DOI Heft:
No. 172 (July, 1907)
DOI Artikel:Sheldon-Williams, Inglis: Bits of old China
DOI Artikel:Notes on some Polish artists of to-day
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20775#0145
Some Polish Artists of To-day
Manchurian border, where the Great Wall ends in imagination at will back among scenes that are
the Yellow Sea, it is pierced by the northern railway, lived over again-under the mellow influence of an
and so these things have come about; you can get old recollection, gradually blending into the myth
from London to Pekin in a few days now, but there and mystery of a people's inscrutable past,
is a price to pay for passing through that Wall that Inglis Sheldon-Williams.
cannot be settled with Russian roubles.
An impression is abroad that anything will go IV T OTES ON SOME POLISH
down with the visiting foreign devil, who must be ARTISTS OF TO-DAY.
tolerated for the sake of his gold, and tons of costly ' \\
rubbish are disposed of to the buyer of small To properly understand modern
discrimination, who sees nothing but the highest Polish art one must study it in the land itself, and
art in all things Oriental, and places his orders have personal acquaintance with the artists. The
wholesale at the showy emporiums of the Treaty Poles have suffered much as a nation, and the
Ports. sorrow they have endured has not failed to leave
Failing a knowledge of, or the time to search for, its mark on their art. I speak of them as a nation,
the hidden genuine treasure, there is more profit to because the spirit of nationality is very strong in
be found in roaming about the native bazaars, the Pole, whether he owes political allegiance to
groping in dark and dusty corners of tiny shops, Russia, Germany, or Austria,
and ransacking the accumulated oddments that In these notes I propose to speak only of some
form the stock-in-trade of the obscure native pedlar, of the leading artists belonging to Galicia or Aus-
who receives with complacency a tenth of the price trian Poland. This does not imply that the artists
demanded and makes no charge for admission to of one political division of the country hold aloof
the world of magic and enchantment where Aladdin from those of others; such is far from being the
still lives and has his being. case, for the society of artists founded some ten
In such ways one may
store up a host of weirdest
memories that touch the
imagination as lightly as
the hinted contact of a
moth's wing on the cheek,
and come and go with
the elusive aroma of a
vanishing morning dream.
For it is all a strange, half-
real dream, this probing
into the back centuries,
and it is there to be
dreamed by all who care
to shun the everyday
common - places of the
East where the touch ot
the Western hand has
brushed away the bloom ;
a dream to be embalmed
in its native spices, to
endure for all time against
ignoble decay when more
garish surroundings once
more importune the mind.
And the small and in-
considerable treasure and
priceless fabric alike be-
come Magician's Lamp or
Magic Carpet to waft the "an uncommon garden" by josef von mehoffer
"5
Manchurian border, where the Great Wall ends in imagination at will back among scenes that are
the Yellow Sea, it is pierced by the northern railway, lived over again-under the mellow influence of an
and so these things have come about; you can get old recollection, gradually blending into the myth
from London to Pekin in a few days now, but there and mystery of a people's inscrutable past,
is a price to pay for passing through that Wall that Inglis Sheldon-Williams.
cannot be settled with Russian roubles.
An impression is abroad that anything will go IV T OTES ON SOME POLISH
down with the visiting foreign devil, who must be ARTISTS OF TO-DAY.
tolerated for the sake of his gold, and tons of costly ' \\
rubbish are disposed of to the buyer of small To properly understand modern
discrimination, who sees nothing but the highest Polish art one must study it in the land itself, and
art in all things Oriental, and places his orders have personal acquaintance with the artists. The
wholesale at the showy emporiums of the Treaty Poles have suffered much as a nation, and the
Ports. sorrow they have endured has not failed to leave
Failing a knowledge of, or the time to search for, its mark on their art. I speak of them as a nation,
the hidden genuine treasure, there is more profit to because the spirit of nationality is very strong in
be found in roaming about the native bazaars, the Pole, whether he owes political allegiance to
groping in dark and dusty corners of tiny shops, Russia, Germany, or Austria,
and ransacking the accumulated oddments that In these notes I propose to speak only of some
form the stock-in-trade of the obscure native pedlar, of the leading artists belonging to Galicia or Aus-
who receives with complacency a tenth of the price trian Poland. This does not imply that the artists
demanded and makes no charge for admission to of one political division of the country hold aloof
the world of magic and enchantment where Aladdin from those of others; such is far from being the
still lives and has his being. case, for the society of artists founded some ten
In such ways one may
store up a host of weirdest
memories that touch the
imagination as lightly as
the hinted contact of a
moth's wing on the cheek,
and come and go with
the elusive aroma of a
vanishing morning dream.
For it is all a strange, half-
real dream, this probing
into the back centuries,
and it is there to be
dreamed by all who care
to shun the everyday
common - places of the
East where the touch ot
the Western hand has
brushed away the bloom ;
a dream to be embalmed
in its native spices, to
endure for all time against
ignoble decay when more
garish surroundings once
more importune the mind.
And the small and in-
considerable treasure and
priceless fabric alike be-
come Magician's Lamp or
Magic Carpet to waft the "an uncommon garden" by josef von mehoffer
"5