjects as the one chosen last year at
Burlington House. Exaggerate all the muscles,
twist plenty of limbs together, and the thing is
done. This seems to have been recognised when
the sketch-models of Samson came before the
Academicians, for the prize was given to Mr. A. J.
Leslie, whose group was by far the least athletic.

Sir Edward Poynter, in his remarks to the
students, spoke with just pride of the competition
for the Creswick Prize, the subject of which was
A Stream through a Meadozv. He said with truth
that some of the landscapes showed high pictorial
merits, as well as thoughtful study from nature.
As a proof of this we give illustrations of three

country scenes, in which many difficult problems
of landscape painting have been attacked with
admirable spirit, and with considerable success.
Mr. T. B. Stoney's good work, an Irish landscape,
richly grey-green in tone, suffers the most from
reproduction in black and white; but all who saw
it will remember the distinctive charm of the
feeling expressed in its quiet simplicity. The
prize was awarded to a foreground study of tall
green rushes, painted by Mr. Ernest Board.

The rest of the competitions will be considered
next month, and some of the decorative figure-
work will be reproduced.

The Academy, after a succession of important
winter exhibitions illustrating the achievements ot
old and modern masters, seems to have considered
the commencement of a new century an appropriate
occasion for putting before the public a few of the
commonplaces of minor men. It has gathered
together a jumble show of odds and ends by British
painters who have died during the last fifty years.
With curious perversity it has selected a great many
things that no one particularly wanted to see, and
has left out a great many more that would have
excited the widest possible interest. The collection

'a stream through a meadow by t. butler stoney

44