Studio: international art (10.1897)

Studio-Talk

and paint conscientiously, and your work will mean
something." _

The combination of observation, power of con-
ception, conscientiousness and good technique
make Senno a remarkably fine and sympathetic
painter. Sometimes his conscientiousness runs
away with him, as in the heifer picture just men-
tioned ; but in those, both sea-scapes and land-
scapes, which hang round his studio walls and have
not been worked up for exhibition, his poetry, his
synthetic method and his virile technique are very
apparent. They are the outcome of a cultivated
mind wedded to the spirit of a true artist.

I. M. A.

REVIEWS OF RECENT
PUBLICATIONS.

Jean Francois Millet: His Life and Letters. By
Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady). (London :
Swan Sonnenschein & Co.)—The mission of art, as

Jean Francois Millet expressed it, is to interpret
Nature to those who cannot understand her language.
To do this successfully he added : " All you need
is intelligence and a great desire." Obviously this
dictum, in common with the dicta of most men
who use pictorial rather than literary symbols as
the medium of expression, is not strictly accurate.
Millet's first appeal was distinctly to men who do
understand Nature's language, who have spent their
lives in consciously or unconsciously contemplating
and studying her. Again, to interpret her, some-
thing more than intelligence is needed, as the
highly creditable productions of a thousand-and-
one distinctly intelligent landscape painters show.
But Millet was right when he emphasised the
important part which an all-consuming, impelling
and compelling desire plays in the equipment
of a great painter. Desire, however, must have a
legion of qualities at its back—patience, consis-
tency, virility, and concentration. Given these,
everything else will follow. It is not necessary to
have facility; not necessary to have academic