Studio: international art (29.1903)

Reviews

possible to complete and reproduce them, with the
aid of Mr. Catterson Smith, who had worked on the
Kelmscott Chaucer under the personal direction of
Sir Edward. " Accordingly," explains Lady Burne-
Jones, "the conventions agreed upon for certain parts
of the Chaucer drawings have been used here, and the
colour tradition of black-and-white then taught has
been followed. Where the pictures were finished
they have been exactly reproduced, and where, as
in some parts, little more than a suggestion was
given, the skill and sympathy of the pupil have
understood and made it visible to others." So
far as it goes, the work done is remarkable for the
dignity and simplicity of composition, the beauty
of form, and the refinement of expression character-
istic of everything from the hand of the master,
to whom design was ever the first consideration.

Andrea Palladio. By Banister F. Fletcher.
(London: G. Bell&Sons.) 2ij-.net.—Although from
time to time attempts have been made to write the
life of the great master of the Renaissance, who
paved the way for the evolution of the modern style
of Italian architecture, and whose influence is still
felt throughout the whole of Europe, it was reserved
to Mr. Fletcher to combine with an accurate bio-
graphy a really critical examination of the work of
Palladio. Himself a distinguished architect, winner
of many medals, and a very popular lecturer, the
author of this new volume has brought special
qualifications to bear upon the work before him.
He takes a view very different from that of most
critics of the so-called Palladian style, which has
been found fault with as wanting in simplicity and
overladen with ornament, claiming for it quiet
dignity and constant striving after repose, and
declaring that all that is best in modern English
architecture is the result of the influence of the
famous Italian. Mr. Fletcher examines with in-
finite care every typical example of Palladio's work
which has been preserved, explaining the original
significance of each feature, and omitting no detail
of decoration, however apparently trivial. His text
is supplemented with a great number of excellent
reconstructions of plans, facades, interiors, com-
pleted palaces, and groups of houses, enabling his
readers to judge for themselves of the accuracy of
his conclusions, and he adds completeness to the
whole work by a resume of the contents of the
celebrated Quattro, Libri dell' Architeciura, by
the Italian architect himself, explaining for the
benefit of the lay reader the various technical terms
employed.

Views and Reviews. By W. E. Henley. Second
Series. (London: David Nutt.) 5j.net.—The well-

known editor and art critic, Mr. W. E. Henley, has
gathered up, in this little volume, a number of his
most characteristic essays on modern art and
literature, in which he discourses in the easy,
chatty style peculiar to him, on characters so diverse
as Hernani, Napoleon I., Sir Walter Scott, Lord
Byron, David, Gericault, Delacroix, and many of
the great authors and artists of the more immediate
past. The brief notes on Corot, Millet, Monticelli
and Bastien Lepage are especially noteworthy, so fine
is their appreciation of the idiosyncrasies of those
typical leaders in the modern art movement, whilst
the articles on Rodin, the sculptor, and R. A. M.
Stevenson, the art critic, define with rare skill the
characteristic excellencies of those masters of style
in lines so different. " Rodin," says Mr. Henley,
" has seen hell, and, like Dante, has turned his expe-
rience into immortal art." The " Velasquez" of
Stevenson is, in his opinion, worthy to rank with
the " Maitres dAutrefois " of Eugene Fromentin,
a masterly essay, too little known in England.
Corot, to this master of definition, is the " Mozart
of landscape "; with Monticelli the " be-all and
end-all of painting was colour " • Millet is "ethical
as well as plastic"; in the pictures of Bastien
Lepage, in spite of the ugliness of many of them,
"there is a curious distinction of style, an abiding
virtue of sincerity."

In Memoriam. By Alfred Lord Tennyson.
With Illustrations by Alfred Garth Jones.
(London : G. Newnes.) — Perhaps no modern
poem offers greater difficulties to the illustrator
than does the introspective masterpiece, " In
Memoriam," the outcome of many years of weighty
thought, the reflection of the development of one
of the greatest individualities of the nineteenth
century. "In Memoriam" is no mere elegy on a
single lost friend, it is the expression of the deepest
pathos, the most profound passion of humanity
itself; and as such it could only be worthily inter-
preted by one who has himself been stirred to the
depths by sympathy with that pathos, and has felt
in his own heart the throbbing of that passion.
To say that Mr. Garth Jones has failed in a
task so stupendous that even Sir John Millais
might well have shrunk from attempting it, is
no disparagement of that clever draughtsman,
whose work indeed shows in this case, so far as
actual execution is concerned, an advance in
technical skill. Though not so satisfactory in
expression as the designs for " Paradise Lost,"
the drawings gain by the abandonment of the
Egyptian rigidity of figure, the heavy black tree
masses, and irritating cross hatching previously

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