International studio (42.1910)

Reviews and Notices

Cross, S.E., was then preparing for the use of his
pupils. The series is now complete, and the
articles, written in every case by men with special
knowledge of the artistic and business difficulties
that encompass the struggling worker in black and
white, may confidently be recommended to the
student. The writers include the art-editors or
assistant editors of most of the important weekly
and monthly journals who are well qualified to
advise the young artist who is ambitious of success
as an illustrator. From these articles he can learn
something of the various kinds of work that
journals and publishing houses require, and gather
besides a hundred useful hints not only on techni-
calities but on methods of procedure when sub-
mitting his drawings. He may even find out from
their perusal the hours when art-editors are likely
to be least unapproachable, and that it is not ad-
visable to take drawings at such awkward times
as one or six o'clock. There seems to be a general
consensus of opinion among Mr. Bradshaw's
experts that it is useless to submit to them the
ordinary art school study. However good it may
be it is of little value as a test of its author's
power as an illustrator. It is encouraging to find
that the representative of one of the greatest of
our illustrated papers prophesies that the drawing
will in time regain much of the vogue it has lost,
and is likely, partially at least, to oust the photo-
graph. Women illustrators will be pleased to hear
that there is an art-editor who finds them as a
rule more sympathetic, imaginative and conscien-
tious than the men who have worked for him.

At the Birkbeck College School of Art the
autumn session was opened with a varied and
comprehensive exhibition of work executed by
Mr. Mason's students. The show of landscapes
by members of the sketching club included a good
number of clever studies, and other works that
deserve special mention were the paintings from
the nude by Mr. Arthur M. Boss and Mr. Herbert
Reeve, and the book illustrations by Mr. C. W.
Smith, all of which gained commendation in the
National Art Competition. Other awards of the
year were an art teacher's certificate to Miss
Dorothy A. E. Goody; London County Council
Art Scholarships to Miss Irene Butterworth, Miss
Norah Williams and Arthur Glover ; and Birkbeck
College Studentships to Mr. F. H. Ballard and
Mr. Charles W. Smith. The Taverner Prizes for
drawing, composition and painting were taken by
Mr. Arthur M. Boss, Mr. Ernest Eason, Miss
Agnes Sutherland and Miss Emily Connal; the

Pocock prize by Miss Gladys Mason; the Holden
prize by Miss Dorothy Winbush; and the Mason
prizes by Mr. Boss and Miss Grace Hudson.

Arrangements have been made at the Heatherley
School in Newman Street for the delivery this
winter of a series of lectures on anatomy, which
should enhance materially the usefulness of the
well-known institution in which a large proportion
of our eminent artists have at some time or
another worked with advantage. Last winter the
Heatherley School was probably fuller than at any
time during the sixty years and more that it has
been in existence, a result that was due chiefly to
the individualistic character of the teaching and to
the seriousness of outlook that prevails in Newman
Street. W. T. W.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Turner's Sketches and Drawings. By A. J.
Finberg. (London: Methuen & Co.) 12s. 6d.
net.—This is an elaborate and painstaking analysis
of the methods, in regard to detail, through which
the immense genius of Turner expressed itself.
The task of such interpretation would naturally
fall to Mr. Finberg, who for years has been quietly
covering all the ground of his subject. To no
man's note books did there ever cling a greater
significance than to Turner's, and from these and
his drawings for engravings in various stages of
completion Mr. Finberg attempts the task of the
reconstruction almost of the very mental processes
which led up to given results. The task is of course
in a certain measure one based upon hypothetical
conclusions, and Mr. Finberg closes the book with
a closely argued plea for the method. As we
understand him, he seeks to place art criticism
with the other sciences, in interpreting artistic
phenomena upon the lines by which conclusions
are reached in those sciences ; though he is not
concerned " objectively " with the picture, and is
in fact at variance with the objective critics. But,
if we have understood him aright, his attitude is
"objective" towards subjective phenomena, after
the manner of the scholars of philosophy and logic,
whose language it is he uses. The book bristles
with points of controversy, but it certainly initiates
a novel point of view. The truths it seems most
intimately in touch with are certainly those which,
so to speak, can be " taken to pieces." There are
certain regions of mystery which such a method
cannot impinge upon, but within its own scope it
illuminates and clarifies some issues which had

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