International studio (57.1915/1916)

Reviews and Notices


PART OF MURAL DECORATION FOR THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, WICHITA, KANSAS, U.S.A.

BY ARTHUR S. COVEY

practice of art also he discerns the collectivist
spirit at work. “ The artist’s talents,” he remarks
in one place, “are cramped and confined by the
collectivist banding and branding. Do not painters
get branded as painters of cows or clouds, sea or
subject. . . . ? It is time the artist set himself to
stimulate the layman by showing a keener interest
in objects of daily use. And let him come off his
pedestal and make his coal-scuttle beautiful.”
But it is in architecture that he sees the tendency
most powerfully at work. “ It is inconceivable
that so many of our leading architects at the present
time should be reviving these samples of ancient
sin,” he says, apropos of the cry now being raised
for the so-called “English Renaissance” style.
“ Collectivism and conformity have made them
mimic the manners of those they looked up to.”
There is, as may be inferred, much matter of a
controversial nature in this volume, but on the other
hand there is also a good deal which will claim
general assent, as when he observes that “ Healthy
individuality does not tend to self-righteousness.
On the contrary it helps to eradicate those faults
while selfish thoughtlessness is practised by blind
obedience to custom.”

A second and revised edition of the popular hand-
book How to Appreciate Prints by Mr. Frank
Weitenkamp, Chief of the Print division of the
New York Public Library, has just been published
by Grant Richards (ps. 6d. net). The plan of the
book has undergone no change, but each chapter
has been revised where necessary. The book
covers the whole ground of what is nowadays

comprised in the term “ Graphic Art ”—etching,
line engraving, mezzotint, aquatint and kindred
methods, wood engraving, lithography, colour
printing, and photo mechanical processes, and
there is a chapter with good advice on the care of
prints. The book contains numerous reproduc-
tions of prints referred to in the text.

The Committee of the Vasari Society, which
has for its object the publication of reproduc-
tions of select drawings by the Old Masters,
have, notwithstanding the increasing difficulty they
have encountered in finding unpublished draw-
ings in English private collections of a really high
artistic standard, been able to place in the hands
of their subscribers a very interesting collection of
reproductions forming the society’s ninth volume.
Twenty - eight examples are included in this
volume, and the principal source apart from
public collections is the collection of Mr. Henry
Oppenheimer. Leonardo, Michelangelo, del Sarto,
Carpaccio, Titian, and Canaletto, among the Italians,
Rubens, Goltzius, Rembrandt and Jacob Koninck
among the masters of the Low Countries, Albrecht
Diirer the German, and Jean Fouquet, Jacques
Callot, and Antoine Watteau of the French School
are all represented by interested drawings repro-
duced by the Oxford Press with remarkable fidelity,
the tints of the originals being rendered as nearly
perfectlyas possible. The distribution of the society’s
volumes is restricted to members subscribing one
guinea per annum. Communications respecting
the society should be addressed to Mr. A. M. Hind
at the British Museum, London, W.C.

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