Studio: international art (23.1901)

composition in high relief on the pendentives of
the dome he has succeeded to a remarkable
degree, and it is to be regretted that motives of
economy have confined him to a repetition of the
same group on the four spandrils.

Throughout the interior of the Grand Hall and
Avenue are to be found a number of stalls, whose
designers have displayed both skill and originality
in breaking away from the gingerbread show-case
style of design which has hitherto been considered
elegant and appropriate by exhibitors at such
exhibitions; and this may be accepted as a happy
augury of the closer relations that may be expected
to exist between Art and Commerce in the new
century.

(To be continued.)

STUDIO-TALK.

(From our own Correspondents.)

LONDON.—The Queen Victoria Memorial
is still the most important subject of dis-
cussion in the art world, but there can
be no doubt that the indignation aroused
in many quarters by the Executive Council is much
too scattered to be effective. It is just possible
that the Memorial may yet be made an open com-
petition ; but if common-sense should come by its
own in this way, then the art-workers will not be
able to claim much credit for their undisciplined

revolt against the injustice which at first excluded
them from taking part in a national movement.
The truth is that British artists have no esprit
de corps worth mentioning. They are ready enough
to grumble, but they are never willing to unite
their grievances in order to make them known at
a meeting important enough to attract public atten-
tion. In the case of the Victoria Memorial, for
example, many architects have been scared into
feeble grumblers by a very dreadful fear, the fear
of being accused of self-advertisement. They do
not seem to realise that an artist's life is made up
inevitably of self-advertisement. Every piece of
his work that attracts public notice, whether good
work or bad, is a piece of frank self-advertisement;
and we take leave to think, moreover, that those
architects who send year by year to the Royal
Academy, where their great calling is not respected
as it deserves to be, are actuated by a spirit of self-
advertisement very much less admirable than that
which should force them publicly to assert their
right to the privilege of doing their best in an
open competition for the Victoria Memorial.

By reason of its variety and high average of
accomplishment the collection of drawings on view
in the gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in
Water Colours deserves to be sincerely praised.
There are high merits in Mr. E. A. Waterlow's
Hemingford Mill, Mr. Robert Little's Faslane,