Studio: international art (19.1900)

Studio- Talk

Art and Industry, and de Riquer won it, though
his design was "sideways" instead of "upright,"
as preferred by the Municipality's conditions.
This was the first in a long and successful series,
amongst which should be mentioned Granja
Avicola (Poultry Farm) 1896, Salchichon de Vich
(Vich Sausage) 1897, Quan jo era noy (When I
was a lad) and Crisantemas (Chrysanthemums) for
his own books, 1898; Mosdicos Hidraulicos, 1899;
a big design for the St. Luke's Club; and Bellezza.
Last year the Athenaeum of Barcelona granted
him the use of their building for an exhibition
of picture posters.

By the lovely little editions of his own writings
illustrated in colour and in monochrome; by his
Christmas Numbers for Seiiores Montaner y Smids,
of Barcelona—El Sueho de las Calaveras, 1896,
and Rinconete y Cortadillo, 1897, de Riquer has
gained a foremost position in his own country. He
has designed, built and decorated his own home
and studio in the Frenerfa, Barcelona. His books
revealed a new Catalan author, and were charac-
terized, so competent critics are agreed, by their
poetry, their freshness, and their glowing expression
of the love of natural beauty.

Standing as he does in the first rank of the
Spanish artists of to-day, de Riquer owes this posi-
tion to his own exertions; he has belonged to

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slttUi mtirmonim : mma

FRIEZE BY A. DE RIQUER

no "school," he has learnt where he could, what
he could. " I have always been obliged to dance
a pas seul" he says, "and I have danced it in
my own way." In this fact lies the secret alike of
his strength and of his limitations. His work, as
our illustrations (some published here for the first
time) certainly attest, shows at once the sincerity
of his convictions and the faithfulness with which
he has pursued his own ideals.

Fernando de Arteaga y Pereira.

STUDIO-TALK.

{From our own Correspondents.)

LONDON.—Mr. F. N. Shepard's drawings,
of which we give illustrations on pages
188, 189, and 191, are things about
which Charles Lamb might have written
an essay. When we look at them and con;
template their whimsical tenderness and their
blending of the grotesque with everyday realism,
we visit in imagination a sort of toybook fairyland,
where the genius of Japan's art plays the quaintest
of pleasant freaks, both with English moods of
thought and with English children. It is thus
that the accompanying illustrations appeal to us,
and it will be noticed in the coloured print how
easily Mr. Shepard, while keeping his subject all in
fantasy, gives a quaintly realistic impression of
what winter is to the poor. The other illustrations
form a complete series, and should be looked at in
the following order: first The Fog, then comes
The Wind and blows away the fog, but brings
The Rain ; the winter scene comes last.

If anyone has a right to speak with authority
on the question of the real secret of success in
the decorations of keyboard instruments it is
Mr. Arnold Dolmetseh, not only because his
thorough and first-hand knowledge of the old key-
board instruments has kept him constantly in
touch with their historic styles of decontion, but
also because he has seen his knowledge tested
experimentally by the artists who have painted his
own clavichords and harpsichords. He speaks^
then, as an expert, and the opinion at which he
has arrived may be thus summed up: that the
applied ornament should be sufficiently flat in
treatment to seem part of the wood itself On
the name-board—that is to say, on the panel
above the key-board—decorative figure subjects
have been tried with success ; but here, as else-
where, the scheme of colour must contrast but
very slightly with the tone of the surrounding

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