Studio: international art (10.1897)

The Work of By am Shaw

Augustin," after he has re-
ceived ten kisses from the
princess. Students of An-
dersen will not forget that
the princess, who could not
be wooed with a rose or a
nightingale yet stooped to
kiss a swineherd to obtain a
toy; so that when revealed
in his true character as the
Prince, he spurned her, and
went back to his kingdom
"and shut the door in her
face."

Mr. Byam Shaw's first ap-
pearance at the Royal Aca-
demy was in 1893 with Rose
Marie, taken from a poem by
Rossetti. In 1894 he showed
there the water-colour study,
Abundance, and Silent
Noon, here reproduced ; the
subject is taken from the
nineteenth sonnet in Ros-
setti's " House of Life," and
the lines here italicised were
appended to the title in the
catalogue. The picture is
so full of the spirit of the
poem, that we must be ex-
cused for quoting in full a
sonnet familiar enough to all
lovers of poetry :

Your hands lie open in the long
fresh grass,—
The finger-points look through

like rosy blooms, book-plate byam shaw

Your eyes smile peace. The
pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 1895 Mr. Shaw exhibited a third subject from

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Rossetti's poem, which was hung in a position of

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge, , r„, , c ' . c

„_ b , , ,. , , , u j honour. This bore for motto, a quotation from

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. 1

'Tis visible silence. Still as the hour glass "The Blessed Damozel :

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon fly "We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :— Where the lady Mary is,

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. With her five hand-maidens, whose names
Oh ! clasp we to our hearts for deathless dower, Are five sweet symphonies :

This close companioned, inarticulate hour, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

When twofold silence was the song of Love. Margaret and Rosalys.

This picture, owned by Mr. Frederick Hollyer, Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

is full of the peace of noon. Despite a very satis- And foreheads garlanded,

, , Into the fine cloth white like flame

factory reproduction, it appears here but a travesty ^ golden

of the original, for its colour, especially in the To fashion the birth-robes for them

distant stretches of sunshine, is necessarily lost. In who are just born, being dead.:'

216.