International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

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basket-work, the designs being specially made
by Mr. Vollmer.
In her endeavours to do the best possible for
her children, the Austrian Government, by having
patterns made in the Prag-Rudniker pattem work-
shops, and distributing them gratis to the smaii
makers, enables them to keep up with the times—
a thing which, under other circumstances, would
be a practical impossibility, for these smah manu-
facturers have their homes in the different crown
iands, and have neither the necessary education
to create new designs nor the means to pay
anyone to make them. And in this alone the
Austrian Government, through the of
Cuitus and Unterricht, might serve as an example
to all nations. A. S. LEVETUS.
HE DRAWINGS OF STEPHEN
B. DE LA BERE. BY L. VAN
DER VEER.
AMONG the interesting winter exhibitions the
Bruton Gallery contributes a distinct novelty in
presenting a collection of water-colours and oils
by Mr. De la Bere, a young
English artist whose draw-
ings, in spite of their ugli-
ness and bizarre brutality,
are decidedly clever.
Mr. De la Bere has not
long been free from his
Student life at the West-
minster School of Art,
where he studied under
Mouat Loudon, and where
his portion of the school
exhibitions always attracted
the lion's share of attention
on account of their daring
and cleverness. In examin-
ing the one hundred or
more pictures shown in the
present exhibition one was
Struck first with the unusual
talent of the artist, and with
his remarkable delineation
of the coarse and vulgär
side of humanity.
De la Bere is a very clever
young man—so clever, in
fact, that one hopes when
he grows older that he will
become less fond of the
idea that to attract public
328

attention it is necessary to do something very
startling. His work in its present stage betrays re-
flections of nearly every well-known poster artist
exaggerated into his own conception of the most
bizarre and ugly things imaginable; and while his
individual gifts are too pronounced to lose entirely
their identity in his many art infatuations, his work
will improve when he has outgrown these affecta-
tions and evolved a style more clearly his own.
The French School Claims the greater part of
his admiration, and Steinlen, thatgifted Frenchman
whose work has been the pitfall of so many indi-
vidualities, is the man who has most inffuenced
him. But in working along the ways of Steinlen
the young artist has quite overlooked the fact
that the older man has lived a fine life close
to humanity, has listened to her heart-throbs,
has delved into and discovered some of the inner
tuysteries of the soul; and that although he chooses
to depict life amongst the lowly, he does so with a
dignity and rehnement of feeling which at once
distinguishes his conceptions from those of the
man who works merely from the outside. To
paint tatters and debauchery one must understand


"BY ORDER OF THE SENESCHAL" BY S. B. DE ].A BERE