International studio (52.1914)

Studio-Talk


DESIGN FOR A ROW OF WORKMEN’S COTTAGES IN A PROVINCIAL TOWN

BY M. H. BAILLIE SCOTT, ARCHITECT

The plan of this cottage shows the proposed com-
bination of the parlour and living room to give a
roomy interior. The coast of Wales in this district
is notable for the beauty and variety of colour in its
stones and it was proposed to use these in the gate
pillars shown in the sketch.
The cottage at Sherborne again illustrates how
local conditions have influenced the design. It
was built in relation to a house in which the
purchase of the materials from an old Tudor farm-
house in the locality led to a close adherence in the
design to the old buildings of the locality.
The cottage at Shelford differs from the other
plans shown in that it shows the parlour developed
as a living room instead of the kitchen. In the
cheapest types of cottage it seems reasonable that
the kitchen should be the living room, for then it is
necessary only to keep one fire going in the house-
hold, which serves the double purpose of warming
the house and cooking the food. In matters of
this kind, however, convention too often outweighs
practical advantages and to the minds of those who
are striving after the higher complexities of living,
the specialised kitchen will be welcomed as a step
on the upward path which leads to the ultimate
goal of the villa with the bay-window.
STUDIO-TALK.
From Our Own Correspondents.
IONDON.—The death of Mr. John Henry
Frederick Bacon, A.R.A., M.V.O., who
died in London on January 24, has
—J deprived the British School of an artist of
distinguished ability and versatility. Though still
short of fifty at the time of his decease, Mr. Bacon
had had a long and successful career, for long
before he was out of his teens his exceptional talent

as a draughtsman enabled him to secure work for
magazines. When he started painting in the late
’eighties he quickly made his mark with those
domestic and religious genre pictures which earned
for him great popularity, though nowadays perhaps
they fail to arouse the interest they once did. A
more enduring fame came to him as the painter of the
Coronation picture Homage Giving, Westminster
Abbey, shown at the Royal Academy of 1903 and
as a painter of single portraits ; during the last ten
years of his life the numerous commissions which
fell to him in this capacity left little time for
anything else. The last important work under-
taken by him was of course the Coronation picture
of their present Majesties, which was exhibited at
the Royal Academy in 1912. Mr. Bacon was
elected Associate of the Academy in 1903. He
was trained at the Westminster School of Art under
Mr. Fred Brown, now professor at the Slade
School, and afterwards at the Academy Schools.

The Memorial Exhibition of the work of the late
Sir Alfred East, R.A., P.R.B.A., has recalled to us
some of the earlier landscapes, in which, with afeeling
akin to Harpignies, the artist proved himself a rare
poet of the most familiar aspects of the countryside.
He brought to his work an immense enthusiasm
for tree-beauty and an unusual knowledge of
vegetable growth and form; moreover he had that
sympathetic touch which is the origin of style. In
this very matter of style, however, a certain coarse-
ness is to be met with in works of a later period.
The great feeling for decoration that urged him to
adopt the large scale, over which he exercised
complete control in composition, tended to modify
the intimacy of technique which had, in his finest
pieces, so perfectly corresponded with the mood
his pastoral subjects evoked. The exhibition, held
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