Studio: international art (23.1901)

Flower and Plant Studies

"THE LESSER PERIWINKLE" BY J. FOORD

pays heed to their chatter, so that a genuine know-
ledge of plants and their flowers has a chance of re-
maining a quiet art influence in many British schools.

Were it not that good works proclaim themselves
and belong to the public, it might be well not to
draw wide attention to the modest excellence of
Miss Foord's drawings, lest publicity should do
harm to the unpretentious movement that Miss
Foord helps to lead. It is so easy to injure such
a useful tendency in art by making those whom it
benefits too conscious of what they owe to its
influence, and thus its real friends ought to feel
nervous when they speak in praise of its achieve-
ments. They should remember, first of all, that
the word "Art," like the word "Man," is what
may be called a chameleon of speech, a term of
vague, ever-varying significance ; and they should
remember, too, that art does not come to those
who are too self-centred to be observant and
frankly sincere. Miss Foord, unlike most women
artists of to-day, does not " try " to be various and
clever. Her aim is to be thorough, and she is not
fascinated by the thousand recipes of style that

now do very inadequate duty for simple traditions
of sound craftsmanship. The great majority of art
students will talk to you about a score of different
ways in which a given piece of work may be done.
If they knew but one good way, knew it through
and through, how fortunate they would be ! For
they would have at their easy command a means
of expression that would be to them as a second
native language, susceptible of any transformation
that can be given to it by the idiograph of an
artist's temperament and character. He who is
familiar with any form of artistic speech, however
limited it may be in range, usually employs it in a
manner that is interesting, unaffected, and his own.

Miss Foord, by patient and observant study lrom
Nature, has given us a very pleasing new form of
useful work, that has traits in common with the
illustrations to be found in the excellent botanical
books of the beginning of the nineteenth century.
At the first glance it may seem that Miss Foord
has been influenced also by the Japanese, but a
careful examination of her drawings will show that
the decorative craft of line is North-European in
its careful explanatoriness of character. It does
not possess that amazing suppleness and lightness
of " shorthand touch " for which the Japanese are
especially famous, and which they owe probably
as much to the nervous constitution of their
race as to the thoroughness of their youthful
training in the use of brushes.

Anyone who desires to make further acquaint-
ance with Miss Foord's charming work should
study her " Decorative Flower Studies," a truly
beautiful and valuable book that has just
been published. It contains no fewer than
forty large plates of different flowers, all printed in
colours by means of a French stencil process.
There is also a satisfactory account of each flower,
as well as a set of pen-drawings of its separate parts.
The coloured plates are nearly all very good ; they
have a certain spaciousness of treatment that is full
of delicacy and freedom ; and we have no doubt
at all that the book, considered as a whole, is a
real gain to all who take delight in the decorative
representation of flowers. Many of the plates—
and notably those of The Horse Chestnut, The
Lilac, The Sweet Pea, The Hose Safrano, The
Day Lily, The Wistaria, The Lavender, The Parrot
Tulip, The Plumbago, The Japanese Anemone, The
Laburnum, The Clematis, The Zinnia, T/ie Nastur-
tium, The Briar Rose, The Lesser Periwinkle, The
Ki?tgcup, The Honeysuckle, and The Gorse—ought to
be sold separately, so that they might be purchased
by those who cannot afford to buy the whole book.

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