International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

C. H. Shannon s Lithographs


veranda runs—a shelter from the inclemency of
the weathf r, and at the same time affording means
of enjoying the intermittent sunshine. In the
inside the large dining-hall with its ceiling sup-
ported by solid beams, a buffet of plain wood
with wrought-iron decoration, and a fine and lofty
stove de faience, are the characteristic features. This
villa is very spacious and contains no fewer than
nineteen bed-rooms.
The Kunkler lodge and the chapels at Lancy
and Cornillon, with their brown pans de bois, are of
lighter and more smiling aspect.
The view of the interior of the Kundig Villa proves
that the modem style of furniture is not out of
place in a chalet provided that it is neither loud
nor affected. But there are elements which ought
to be banished once for all, amongst them the rococo
and graining, which it is to be hoped have had
their day and will soon cease to be.
A glance at Mr. Fatio’s work is enough to show
what is being done and what can be done in the
interests of a truly national architecture in
Switzerland. Swiss architects have to accom-
plish their task not without difficulties and
sometimes not without opposition; but in
keeping their eye fixed steadily on the
best models of the past, and striving to
adapt them to modern requirements,
they are, in the most effective way
possible, counteracting the baneful in-
fluence of a purely commercial and
cosmopolitan spirit that has no respect
either for the natural beauty of the
country or the art that is in harmony
with it. R. Mobbs.

expression; they have in many cases a subject,
but it is always one with the drawing part
of it, as a spirit in a body. In any at-
tempt to communicate an incommunicable
thing, to make clear by explanation what by its
nature must always remain inexplicable, and in
the end is only to be felt, one courts disappoint-
ment.
It were easy for a shallow criticism of rule-and-
thumb, unimpressed by the qualities Mr. Shannon
displays in his lithography, to be busied about some
detail not made out quite clearly, and to keep
a greedy outlook for real or fancied false construc-
tion ; forgetting, as such criticism always does, that
the artist’s hand obeyed a mood concerned only with
essential form. In work of this kind any standard
fixed is wrong that is not the standard set by the
artist’s own intentions. One must not judge these
things by standards which might be right if
applied to a scheme of decoration and to certain
kinds of painting, for the mood in which any great
art is carried through is one which subordinates,
as Whistler subordinated, everything to a motif
beyond mere dexterous imitation; a motif not
concerned to reconcile itself at every stage with

THE LITHOGRAPHS OF
C. H. SHANNON. BY T.
MARTIN WOOD.
On the alert always for beauty in
visible life, Mr. Shannon tries too in
his art, to give a visible beauty to life
that has passed into the romantic
atmosphere of his own imagination or
into literature, and it is given only to
the few to pass from actual life to
literature in the pursuit of an emotional
form of beauty without becoming anec-
dotal in a way that is apart from art.
Mr. Shannon’s lithographs are very
perfect as examples of style—that
secret marriage of the thought with
the medium through which it finds
26

CHAFEL AT PETIT LANCY

E. FATIO, ARCHITECT