International studio (23.1904)

Book Reviews

various Montmartre artists discussed within its
pages.
Auguste Rodin. By Rudolph Dircks. Pages
72. Illustrated. New York: Charles Scrib-
mers’ Sons. (Imported.) $1.00 net.
The life and work of Auguste Rodin forms the
subject of the fourth volume of the Langham
iSeries. The author gives us a most interesting
account of this child of the people, who, born in
Paris in 1840, was destined to become so celebrated
a sculptor. We read with interest of his early at-
tempts at modeling during his school days at La
Petite Ecole de Dessin (that school for young crafts-
men which had numbered among its pupils, Fre-
;miet, Carpeaux, Dalou and other distinguished
men), and his later attempts in a make-shift studio
■which he had found for himself in a stable, resulting
after eighteen months’ work in the mask known as
The Man with the Broken Nose, which was rejected
by the Salon of 1864 and accepted fourteen years
later, when it won celebrity for the sculptor. His
later works are fully discussed, and the little volume
has numerous illustrations taken, for the most part,
from photographs of his various works contained in
the Musee du Luxembourg, the Musee Rodin at
Meudon, and the Place de la Poste, Calais. The
frontispiece is a photogravure portrait of the sculp-
tor. At the end of the volume will be found a list
■of principal works.
The Land of Heart’s Desire. By William
Butler Yeats. i6mo. Pages 32. Portland:
Thomas B. Mosher.
Mr. Mosher has already made an enviable
reputation for the manufacture of beautiful books,
published in limited editions. It was a happy
thought of his to embody Mr: Yeats’ beautiful little
play in one of his choice volumes, of which nine
hundred and fifty copies have been printed on Van
■ Gelder hand made paper, and the type distributed.
The booklet is neatly bound in boards, with
paper labels printed in two colors. The play was
first produced at the Avenue Theatre in the spring
of 1894. The scene is laid in the County of Sligo,
and the characters are supposed to speak in Gaelic,
though the author has spared the reader by making
them apparently speak in English. They wear the
■costume of a century ago. This is one of Mr. Yeats’
characteristic pieces of work, purely Irish in its
atmosphere, and with that delightful sense of faery
with which he knows so well to imbue his poetry.
The exquisiteness both of idea and of expression is
matchless.

Painters Since Leonardo. By James William
Pattison. 8vo. Pages 288. Illustrated. Chi-
cago: Herbert S. Stone & Co.
Mr. James William Pattison has been for
several years class lecturer at the Art Institute of
Chicago, and is, we are informed, a painter of some
ability and a critic of distinction. His book groups
the painters he discusses according to the time in
which they lived and the influences which sur-
rounded them, rather than by nationality or locality.
The volume carries us down to the present time,
and includes most of the notable living painters.
To have attempted such a subject in 278 pages was
in itself somewhat daring, for of necessity it leaves
the volume somewhere between a dictionary and a
running commentary, and it is a little difficult to
see exactly what purpose the book will serve. If it
is to be used as a book of reference, it seems prob-
able that one would frequently be disappointed in
not finding the required information; and if it is to
be read continuously, it is feared it- would be some-
what tiresome and scrappy. However, the last
half of the book will be found useful and stimulat-
ing, forming a kind of modern Horace Walpole’s
Anecdotes. We feel quite sure that the author is
capable of doing much finer and more lasting work,
and we are so overdone nowadays with mere jot-
tings, that we regret that he did not round off his
studies more carefully, and produce something
more complete. In many instances one finds re-
marks that show a point of view untrammeled by
“standard” opinions that have become hackneyed;
and therefore one looks forward to see the author’s
treatment of a subject of less awkward scope and
more suited to the originality of which he undoubt-
edly possesses the secret.
The volume is richly illustrated with excellently
printed half tones of the world’s best pictures.
As we have indicated above, the most valu-
able portion of the book is that dealing with the
modern painters, upon which subject we find the
following chapters: The Ascendency of the Barbi-
zon School; The Quiet Middle of the Nineteenth
Century; New Developments in France and
America; The Pre-Raphaelites and the Beginnings
of Impressionism; The Growth of the Personal in
Art, Impressionism; its Followers and its Oppo-
nents; The American and Some Others; The Pres-
ent Situation; Final Review; Schools of Art.
If only for the purpose of getting a bird’s-eye
view of the art of the last half century, the book is
worth reading and possessing.
Benozzo Gozzoli. By Hugh Stokes. 8vo.

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