Studio: international art (9.1897)

Reviews of Recent Publications

white means light, black darkness or shadow, and
yellow poison, captivation and disturbance. On
this page also the author gives some symbolic
hatchings to represent colours, but departs quite
from the usual heraldic conventions. Thus vertical
lines which in heraldry mean gules here mean
green, while horizontal lines (in heraldry azure)
stand for grey. To illustrate the use of these the
author adds a sketch of a labourer plodding along
a road, all duly hatched. The seventh, eighth,
ninth and tenth sheets are devoted to four highly
decorative and astoundingly clever colour drawings,
executed apparently in a mixed process of etching
and aquatint, in which he applies the symbolic
colours. The first of the four (entitled The
Dismal Load), represents a labourer with gloomy
visage towing a barge in the twilight. The second
(The Poor Girl), shows the head of a forlorn
maiden against a grey factory town as background.
The third (Homeward at Evening), is more cheer-
ful, representing the head of a farmer's daughter
against a warm sky. What the symbolic meaning
of the prevailing brown tint may be is not stated.
The fourth (The Mother), is a less satisfactory
picture. We are then suddenly presented with the
two clefs, bass and treble, gaudily ornamented in
stripes. Why the note D immediately below
middle C should be scarlet in the bass clef, and
yet the same note be green when written in the
treble clef, is but one of the many contradictions
to be found. This absurdity is followed by two
sheets on which a few bars of Beethoven, Schu-
mann and Wagner are similarly honoured with

coloured stripes between the lines of the staves—
with the same contradictions. Note A is grey in
the bottom of the bass clef, green in the treble
clef, and scarlet when it stands on the top line of
the bass. Note E in the bass is blue, both when
that note serves as seventh in the key of F, and
when it serves as dominant in the key of A. The
colours, therefore, do not symbolise any tonal
relations whatsoever. In the scrap from Tann-
haiiser, though written in C major (treble), the
tints contradict those given on sheet three, for now
F is grey, A green, C blue, and E red. In fact, so
far as any sane or logical connection between
music and colour is concerned, the whole affair is
an absurdity. The work concludes with an enig-
matical coloured etching (The Two Voices), of a
scratchy texture, and with two "finis" sheets, the
last of which in black and white represents an owl
glowering over a dragon which has apparently
fallen dead after the effort of laying a rather large
egg. Mr. Joseph Sattler is a most amazingly
clever artist; but as for the riddle which he here
propounds in "My Harmony," we give it up.

Silvanus P. Thompson.
Mr. Charles Robinson, whose drawings will be
familiar to readers of The Studio, has just com-
pleted a series of remarkable illustrations for a
work entitled The Child's World, which is shortly
to be published at the Bodley Head. By the
courtesy of Mr. John Lane, we are permitted to
reproduce (page 74) one of Mr. Robinson's drawings
upon a slightly larger scale than that adopted for
the book in question.

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