International studio (50.1913)

The National Competition of Schools of A rt, 1913


PAINTED PLAYING-CARD BOX
BY MURIEL NOTT

(BIRMINGHAM, MARGARET STREET)

sculptor Academicians who
were not anxious to begin
the duties of judging until
their own pictures and
models for the year were
finished and sent to the ex-
hibition. The sending-in
day for the Academy was in
the first week of April, the
end of the art school year
was fixed to correspond with
it, and the arrangement has
prevailed until the present
time. There is no apparent
reason why the art school
year should not finish at
Christmas and the National
Art Competition works be

encouragement than it receives, will
never again be relegated to the back
premises of a Museum in which it
should have a prominent place.
The Board of Education may now
with advantage turn its attention to
another reform, the need of which has
been urged before in the colums of
The Studio and other journals. The
exhibition of the National Art Com-
petition is the outcome of the ex-
penditure each year of a very large
sum of public money. Is there any
need that it should be held always in
August, the month in which the tax-
payer who finds the money, and that
section of the public that is interested
in art and art schools, are least likely
to see it ? At present the art school
year terminates at the end of March
or the beginning of April; the studies
are examined and the awards made
during the summer, and at the end of
July, when the public is surfeited with
art exhibitions and thinking only of
holidays, the prize works in the
National Competition are placed on
view. According to tradition this
inconvenient arrangement originated
in the earliest days of the Competition
and was planned to suit the con-
venience of the examiners. At that
time there was very little encourage-
ment for applied art, and the ex-
aminers were nearly all painter or
290


PEN-AND-INK BOOK ILLUSTRATION
BY HAROLD WATSON (LAMBETH)