International studio (53.1914)

The Art Screens of Robert Chanter


DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY ROBERT CHANLER

under Mr. Chanler’s direc-
tion cover immense surfaces.
But always it is a question
of patience and the progress
is necessarily slow, though
sure. And as a rule the
American workman chafes
at results obtained thus.
The completed work, how-
ever, justifies these methods.
A series of screens and
hangings for Mrs. Harriman
have been designed on
leather and velvet, with an
interesting background in
the first case of gold, treated
with glazes and varnish, the
result being a fine mellow
quality that the modern
workman hitherto has not
obtained. Ingenious de-
signs of knights, castles,
landscape forms, have been
secured, making admirable
and effective compositions,
while on the velvet gold has
been applied on a built-up
ground, in a highly original
manner. Always the spot-
ting of colour has been clev-

men he has assimilated in an intelligent manner
and he has retained throughout his own strong

erlv arranged and in most cases there is a qual-
ity of sobriety, recalling the artisan creations of

personality.
For the working out of his many schemes of
colour, Mr. Chanler has, in his most interesting
home in New York, a collection arranged in one
floor of the house, consisting of quaint birds of
many colours, animals, and an aquarium with
various fishes from southern seas, fishes of rarely
brilliant tints, of rainbow effects almost unbeliev-
able, and these birds, too, are of the colours of the
rainbow. Proximity to these creatures at all
times of the day, or the'night for that matter, is an
endless inspiration in a colour way, for there have
been introduced electric devices that enable the

the middle ages, for many of these panels might
well have come from ancient chateau or castle, the
characteristics of which Mr. Chanler has carefully
sought.
|^EW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
In the Print Gallery (Room 321) of the New
York Public Library, the exhibition illustrating
the “Making of an Etching” has been replaced by
one of etchings by Sir Francis Seymour Haden.
This collection of his work, one of the few large
and notable ones, forms part of the S. P. Avery

owner at any moment to turn on a brilliant flood
of light and so get almost any conceivable effect.
In a large and delightfully appointed workshop,
with side rooms for the preparation of the wood,
these screens in process of completion are arranged
about; and at any moment the artist is liable to
dash at them, changing here, improving there,
adding just the necessary touch that gives them
their personal character, while skilled assistants

Collection of Prints, which is the very backbone
of the Library’s portfolios of nineteenth-century
etchings. The very completeness of the collection
here placed on view in its entirety obviously offers
a complete view of the various manifestations of
Haden’s art. His personality was a masterful
one, and that characteristic is echoed as a domi-
nant quality in his etchings. The exhibition will
remain on view until the Fall.

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