International studio (25.1905)

city; Miss Louise Wood, Philadelphia., Pa.; Miss
Ellen Wetheral Ahrens, Philadelphia, Pa. The
election of officers comprised: William J. Baer,
president; Laura C. Hills, Vice-President; Thomas
R. Manley, treasurer.
THE PROVIDENCE WATER COLOUR CLUB has
recently held a successful annual exhibition, its
ninth. Some one hundred and fifty water colours
were hung on the walls, and a number during the
ten days of the exhibition were sold. The feature
of the annual supper held in the club rooms was
"The Picture Trade," an old custom of the Club,
in accordance with which each member contributes
a sketch to be distributed by lot.
A CONVENTION of the Architectural League of
America is to be held in Pittsburgh, April iy and 18.
IN the March number of the INTERNATIONAL
SruDio in referring to the work of the Rochester
(N. Y.) Athenasum and Mechanics Institute, we
spoke of Mr. Theodore H. Pond, the superinten-
dent, as one time director of the Rhode Island
School of Design. As a matter of fact we should
have said that Mr. Pond was the director of the
Department of Decorative Arts and Crafts. At
the time of his connection with the Rhode Island
school Mr. Warren S. Locke was in charge of the
institution.

-w—^ OOK REVIEWS.
] SlR EDWARD BURNE-JONES. By MAL-
1 -V COLM BELL (Newnes' Art Library).
Pages 56. 8vo. Illustrated. London:
George Newnes, Ltd. New York: Frederick
Warne & Co. $i.2g.
We have had occasion in several previous num-
bers of THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIO to call atten-
tion to the issues of the Newnes' Art Library. It is
a particularly good idea to include the work of Sir
Edward Burne-Jones, the eminent English artist,
who is numbered among the famous pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood, with Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Rossetti,
Sir John E. Millais, George F. Watts, and several
other eminent names. Few artists of the Nine-
teenth Century have shown more peculiar indi-
viduality, and not one who needs, for complete
appreciation, such careful study and thorough un-
derstanding of prevailing influences. Probably for
this reason the impression created by a Burne-Jones
canvas in an ordinary exhibition, in amongst a
number of other miscellaneous paintings, never

seems to bring out the full beauties of his splendid
work. To have some hfty plates collected in one
volume enables the reader to follow the artist in the
way best calculated to comprehend the meaning of
his message and sympathize with his rendering of
it. To this end we are also greatly assisted by the
ten-page preface by Malcolm Bell, lightly but
clearly, sketching his life and work.
AuBREY DE VERB: A Memoir. Based on his
Unpublished Diaries and Correspondence. By
WiLFRiD WARD. With two photogravure por-
traits and other illustrations. Pages 428-J-40.
8vo. London, New York and Bombay: Long-
mans, Green & Co. 1904. $4.60 net.
There are few more generally beloved person-
alities connected with British art and literature
of the Nineteenth Century than that of Aubrey de
Vere, and the reason is not far to seek. Sara
Coleridge wrote of him as follows: "I have lived
among poets a great deal, and have known greater
poets than he is, but a more entire poet, one more a
poet in his whole mind and temperament, I never
knew or met with." It was just this perfection of
artistic nature which he possessed that made his
intercourse with every kind of artistic personality
successful. It mattered not in what particular
direction the tastes of his contemporaries might
run, his own perfectly cultivated mind went out
towards them in sympathy and understanding.
The present volume does not profess to be in the
fullest sense a biography. It is, in the first place,
an attempt at the explanation of this very remark-
able mind and character, as displayed in his inter-
course and his correspondence with his friends.
The author writes in his preface:
"When, as Mr. de Vere's literary executor
under his will, I examined his papers, with a view
to publishing some of his prose remains, I found
that practically nothing was written of the second
volume of Recollections which he had planned.
The letters and diaries, however, which he was
revising with a view to their possible posthumous
publication, at once struck me as in many cases
suitable for this purpose, for they deal with matters
of general interest, and include some graphic con-
temporary descriptions of great men. . . . But
while such features of interest were probably what
led Mr. de Vere himself to contemplate the publi-
action of his letters, the present writer was yet more
impressed by the picture they conveyed of their
author himself—of a personality which for spiritual
beauty, both of mind and of character, and for the
completeness in it of the poetic temperament, must,

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