Studio: international art (59.1913)

Reviews and Notices

(Paris : Le Croquis.) 6 fr.—It must have been,
one supposes, Murger’s famous novel which gave
rise to the expression “ Bohemianism ” as applied
to that rare and sensitive growth which has seldom
if ever survived transplanting from French soil;
indeed, the most vital constituent in its environ-
ment would seem to be sel gaulois. Forced or
cultivated varieties of the plant have flourished
and do still perhaps exist as exotics, but its true
habitat is, or must we already say was, Paris,
and par excellence Montmartre. In many of M.
Marandat’s delightful pen-drawings of the pic-
turesque old-world Butte with its steep and
tortuous ways and its charming little oases of
garden and thicket, we see, with regret, evidences
of the heavy hand of the housebreaker. Most of
the old landmarks are being swept away to make
room for modern edifices; of the famous mills
only the Moulin de la Galette is still standing, and
soon little will remain of this quaint old quarter of
Paris so indissolubly linked in the memory with
names famous in all the arts. We owe a debt of
gratitude to M. Charpentier for this charmingly
written description of Montmartre and to the
artist who has so delightfully recorded fast dis-
appearing aspects of its varied life and character in
a series of three hundred drawings.

L’Arte Mondiale a Roma nel ign. Di Vittorio
Pica. (Bergamo : Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche.)
30 lire. We already owe to the enterprising
Institute of Graphic Arts at Bergamo an important
series of copiously illustrated volumes dealing with
the international art exhibitions held at Venice,
and now in the volume before us we have an
addition to the series which far outdistances the
others in quantity of illustrative matter. That of
course is consequent on the much greater scope of
the Rome exhibition, at which the art of practically
every State in Europe as well as the United States
and Japan was represented, most of them having
their special pavilions. The illustrations to the
present volume, numbering 732 in all, have been
reproduced from pictures, drawings, etchings and
sculpture selected from these numerous groups,
and the quality of the reproductions throughout is
excellent. Hence apart from the intrinsic interest
of the individual works illustrated, the collection as
a whole has a high documentary value as a record
of present-day achievement, for with comparatively
few exceptions these works are those of artists now
living. The only fault to be found with the presen-
tation of this large fund of material is that the topo-
graphical classification has not been adhered to as
rigorously as it might have been, and no clue to
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the nationalities of the artists is given except in the
introductory essays. The onerous task of reviewing
this vast concourse of works of art has fallen to
Sgr. Pica, whose experience with the Venice
exhibitions has made him an adept at this sort of
thing. He devotes a few pages to each group,
summing up their salient characteristics as they
struck him, and discusses under separate headings
various artists whose work impressed him as
particularly significant: Carl Larsson, Rusinol,
Sorolla, Zuloaga, Anglada, Josef Israels, Emile
Claus, Frank Brangwyn and Rodin.

Didionnaire repertoire des Reintres depuis Panti-
quite jusqu’a nos jours. Par Isabella Errera.
(Paris : Hachette and Cie.) 10 frcs.—The pre-
paration of this Repertoire, in which are tabulated
in alphabetical order the names of more than
30,000 artists, each with the date of birth and
death, and nationality, if known, must have involved
an enormous amount of labour ; but those who have
to refer to such a work will be grateful to the
compiler for having undertaken it and carried
it through so conscientiously. The source of
information is briefly indicated after each entry,
the full list of authorities being set out in the
beginning of the volume, which though it consists
of over 700 pages, is of handy size.

The Architectural Assodation Sketch Book, 1912.
Edited by C. C. Brewer, Theodore Fyfe, W.
Curtis Green, and H. A. Hall. (London : The
Architectural Association, 18 Tufton Street, West-
minster.) The Architectural Association always
gives good value in its Sketch Book for the guinea
subscription which entitles to possession of a copy.
In the latest volume students of architecture will
find much to interest them. English architecture
is represented in thirty-three out of the seventy-
two sheets of drawings, the subjects figured in-
cluding the Octagon of Ely Cathedral, the Angel
Choir of Lincoln Cathedral, the Senate House at
Cambridge, Sackville College at East Grinstead,
the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Charing
Cross, the Guesten Hall of the Charterhouse, a
priest’s house and an abbot’s house in Somerset,
both of the late fifteenth century, besides details
of numerous structures of note, among these being
double-page drawings of the Admiralty Screen and
Dover House fagade in London. Of the sheets
devoted to Continental architecture Italy claims
by far the largest share, the principal items here
being the Churches of the Badia and S. Spirito at
Florence and S. Maria della Pace, Rome. There
is also an excellent drawing of the Church of S.
Maria della Salute, Venice, from the street adjoin-