Studio: international art (9.1897)

Reviews of Recent Publications

familiar to all readers of The Studio. M.
Mourey proves himself to be especially in sympathy
with the Renaissance of Industrial Art in this
country, and the chapters devoted to William Morris
Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Anning Bell, and
W. A. S. Benson are amongst the best in the book.
It is proverbial that lookers-on see most of the
game, and the opinions of so enlightened a foreign
observer as M. Mourey will be read with advantage
by every one interested in the developments of
modern English art.

Oxford Characters: A Series of Lithographs.
By Will Rothenstein. (London : John Lane.

3s-)—This excellently turned out volume is
another instance of the cleverness of Mr. Rothen-
stein whatever be his material. One doubts
whether the word caricature had not been a more
exact title. Yet, perhaps, the curious limitation of
the artist's sympathy with his subjects just falls
short of the exaggerated humour which is carica-
ture, as it does of the finer humour which reveals
solidarity with humanity. These lithographs im-
press you as superb testimonials to the draughts-
man's skill; but you feel all the time that his
perhaps unconscious effort was chiefly to show
mastery of his material, and that the reflection of
the personality of the sitter was quite of secondary
importance. So far this has tinged all Mr. Rothen-
stein's work, and given it an air of artificiality,
which is, if more than artifice yet less than art, in
fact as well as in syllables. No one living could
could do better than these in similar fashion ; but
having proved over and over again that he is an
artist in technique and manner, we arc not likely to
forget it, but can but wish that Mr. Rothenstein
would. Then, working without self-consciousness,
his future efforts might astound us; for from talent
like his, genius may arise at any moment.

Directory of Science, Art and Technical Schools.
By Ray. S. Lineham. (London: Chapman &
Hall, Limited. Price 2s. 6d.)—This is the second
edition of a work which must have taken great
pains to compile, and which, we gather from the
preface, is to make its appearance annually. It is
a much more complete directory than that issued
last year, and ought to prove useful. We think,
however, the publishers would be well advised if
they confined the advertisement pages to the two
ends of the book instead of interpolating them in
the text.

Arthur Boyd Houghton: A Selection from his
work in Black and White, printed for the most
part from the original wood-blocks. With an intro-
ductory essay by Laurence Housman, 1896.
*54

(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ld.)
—This is an age of resurrections; and it is a sign
of the pace at which we are moving that we should
have left so far behind the works of the compara-
tively recent period of the sixties that there should
be room for a re-issue of the productions of that
decade, and that, when presented to us as they are
to-day, they should bring with them somewhat of
the savour of novelty. The present revival of the
cultus of Arthur Boyd Houghton is mainly due to
the passionate advocacy of Mr. Laurence Hous-
man, whose own remarkable literary and artistic
gifts render what he has to say on the subject
worthy at least of respectful attention. Whether
the introductory essay he contributes to the selec-
tions from Houghton's work or the reproductions
of the works themselves are the more likely to con-
vince the sceptical and induce connoisseurs to share
Mr. Housman's own enthusiastic admiration for the
object of his choice it were, perhaps, rash to pre-
tend to forecast.

Starting with the pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Housman
shows how the work of a group of younger men,
viz., Walker, Pinwell, and Houghton was, in a
sense, the outcome of, and yet distinct from, the
earlier work. The later was less literary in tone, it
is true, but at the same time it set itself to grapple
with a problem from which the work of the first
period had practically held itself aloof. The pro-
blem was no less than the maintaining the highest
mastery of style compatible with extreme realism of
treatment. Thus Houghton and his school did
not disdain to handle subjects which the more
rigid pre-Raphaelites of the first period would have
considered too sordid and too commonplace for
art to deal with at all. Houghton's endeavour in
a word may be summed up as the glorification of
the crinoline. But more than this, not only in
respect of subject, but in the quality aimed at, was
the difference of mode apparent. Whereas the
earlier artists seem to have regarded the area of the
wood-block as a thing almost too precious to do
other than occupy it all over with intricate and
elaborate detail, a plan not seldom involving the
loss of general effect and clearness of definition by
overcrowding, on the other hand Houghton knew
how to appreciate the value of contrast. He was
not chary of white spaces, of contrasts between
light and dark masses sharply defined.

The largest number of illustrations are selected
from Dalziel's Arabian Nights, Houghton's most
important work. Others are from Frederick
Warne's Don Quixote; from two volumes of verse,
viz., Ballad Stories of the Affections and North