International studio (60.1916/1917)

Studio-Talk

of the brush is marked by the facility and assurance
proper to those who have mastered the craft of
painting. His women appear to us perhaps some-
what sensual, but it must be borne in mind that
Beltran’s art is the product of a Southern nature,
as was the case with the Italian masters of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who exercised
so much influence on Spanish art and whose works
are to be found in large numbers in our public
and private collections.
As we have already said, Beltran has achieved
a success of remarkable importance, for his recent
exhibitions have been really notable events in the
art world of this country. The National Museum
has acquired one of his pictures entitled Noche Azul,
and another fine work, Noche Galante, has been
purchased by King Alfonso, from whom the artist
has received the insignia of the Order of Isabel
la Catolica. J. G. M.

PHILADELPHIA.—That the medium
employed by artists in the expression of
their ideas can be varied in modern
practice of the graphic arts to an almost
unlimited extent, was very well shown in the Four-
teenth Annual Water-Colour Exhibition held at
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from
November 5 to December 10. The Fifteenth
Annual Exhibition of Miniatures was open to the
public during the same period in one of the smaller
galleries. Evidence of the so-styled “new ten-
dencies” was visible on every side, mainly in the
work of painters depending upon the use of colour
unaided by line or light and shade. There was
much of this that should never have been pre-
sented to public view as serious art, but there were
also good things, sound in facture, chromatically
brilliant, quite in the line of modern procedure
yet real works of art, by artists of genuine ability,
gifted with fine visual powers in perception of
much in nature that remains

“PRAISE OF THE MANTILLA” BY FEDERICO BELTRAN-MASIES


an unopened book to the
less observant.

This last point was illus-
trated by Mr. Childe
Hassam’s group of twelve
water-colours, works of an
Impressionist creating design
by means of colour. Mr.
Alexander Robinson as a
colourist also made a notable
showing of a group of
pictures and decorations in
which the vivid hues of the
tropics in the West Indies,
Brazil and Persia are ren-
dered with astonishing effect
with the boldest possible
handling of the brush.
Mr. Alexis B. Many ex-
hibited some very virile
technique in a similar treat-
ment of objects of still life.
Mr. Hayley Lever was repre-
sented by a group of paint-
ings in pure aquarelle, of
the fishing boats and scenery
of Gloucester, Massachu-
setts, favoured very much
of late by American painters
formerly working on the
coast of Brittany or around
St. Ives. Quite unique is

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