International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

We learn with pleasure
that thispicture and the
charming portrait of
Z?^// have
been purchased by the
Swiss Confederation.

We give iilustrations on
page 173 of two interesting
and novel miik-pails, de-
signed by Miss Helene
Hantz. R. M.

heart and to endeavour to express in simple form
his personal vision of things.

M. Berta can afford to be true to his own vision
of the beautiful, for the work he has already pro-
duced, though not without defects—in some cases
the defects of qualities and of immaturity—reveals
a temperament of marked distinction and promise.
His contributions to exhibitions in Venice, Munich,
Turin, Vevey, and Lausanne have called forth the
kind of criticism which work that has real merit in
it inevitably evokes. M. Berta has in him that
vein of dreamy-poetry native to the Swiss-Italian
artistic temperament; he is, indeed, a poet-painter.
What, however, imparts an individual value to his
work is that portrait, landscape, or Symbol has, so
to speak, passed through the peculiarly delicate
of the artist. His Saint-Bernard land-
scapes, for example, not only leave upon our mind

A RORTRAIT
176


EY C. BACA FI.OR

Tlk 7APLES. —We
give an illus-
tration on p. 17 q
^ of a sketch by
Mr. Sylvius D. Paoletti

the impression of such landscape painted with a
singulär sensitiveness of visual perception, but the
impression of the profound appeal of mountain
solitude to the artist's pensive nature.

There are three subjects which have exercised
an unmistakable fascination upon his imagination—
viz., childhood, youth, and death, and he has
rendered with singulär power and delicacy of feel-
ing the sweet charm of the Rrst in his zwZ%
ZM// the golden promise of the second in his
; and the melancholy beauty of the third in
his c/ and A Zv<!72e7*<zZ

The <7/ ^2*22^ is a sketch in pastel, open
to criticism by its very incompleteness, yet full of
suggestive beauty. The sadness of the all too
early death of spring in nature and human life is
ßnely conceived under the Hgure of that silent
procession of young girls
across the meadow, bear-
ing on a light bier the life-
less body of their com-
panion. If it be urged
that in the Z?2?Z ^7-2/2^*
the artist has given all
too inadequate expression
to what he has it in
him to say, this cannot be
said of Zy/77<?7*<?/,
which is, indeed, a
strangely beautiful picture,
leavinglittletobedesired
either in conception or
execution.