International studio (34.1908)

A rt School Notes

ART SCHOOL NOTES.*
ONDON.—At the Royal Academy Schools
Sir Hubert Herkomer’s lectures to the
students on painting attracted large
audiences from outside, and several
well-known members of the theatrical profession,
including Sir Squire Bancroft and Mr. George
Alexander, were among those who listened to the
address on “Criticism.” In speaking of the asser-
tion, frequently made, that a good painter is often
a bad critic of his own work, Sir Hubert said it
was a fact that Watts thought little of his famous
portrait of Mr. Walter Crane, and ranked it far
below paintings that to the eyes of other artists
were inferior examples of the master’s skill. The
comments on the newspaper critic by the lecturer
were not wholly unkind, but he complained that
too much power was placed in the hands of a
writer when he was allowed to act as the art
representative of eight, or even more, journals.
To artists one of the most interesting of the
addresses was that in which Sir Hubert gave a
careful technical description of the method em-
ployed by him in doing the large water-colour study
of Ruskin, now in the National Portrait Gallery.
With the idea of obtaining in water-colour some
of the bigness and breadth of oil he covered all
his paper with a warm tone and then scrubbed
the lights out with a hogs-hair brush until he had
secured the balance and proportion of the large
masses. The practice is not uncommon nowa-
days, but to Ruskin, who watched the painter
with curious interest, it was new and repellent.
He told Sir Hubert that the only method of
which he could possibly approve was that of
making an outline with the detailed exactness ot
a pen draughtsman, and then filling in the colour.

Mr. Colton’s severe criticism of the Laocoon,
in one of his Royal Academy lectures on sculp-
ture, was surprising to those of the students who
had come to regard with reverence that famous
group of the father and sons struggling with
serpents that has so long been the idol of the
antique room. The figures, whose straining
muscles have been studied with painful care by
generations of draughtsmen, were described by
Mr. Colton as second-rate and even cheap in
comparison with a real masterpiece like the
* As it is intended to make these notes a permanent
feature of The Studio, the Editor will be glad to
receive notice of events in co7inection with art schools at
home and abroad.
164

Venus of Milo. The Academy professor said
that he would have preferred to have passed the
Laocoon over in silence, but that he had felt it
a duty to warn them against the failings of a
work that had always been praised too highly. It
is worth recalling in connection with Mr. Colton’s
criticism that his opinions about the Laocoon are in
agreement with those of Burne-Jones. “ I always
judge of a set of school casts,” said the painter once,
“ by the absence of Laocoon. If Laocoon’s there,
all’s amiss.” Mr. Colton in his lectures gave the
students many useful hints on technical points, but
he was prevented from carrying out his original
plans by the rules of the Royal Academy, that
forbid the mention or illustration of contemporary
work. He had intended to describe to the students,
and to illustrate by lantern screen, the progress of
a sculptured memorial step by step, from the first
rough sketch to the erection of the completed
work.

On the vexed question of teaching by means of
visitors, that has so long been the practice at the
Academy, it is hopeless to expect agreement. The


ILLUSTRATION TO “THE WATER BABIES ”
BY MISS E. LAWRENCE-SMITH
(St. fohris Wood Art School)