International studio (34.1908)

Reviews and Notices


“HERONS” (TEMPERA) BY KARL HUCK
(See Vienna Studio- Talk)

tion of Morland amongst the painters of the early
English school is unique. The writers justly
affirm, “ Morland had no predecessor, he had no
successor ... he founded no school. He stood
alone as a painter of peasant and humble life, and
the field he vacated has never been seriously taken
up again.” That he owed something to Stubbs (and
in a lesser degree to Wheatley and Gainsborough)
is admitted, but without sacrificing in any way his
marked individuality. We are disposed to agree
with the writers again when they say that no painter,
not even Stubbs himself, ever painted horses with
greater penetration and knowledge than Morland
displays at his best. His pictures of rural life
in England form one of the noblest pages in
the art of this country, and that they are duly
appreciated is proved by the remarkable advance
in their prices during recent years. The story of
Morland’s life is not a happy one, but after reading
this exhaustive account of his career, one cannot
but feel that his earlier critics have not always
done him justice. To have produced so many
fine works in so short a life (he was only forty-one
when he died), proves that in spite of periods of
idleness he possessed a wonderful capacity for
work. “ His love of children,” say his latest bio-
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graphers, “is the redeeming feature of a character
in which there is only too much to condemn . . .
We cannot picture him surrounded by children in
his studio, in the barn at Enderby, or on some
village bench, without realising this ; we cannot
see him, as Collins did in the little back parlour
of an inn, ‘ with a large pointer by his side, a guinea-
pig in his handkerchief, and a beautiful American
squirrel he had just bought for his wife,’ and allow
that Morland was wholly a worthless character—
even though a ‘ basin of rum and milk ’ does
stand on the table at his side.”
Stories from the Arabian Nights. Re-told by
Laurence Housman. With drawings by Edmund
Dulac. (London : Hodder & Stoughton.) 155.
net. — The perennial charm of the “ Arabian
Nights,” which will endure so long as human
nature remains the same, has been well preserved
by the collaborators in the production of the new
illustrated edition. In his interesting preface Mr.
Housman aptly defines the cause of the success
of the great story-teller, Scheherazade, wffien he
says procrastination was the basis of her art, for
though the task she accomplished was splendid
and memorable, it is rather in the quantity than
in the quality of her invention—in the long-spun-
out performance of what could have been done
far more shortly—that she becomes a figure of
dramatic interest. “The idea,” he adds, “which
binds the stories together is greater and more
romantic than the stories themselves, and though
. . . the diurnal interruption in their flow is
more or less taken for granted, we are never quite
robbed of the sense that it is Scheherazade who is
speaking, Scheherazade the loquacious, the self-
possessed, sitting up in bed at the renewed call of
dawn to save her neck for the round of another
day.” The stories selected for re-telling are those
of “ The Fisherman and the Genie,” “The King of
the Ebony Isles,” “ Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves,” “ The Magic Horse,” “ The Wicked
Half-Brothers,” and “The Princess of Derzabar,”
and in the fifty fine pictorial interpretations of
thrilling incidents in them Mr. Dulac displays con-
siderable imaginative power. His colour scheme
is clever, and many of his drawings are well
composed and full of poetic suggestion.
Torokorszagi Levelei. Zagoni Mikes Kelemen.
(Budapest : Franklin & Co.)—Very little, if any-
thing, is known in this country, or indeed anywhere
outside Hungary, of Clement Mikes, whose “Letters
from Turkey ” are reprinted in this volume.
Among his own countrymen however these letters,
which were written during the years of the author’s