Studio: international art (30.1904)

Studio-Talk

' THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS . BY ROBERT VAN VOORST SEWELL

(Published and Copyrighted by C. Klackner, New York)

Mr. Sewell is a New York man, and received
his early art training with the Art League of his
native city. Later he went to Paris, where he
spent his most fruitful years of study at the Julian
School, where his strong bent towards the more
purely decorative side of painting was given every
encouragement After the course at Julian's he
essayed to establish himself as a mural painter in
the land of his birth, and it was but a short time
before he had won laurels, and got commissions,
the two things that go to convince an artist that
he has " arrived."

One of the most important pieces of work done
by Mr. Sewell at this time was a decorative frieze
portraying the principal characters in Chaucer's
great poem, " Canterbury Tales," of which

we give two illustrations here. It was com-
missioned as a hall decoration for the country
house of Mr. George Gould, and is perhaps
the most ambitious, as well as the most suc-
cessful, piece of work done by the artist.
The various characters in Chaucer's immortal
poem are represented wending their way towards
the hallowed shrine in the Cathedral of Canter-
bury. The figures stand out against a back-
round of granite walls which line the roadway
and approach the Cathedral gates. Mr. Sewell
has treated his subject more from the pictorial
than from the purely decorative side, and is not
quite in accord with' the accepted ethics of
mural art; but there is rare charm displayed in the
grouping of his figures, and the sense of movement
is excellent, and nearly always in harmony with

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