Studio: international art (6.1896)

Studio- Talk

BIRMINGHAM.—The chief items of has turned out in the past a quantity of good

news in connection with the art-world stained-glass as well as metal-work, but there is

of the Midland metropolis during the still room for plenty of improvement in this direc-

month of September have been the tion. Mr. William Morris's tapestries have also

opening of the autumn exhibition of been a revelation to those stay-at-homes who have

the Royal Society of Artists ; the closing of the never seen an Arts and Crafts Exhibition or a

loan collection of modern tapestries and designs London show beyond the Academy,

for stained-glass and mural decorations in the A. B. C.
Corporation Art Gallery ; and the reopening of the
Municipal School of Art for the autumn session.

"^k J EWLYN. — Mr. Passmore Edwards,
The autumn exhibition in the society's rooms in desiring that his name should live in
New Street is their sixty-ninth. It is somewhat granite, has scattered reading-rooms
above the average of the last few years. There is ^ and hospitals over the length and
the usual number of works by R.A.'s and other breadth of his native county of Corn-
well-known artists from the Academy and the New wall, and lo ! he has now built a picture gallery for
Gallery, about which it is not necessary to speak in the Newlyn artists. The building, which is to be
detail. The interest of the exhibition lies in the opened on October 22, stands on the straight dust-
work of the younger members of the society and blown road that joins the fishermen's cottages of
the younger artists of the Midlands. Several of Newlyn with the villas and terraces of Penzance,
them give promise of fine work in the future ; upon a plot of ground given by Mr. Le Grice, a
indeed, a few of them give more than promise, wealthy landowner. It stands between the dusty
Mr. E. Gabriel Mitchell, who has recently been road and the deep sea, which is here held back from
elected an associate of the society, has for the last its habitual encroachment by a wall under the
few years been exhibiting landscape work of the shelter of which rope-makers were wont to work,
most poetic quality, and he is already effecting an wetted by the very sea whose waters they spun
influence upon the point of view and methods of their webs to circumvent,
manipulation of some of the younger landscapists -,—

of the district. His two pictures here, The Frolic The gallery is massive enough to perpetuate the
Wind that Breathes the Spring, and Rest Comes name of the donQr through many generations. On
with the Night, are among the best things in the the end facing the road there are four spaces t0 be
collection. Mr. Foster Newey's Spring is another fiUed with rep0usse copper-work beaten by the
good drawing of fine quality. Among other artists Newlyn industrial Class, from designs by Messrs.
whose pictures are noteworthy should be mentioned Mackenzie and Gotch, the former of whom has
Messrs. F. W. Davis, Charles M. Gere, G. O. ]ab0ured long and disinterestedly to create and
Owen, Walter Langley, Oliver Baker, Edward S. nurse this charming handicraft amongst the fisher-
Harper, Arnesby Brown, Alfred East, C. C. Read, boyg of the village> and the pane]S; presenting
C. H. Whitworth, and some of the St. Ives land- Earth> Air> Fire and Watei. wiUj it is pretty certSL[h]
scape painters. There are also good pictures by be a most interesting feature of the facade. The
H. H. La Thangue and Frank Brangwyn among actual gallery is forty_five feet long by twenty-five
others. - in width, the roof being canopied and lighted

. , . by a lantern. There are also rooms for a care-
The designs and cartoons for stamed-glass wm-

, 0 -it. t -r, • taker, a committee-room, retiring-room, store-

dows and wall decorations by Burne- Tones, Rossetti, „ n , , . . . ,

_ ,,r . TTT , ^ room, &c, and altogether it is a very handsome

Ford Madox-Brown, \\ llliam Morris, YY alter Crane, and ver kind ift

Henry Holiday, Frederic Shields, W. B. Richmond, ^ 1 ^ _

and others, which have been exhibited in the

Corporation Art Gallery for the last three months, Problems connected with the maintenance of

have been eagerly studied by the students of the such an institution in a small community have,

School of Art and other art-workers and art-lovers however, plunged the artists of Newlyn into most

in Birmingham. It is work of a kind which has serious perplexities ; and committee meetings, at

for some years had a great influence upon the which all the many difficulties and their solutions

rising school of Birmingham designers, so that the are thrashed out one by one, are now rife amongst

opportunity was made the most of. Birmingham them. N. G.

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