Studio: international art (34.1905)

Reviews

Roberts the keen, alert man of action; in the
Hon. Chief Justice Moss the acute, cautious, legal
mind; and in the Hon. G. W. Allen the imaginative,
contemplative man of aesthetic tastes—all these
distinct and well-defined characters.

Miss Florence E. Ward, R.C.A., is one of the
few representatives of plastic art in Canada—more
particularly of those following it as a profession ; and
in it she has discovered her vocation. Dominated
by an intense appreciation of life—in form, rather
than colour—she strives sincerely to create again
in solid material her vivid and altogether truthful
conceptions. Several successful portrait busts
attest her ability to model what she sees with grace
and dignity; and the creation of many imaginative
subjects tell of her sympathy with life, and her
satisfaction in expressing it in ideal compositions.

J. G.

SALZBURG.—We give a reproduction in
colours of a water-colour drawing by
Prof. Hans Nowack. Prof. Nowack was
a pupil of the Imperial Arts and Crafts
School in Vienna. In 1889 he was appointed by
the Portuguese Government to teach drawing and
painting in an art school in Madeira. Inspired
by the beautiful scenery of the island, he produced
water-colour landscapes during the seven years he
spent there. After leaving Madeira he spent a
year at Faro, in Portugal. King Carlos, who is
himself a clever artist, possesses some of his pictures.
On returning to Austria he lived for four and a
half years in Bozen (Tyrol), the picturesque streets
of which interesting old town offer many attractive
subjects for the artist. At the present time he is a
Professor in the Arts and Crafts School in Salzburg.
He is a student and great admirer of English water-
colour art, and his work shows traces of English
influence. F, L. C.

REVIEWS.

Ham House: Its History and Art Treasures.
By Mrs. Charles Roundell. (London : George
Bell & Sons.) 2 vols. Ordinary edition, five
guineas ; edition de luxe, fifteen guineas ; Japanese
vellum edition, thirty-five guineas ; special edition,
seventy guineas; all net.—The time-honoured
saying, noblesse oblige, has received a new inter-
pretation in these latter days, for the owners of
celebrated houses and art treasures no longer look
upon them merely as their private property, but
are ready to admit the public to share their own
enjoyment, and even, in some cases, to allow
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their priceless heirlooms to be reproduced. Mrs.
Roundell, who is the daughter of the late
Wilbraham Tollemache, and therefore a connec-
tion of the present Earl of Dysart, of Ham House
and Buckminster Park, takes as the motto for her
interesting account of his family and ancestral
home the appropriate words of Francis Bacon in
his " Essay on Nobility " : " It is a reverend thing
to see an ancient noble Castle or Building not in
decay, or to see a faire Timber Tree sound and
perfect. How much more to behold an ancient
noble Family which hath stood against the Waves
and Weathers of Time." Beginning with the
marriage of Sir Lionel Tollemache, third baronet,
who succeeded his father in 1640, the fortunes of
the "ancient noble Family "are traced with sym-
pathetic hand down to the death of Admiral
Tollemache in 1837, the dry genealogical details
being brightened up with many a characteristic
anecdote, such as that relating to Lady Aid-
borough's clever repartee to the French official
who, when she was past seventy, dared to question
the statement in her passport that she was but
twenty-five; or her quaint greeting to Louis
Philippe at his first reception at the Tuileries
after his escape from assassination. The work of
Mrs. Roundell, which is enriched with a great
number of excellent reproductions of portraits
and other works of art owned by the Dysart
family, views of Ham House as a whole and of
details of its architecture and furniture, is further
supplemented by a deeply interesting account of
the books and MSS. collected by John, Duke of
Lauderdale, the second husband of Elizabeth,
Countess of Dysart, from the able pen of William
Younger Fletcher, F.S.A., and by an equally
valuable Essay on the Miniature Room at Ham
House by the well-known expert, Dr. G. C. Wil-
liamson, who points out that there is, perhaps, no
other collection in England so choice in quality,
or so various from the point of view of the artists
represented.

Royal and Historic Gloves and Shoes. By W. B.
Redfern. (London : Methuen.) £2 2s. net.—
It is impossible to turn over the pages of this most
fascinating volume—a volume that will appeal to
the antiquarian, the historian, the artist, the needle-
woman, and all who can appreciate beauty of
design and workmanship—without a certain feeling
of sadness, so lifelike are the visions it calls up of
the vanished hands and feet that have long since
crumbled to dust, for which the original ornate
gloves and shoes reproduced in it were fashioned.
With infinite patience and care, Mr. Redfern has