International studio (15.1901/1902(1902))

Studio- Talk

“the ploughman”

FROM A CHROMO-LITHOGRAPH BY WALTER GEORGI
(See Dresden Studio-Talk.)

we see none but good art around and about
us, we will without an effort reach a stage of
culture that no professed teaching can lead us up
to. H. W. S.

VIENNA. — The art of carving is inborn
with the Tyrolese. One sees it in their
rude figures of the Virgin and Saviour,
which are so much en evidence in travel-
ling through their land, and in the carved quaint
forms, often very artistically carried out, which
can be bought in every Tyrolese village for a mere
song. Though born in Miihldorf, Bavaria, Gustave
Gurschner is of Tyrolese descent. As soon as the
boy had completed the necessary school course,
he went to Bozen, in South Tyrol, to study in
the well-known schools of art and industries
there. Visitors to Bozen will remember the shop
under the old arcades, and wonder at the richness
of conception, variety of design, and originality
of ideas shown in the work of the students,
often simple peasants, there exposed for sale or
exhibition. Gurschner soon proved his master
mind, for not only did he show great power of
imagination, but a remarkable facility in carry-

ing out what he created. Vienna was his next
resting-place. Here he attended the Imperial
Arts and Crafts Schools under Prof. Kuhne,
and was successful in carrying off many prizes.
Munich, too, sheltered the young student ; in
that city he worked entirely alone, and from
there, naturally, he went to Paris. Here his
remarkable gifts were soon recognised, for at
the Exhibition in the Salon du Champ de Mars
in 1893, when the artist was in his twenty-
first year, his bronzes there shown at once
brought him into public notice. One of these, a
door-knocker, the original of which was bought
for the Museum in Salliera, has already been
reproduced in The Studio. And at the Paris
Exhibition, 1900, Mr. Gurschner gained a bronze
medal for his designs and a silver one for his
bronzes. In the early part of his career the young
sculptor devoted himself to monumental groups
and portrait busts of which one, of the Archduke
Ferdinand Karl, has an honoured place in the
Berg Isel Museum, Innsbruck. But he soon
abandoned these for small figures—women, tall,
slender, and full of grace. Mr. Gurschner seldom
fails to combine the beautiful and the practical,

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