Studio: international art (12.1898)

Studio- Talk

a waist-belt buckle in worked silver, very pretty
in design and executed in quite characteristic
style. G. M.

LONDON—The office of President of the
Royal Society of Painters in Water-
Colours is second only in importance
to the Presidentship of the Royal
Academy. It can be held only by a
man of real eminence in the world of art, and dis-
tinguishes its possessor as an artist of note and a
leader whose influence is widely acknowledged.
Therefore it is easily understood that a great deal
of interest should have been felt in the election of
a successor to Sir John Gilbert, who had for so
many years presided over the society. The general
opinion was that the claims of Professor Herkomer,
who has, in the position of Deputy-President, given
every proof of his rare executive ability and sound
judgment in questions of art politics, would prove
irresistible, and that he would be chosen to lead
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the society for which he has done so much. But
the actual voting proved that he had a strong
opponent in Mr. E. A. Waterlow, one of the
cleverest and most popular of living landscape
painters, who had so large a following that on the
first voting he was able to tie with his competitor.
The Professor refusing to exercise his right as acting
President to give a casting vote, a second ballot
was necessary, and in this Mr. Waterlow gained a
majority of one. Both artists are to be heartily
congratulated—Mr. Waterlow on his election, and
Professor Herkomer on the generosity which led
him to refuse to take an advantage to which he was
fully entitled. _

The winter exhibition of the Royal AVater-Colour
Society was in some respects less important than
usual. It suffered from the comparative absence
of work of real distinction, and from a lack of
variety in the material brought together. The best
things were the landscapes of Mr. R. W. Allan,