International studio (53.1914)

Aii “Opal Room " by Mr. Kemp Prossor


the pages of costly editions
is one explanation why
it is not more widely
known in London.
Mr. Will Dyson, who
is a brother-in-law of
Lindsay, is another black-
and-white artist who stands
out in the ruck. His
cartoons in the “ Daily
Herald” are too well
known to Londoners to
need particular mention
here. An English writer
says that these cartoons
are “ without question the
most masterly and the
most suggestive satirical
comment on public affairs
now appearing in this
country.” I have thought
the same thing myself,

“a CORNISH FISHING VILLAGE”
some ways the most remarkable artist that the
country has produced. His weekly cartoon and
jokes in the “Bulletin” have a grim humour that
rarely fails to grip and he has shown his capacity
for invention in his journalistic work by being
the first to exploit the comic possibilities of
the Australian native bear. But it is as an illus-
trator that his work will be known in the future.
His resourcefulness in treating a wide variety of sub-
jects is extraordinary. Some of his best work, such
as Pollice Verso in the Melbourne Gallery, is in
pen and ink, but he also does illustrations in mono-
chrome wash, and water-colour. He has illustrated
an edition de luxe of the poems of Hugh McCrae,
one of the most promising of younger writers in the
Commonwealth, and he completed a set of a
hundred drawings for a new edition of the
“Satyricon of Petronius” issued by the Ralph
Strauss Press. A set of drawings which may cause
a stir in the art world is about to be used for
an edition de luxe of the “ Memoirs of Casanova.”
The artist is now engaged on a series of illustrations
for one of Shakespeare’s comedies and Gay’s
Beggar’s Opera. While objection has been made
to the audacity of some of Lindsay’s illustrations,
which are sometimes treated with Rabelaisian
freedom, there is no denying the freshness of his
conceptions and the skill with which he gives a
touch of life to the most trivial incident. The fact
that most of Lindsay’s best work is confined to

BY HAYLEY LEVER

but from a fellow-

countryman such a eulogy
might perhaps have appeared exaggerated.

AN “OPAL ROOM” DESIGNED
BY MR. KEMP PROSSOR.
During the last few years Mr. P. Kemp
Prossor has been doing work of great value in domes-
tic decoration—work that deserves to be highly
praised for its expression of a personal conviction
and its absence of conventionality. One of the
greater merits of his effort is its freedom from the
domination of traditional style; he does not limit
the scope of his practice by accepting or adopting
any of the recognised mannerisms in design, he aims
rather at the creation of a decorative system which
will allow him full scope for the explanation of his
temperamental inclinations and for the display of
his artistic feeling. In all the rooms he has
designed his main purpose has been the working
out of schemes of colour in which the complete
effect has been arrived at by the careful adjust-
ment of tint to tint and tone to tone and by
making every detail play its right part in the
development of the central intention. The “Opal
Room,” which is illustrated here, shows charac-
teristically what are his principles and his methods,
how he calculates his colour proportions and how
he applies his colour accents so as to explain the
motive he has chosen, and how he keeps his whole
scheme in exact relation without ever allowing it to

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