Studio: international art (35.1905)

Studio- Talk

Nance has shown in his drawings a
great knowledge of ihe designs of the
old battleships, and he has been wide-
awake to the possibilities for decoration
contained in the highly ornamental
turreted decks, the rows of projecting
cannon, the large bellying sails, the
bright, sharp-contrasted colours of the
quarterings on the flags. Mr. Nance, in
many of his designs, steps into the land
of fancy—a short step, for the beautiful
turreted vessels of those old times are
as much a part of the strange waters
known only to imagination as they are
a part of the history of the sea.
Technically Mr. Nance disposes of his
favourite subjects in the manner of a
natural designer. The screen we repro-
duce shows how thoroughly he commands
his knowledge for the purpose of design.
The Flying Dutchman is mysterious, it
is a picture with sentiment. The screen
is a scholarly marshalling of his facts
and an arrangement of their decorative
virtues. Easy freedom of design he

“a sea fight”

has always been enslaved
to nature she has always
been enslaved to art. She
has won her freedom from
the wind, but she k always
at the mercy of the sea.
Engineering cannot set
that fact aside. In the
■case of man’s inventions,
has it not been found that
those inventions which
make use of the powers of
the elements always, so to
■speak, belong to decoration,
as, for instance, the wind-
mill and the waterwheel ?
When ships were most com-
pletely the creatures of the
wind and sea they were
then most beautiful. When
in war man was entirely
-dependent upon the friend-
ship of nature, his warships
floated into the history of
decoration. Mr. Morton

BY R. MORTON NANCE

SCREEN: “THE REVENGE”

BY R. MORTON NANCE

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