Studio: international art (6.1896)

Studio- Talk

This fact, that in strictly limited exhibitions
there is real pleasure to the public and real profit
to the artist, seems only by slow degrees to be
approaching realisation by the managers of the
various galleries. Hitherto their only policy has
been to use to the utmost every available inch of
hanging room, with the result that the exhibitions
so arranged have become wearisome to visitors
and to exhibitors of the better class, lamentable as
ill-assorted collections of low average merit. More
rigid selection and more liberal allotment of wall-
space would be greatly to the advantage of every
one concerned.

At the Grosvenor Studio, Mr. W. J. Donne was
showing at the end of October a fascinating series
of small water-colour studies of Norwegian land-
scape. They were charming in method, and
showed a special observation of subtleties of
atmospheric gradation, and of effects of colour
juxtaposition. With these drawings a number of
exercises and designs by Mr. Donne's pupils were
on view, and proved with what thoroughness he is
succeeding, with more than one of the students
under his care, in conveying the power of observa-
tion and sense of selection, which give to his own
work much of its merit and value.

At the South Kensington students' show of
sketches, &c, the judges awarded prizes to
H. Watson, for a landscape in oil, a really delight-
ful work ; to H. P. Clifford, for one in water-colours,
and to A. Pittman, for a foreground study ; to Victor
Burnand, for a set of clever architectural sketches ;
to F. V. Burridge, for an interior; to Miss Levick,
for modelling ; to A. Shephard, for Still Life : to
A. J. Collister, for a fine architectural subject in
water-colour, one of a half-dozen notable and
masterly pictures; to C. W. Gray, for a portrait of
himself, well conceived and well painted, as were
some really powerful sketches of the sea by the
same artist; and to Miss Levick, Messrs. Mack,
Rawcliffe, and Shackleton, for various subjects.

Among notable exhibits, a delightfully modelled
Fame by Lilian Simpson; a powerful decorative
panel of the Destruction of Pharaoh's Host, by W.
Giles; a capital design for a wall fountain, with
mosaic, by H. Stayne ; and another in metal, by
Hardy; a portrait of a lady, and a landscape, by
A. H. Fisher; another landscape of swelling
downs, capitally painted by Vokes, and some black
and white sketches by Wood, deserve mention;
also some admirable water-colours by Lenfestey; a

poetic study of children wading in the sea, by
Shackleton; and a clever landscape by Glover
should not be forgotten. With no catalogue, no
signatures on the works themselves, and a bare list
of surnames without initials, it is not easy for a
critic to identify the various exhibits.

That South Kensington is strong in etching is
not surprising when you find Mr. Frank Short's
influence at work. Mr. F. V. Burridge, already an
associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers,
shows a study of trees, and one of a distant village,
with the canaletto San Trevaso, Calle de Mezzo,
and The Rialto> three Venetian subjects, admirable
in all respects. Mr. Shackleton's (prize) etching is
a charming study of children by a brook, and the
other students in this class all betray a sense of
the right use of the etched line, which is most
encouraging.

GLASGOW.—By the death of Dr.
Charles Blatherwick, R.S.W., Art
in Scotland suffers a distinct loss,
as up to the time of his death he
was in close touch with all the
different local Art movements. As a painter, Dr.
Blatherwick worked in water-colour with much
success. He was one of the three gentlemen who
founded the Scottish Water-colour Society, and has
all along been invaluable in the management of
its affairs. He was a past president of the Glasgow
Art Club, by which body of artist and lay members
he was highly esteemed.

The work of our Scottish painters is receiving
marked attention and praise from connoisseurs
and critics at the St. Louis Exhibition, an American
institution of much importance. This is the first
occasion on which an organised collection of
pictures by the " Glasgow School" has been
exhibited in America, and it may be said to be
fairly representative of the new movement in
Scotland. Many of the pictures have already
been acquired for private collections in St. Louis
and other art centres, so the appreciation of the
work is all the more noteworthy.

One of our younger painters, Mr. J. Reid
Murray, of Glasgow, who has lately painted some
very beautiful landscape and figure pictures, has
been chosen by the Circle des XIII. of Antwerp to
represent Scotch Art by his work at their forth-
coming exhibition. Mr. Murray's work has already