Studio: international art (35.1905)

The Tempera Exhibition

He painted for Altona scenes from the long-
vanished past: how the colony at the mouth of
the Elbe was founded; how the people of Altona
in the seventeenth century sheltered their fugitive
brethren in the faith ; how the panic of Napoleonic
times broke over the town; and, side by side with
these, a day from the more recent past, when, after
the war of 1864, the victorious Prussian troops
made their entry amidst the ringing of bells.
This last picture especially rose far above the usual
average in the originality of its composition. For
Dettmann had the happy inspiration of placing
the spectator upon the roof of a house, whence
the inhabitants are witnessing the entry of the
troops. We look down on the gay procession
winding through the streets far below ; and above
all the military display the flags that are hung out
from every house stream and flutter merrily—a
brilliant flourish of colour, splendid in its pictorial
effect.

It is a life-work of rare versatility that unfolds
before us, when we consider Dettmann’s career up
to the present moment. And yet we may any
day be prepared for new surprises, which the
youthful master can and certainly will give us.

On his removal to Konigsberg in 1901, when he
was made Director of the Academy of Art in that
town, he found a long-wished-for opportunity to
exercise his exceptional talent for teaching, which
even in his Berlin days had been much appreciated ;
and thus are opened up to this unwearying artist a
new field of industry and a new fund of material,
to be used by him with untiring zeal for the deepen-
ing and extending of those great powers from which
we hopefully anticipate fresh harvests as the
years go on. He is numbered among the few
German artists of our day in whom we have real
confidence.

T

HE TEMPERA EXHIBITION AT
THE CARFAX GALLERY.

At the time of the first Tempera Exhi-
bition, held in April and May, 1901, at Leighton
House, there was no organised body of artists in
tempera. The Tempera Society is the direct out-
come of that exhibition. Nor, indeed, was it other-
wise than fitly accordant with the natural sequence
of things that the leaders of the movement should
have forgathered at the beginning at Leighton

“ST. VITUS’S DANCE”

BY G. GARSTIN HARVEY