DOI Heft:
Nr. 174 (August, 1911)
DOI Artikel:Studio-Talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43447#0216
Studio- Talk
Cosway was three years old when Peter Romney
was born in 1743. From a very humble birth and
condition of life, by force of character, Cosway rose
to a position of great brilliancy, artistic and social.
Academician at thirty, he lived to be the intimate
friend of royalty, painted every one of importance
in England and extended his artistic conquests even
to France, was important enough to be caricatured
and lampooned, and died full of honours at the age
of eighty-one. But he seems to have had no
reputation as a pastellist! He was one of the
greatest of miniaturists, certainly the greatest of
his day, and he painted in both oil and water-
colour, but his pastel drawings are extremely rare.
Peter Romney, on the contrary, was a pastellist
almost exclusively. He, born also in humble
circumstances, was never able to shake off poverty
and its attendant distress. A younger brother of
George Romney, he seems to have elected pastel
as his medium in order to avoid competition with
his brother, and he wandered from place to place,
throughout the period of his short life, with varying
degrees of failure until at last dissipation killed him
at the age of thirty-four. Every one knows the
name of Richard Cosway, but how few have heard
of Peter Romney !
The exhibition has justified itself. Full of
charm and beauty, it has taught us that we are
richer as a nation in our art treasures than we
thought, richer in having had these artists as fellow-
countrymen who have lived, and richer in the
possession of their work which exists throughout
the country and which is, so far as the great mass
of the public is concerned, a treasure of art of which
hardly the barest glimpse has been obtained.
J. R. K. Duff.
BERLIN.—The Vereinigte Werkstatten fiir
Kunst im Handwerk recently arranged a
ceramic exhibition for their collaborator,
Prof. Josef Wackerle. This artist has
now removed to Berlin, and on studying his groups
and single figures for the old Nymphenburg Porce-
lain Manufacture and his furniture-woodcarvings for
the Bruno Paul workshops, we feel thankful to have
such a craftsman in our midst. His porcelain
material is of beautiful clearness and gloss and
Wackerle handles it with perfect skill. He is
equally successful in life-size portraiture as in the
smaller plastic genre, and works with temperament
and originality. His colouring can be strong or
of Copenhagen transparency. He is the producer
“goats ”
BY HEINRICH VON ZUGEL
l6l
Cosway was three years old when Peter Romney
was born in 1743. From a very humble birth and
condition of life, by force of character, Cosway rose
to a position of great brilliancy, artistic and social.
Academician at thirty, he lived to be the intimate
friend of royalty, painted every one of importance
in England and extended his artistic conquests even
to France, was important enough to be caricatured
and lampooned, and died full of honours at the age
of eighty-one. But he seems to have had no
reputation as a pastellist! He was one of the
greatest of miniaturists, certainly the greatest of
his day, and he painted in both oil and water-
colour, but his pastel drawings are extremely rare.
Peter Romney, on the contrary, was a pastellist
almost exclusively. He, born also in humble
circumstances, was never able to shake off poverty
and its attendant distress. A younger brother of
George Romney, he seems to have elected pastel
as his medium in order to avoid competition with
his brother, and he wandered from place to place,
throughout the period of his short life, with varying
degrees of failure until at last dissipation killed him
at the age of thirty-four. Every one knows the
name of Richard Cosway, but how few have heard
of Peter Romney !
The exhibition has justified itself. Full of
charm and beauty, it has taught us that we are
richer as a nation in our art treasures than we
thought, richer in having had these artists as fellow-
countrymen who have lived, and richer in the
possession of their work which exists throughout
the country and which is, so far as the great mass
of the public is concerned, a treasure of art of which
hardly the barest glimpse has been obtained.
J. R. K. Duff.
BERLIN.—The Vereinigte Werkstatten fiir
Kunst im Handwerk recently arranged a
ceramic exhibition for their collaborator,
Prof. Josef Wackerle. This artist has
now removed to Berlin, and on studying his groups
and single figures for the old Nymphenburg Porce-
lain Manufacture and his furniture-woodcarvings for
the Bruno Paul workshops, we feel thankful to have
such a craftsman in our midst. His porcelain
material is of beautiful clearness and gloss and
Wackerle handles it with perfect skill. He is
equally successful in life-size portraiture as in the
smaller plastic genre, and works with temperament
and originality. His colouring can be strong or
of Copenhagen transparency. He is the producer
“goats ”
BY HEINRICH VON ZUGEL
l6l