International studio (51.1913/1914)

Foreign Graphic Art

During the first half of
March there will be a
display of Mr. Gutmann’s
more recent work at the
Arlington Galleries, when
he will most assuredly
prove his right to a high
place among young Ameri-
can painters of the day.
In the illustrations selected
one is entitled Bine Girls
by the Sea, and depicts
them lace-making on the
edge of a hill overlooking
the ocean. One can almost
feel the hot summer breeze,
while the attitudes of the
restful Breton lasses add
to the sensation. Re-
strained colour and skilful
handling of light, com-
bined with excellent com-
position, mark this canvas
out as typical of Mr. Gut-
mann’s best work. The
Old Lady and the Baby are
good Breton types, broadly
and simply treated, the
figure arrangement being
happily conceived, a simple
but dignified rendering of
everyday life. W.H.N.

THE SEWING GIRL BY BERNHARD GUTMANN


The much-talked-of Leon Bakst exhi-
bition at the Berlin Photographic Com-
pany’s Gallery made way in December
for a group of drawings, etchings, pastels and
lithographs brought over by Dr. Ferenc Hoffmann
to show what is being done to-day in Austria
Hungary and Bohemia.

Foreign graphic art

Mr. Birnbaum’s vision extends into far larger
spaces than any three galleries could repre-
sent, and the display rooms at his disposal are
lamentably small, when it is a question of handling
to advantage such a show as this. Everything
possible was done to arrange the material in such
a way that people might see the peculiarities of
these different units of Franz Josef’s empire and
judge each on its own merits. The idea, however,
was better than the execution, and the demarca-

tion lines were hard to determine. What one

really saw was an enormous mass of a heterogene-

ous nature, and it would be absurd to maintain
that different standards were discernible in the
Czech, as opposed to the Magyar, or in them as
compared with the studio output of Vienna.
They all seem to work in a more or less cosmopoli-
tan spirit, though of course French, German or
Japanese influence is stamped upon many of
the exhibits which might well on that account
have been withheld from the badly overcrowded
walls. Ultramodernism is sporadic rather than
epidemic. Such themes as Kesmarky’s Cruci-
fixion, executed according to cubistic art, are
unsettling to one’s equanimity and are, fortun-
ately, rare. One turns with joy to the many
beautiful representations of that wonder-city,
Prague, which can never be over-painted like its
sister city on the Adriatic. Features of the exhi-
bition were the powerful pen-drawings and litho-
graphs by Rippl-Ronai, the Klemm cycle of en-
gravings for “Faust,” the Bromse etchings, the
wonderful Lady of the Camellias in large and small

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