International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Paintings of Pilade Bertieri

carry out a scheme so ambitious as that planned
by Mr. Wilson. Artists, carpenters, and painters
all did their best, but their efforts were in vain,
handicapped as they were by the difficulty of
obtaining sufficient labour and by the military
regulations that made work after dusk impossible.
The only room that was completed in time is
the First Gallery, in which no structural alterations
have been made or any decorations admitted
beyond the articles shown. These, however, are
most attractive, for the exhibition in this room is
retrospective, and includes work produced by
Dante Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, William
Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones, men who were
intimately concerned in the earlier movements
that were the originating cause of the foundation
of an informal society of art-workers and designers
known as “The Fifteen” from the number of its
members. The society, as Walter Crane told the
writer of this article, held its first meeting one
evening in January 1881, at the house of Lewis
Day, and continued to exist until it was absorbed
by the Art Workers’ Guild, from which sprang the
Arts and Crafts Society as we know it to-day. Its
title was the invention of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson,
and its first President was Walter Crane, some of
whose earlier designs are shown in the retro-
spective exhibition. Among them are certain of
the original drawings for the charming coloured
picture-books for children, which brought him fame
in the Sixties and Seventies.
There are examples, too, of the work of William
Morris, that many-sided man whose influence
affected powerfully the arts and crafts movement
from its inception, although he took no active
part in the foundation of the Arts and Crafts
Society. Some of Morris’s original designs for
chintzes and other fabrics are to be seen in the
retrospective collection, together with cartoons for
stained glass and specimens of the fine printing in
which he took such pride. No one should miss
the quaint series of coloured tiles illustrating the
Months in which Morris collaborated with Rossetti,
Madox Brown, and Burne-Jones. Other tiles,
designed by Burne-Jones alone, illustrate Chaucer’s
Legend of Good Women, and a large cartoon by
Burne-Jones on the north wall of the gallery is
faced on the other side by a still larger picture by
that artist, The Passing of Arthur, lent by Mr.
Goldman. There are other things worthy of notice
in the retrospective section, but comments upon
these as well as upon the whole modern exhibition
must be reserved for the second article.
W. T. Whitley.

The paintings of pilade
BERTIERI.
During the last few years a tendency has
been growing among the younger artists in this
country to seek for the attention of the public by
the use of methods which are to some extent ques-
tionable—questionable, at least, in the sense that
they are contrary to the finer traditions of art
practice. Apparently, the idea by which these
young artists are possessed is that they must jump
at once into the popular view and gain immediate
notice at all costs ; they do not want to work their
way stage by stage into a position of secure pro-
minence : they are anxious to rush the position and
to capture it by a showy and spectacular assault.
They seem to think that they can be famous in a
hurry if only they are vehement enough in their
demand for notice.
This youthful ambition, exaggerated though it is,
could easily be forgiven if it led them to strive after
the highest type of achievement. If the desire to
be famous went in company with the resolve to do
only work which must command respect by its ad-
mirable quality, its thoroughness and its sincerity,


PORTRAIT OF SAM SOTHERN, ESQ. BY PILADE BERTIERI
77