Studio: international art (11.1897)

Studio-Talk

"VISIONS ' BY G. MENTESSI

Nature, not like one of a Sunday holiday crowd, Two of the points which strike one are the paucity

but with the true artist's eye, quick to notice and of the portrait in the purely Italian school, and the

admire the subtle play of light, which comes but general increase in the landscape studies. Of

for an instant, and then is gone. And yet his these last the Glasgow school contributes almost

landscapes are instinct with truth and power, the the entire contents of one of the rooms, Macaulay

truth and power of beauty. Even his severest Stevenson, and Archibald Kay sending most

critics were put to silence by one of his pictures excellent and sympathetic work. The former's

exhibited at the last Exhibition of the XL, and Evensong is remarkable for the delicacy of its

hung prominently in the centre of the room. The technique and the finely executed effect of haze

small illustration on page 126, which we are enabled and stillness in the landscape. Both these artists,

to publish by the kindness of the artist, gives but a and indeed most of the Glasgow school, possess

faint idea of its charm. It may indeed be said of the art of infusing into their work that note of

Leistikow's pictures that they are convincing in underlying poetry without which landscape painting

their very beauty. is a mere mechanical effort.

G. G.

Of the larger canvases, Villegas sends Murio il

VENICE.—The unquestionable advan- Maestro^ which, save for certain defects in the
tage that pictures hung without that arrangement of the foreground, deserves to be
haunting economy of margin from ranked with this painter's best work. The picture
which canvases suffer in the Academy represents the scene round the bed of a dying man,
is nowhere more strikingly exempli- and in the group of surrounding retainers Villegas
fied than in the exhibition lately opened here. shows his wonderful power of depicting emotion •
None of the pictures are skied, none are crowded the genuine grief, and its servile imitation, the
into corners where their individuality is apt to be passive callousness of usage on the face of the
overlooked or their delicacy of colour destroyed by priest, the mere gaping curiosity and the frank
the juxtaposition of a scheme more crude and indifference of those who make the occasion one
attracting, while more than one of the large can- for the hasty acquirement of booty, are all realistic-
vases has a wall to itself. ally rendered. There is a certain shallowness in
128