Studio: international art (36.1906)

Technical Hints

Technical hints from the

DRAWINGS OF PAST MASTERS
OF PAINTING.—I. SIR P. LELY.

Among the important details connected with
the painter’s training almost ignored in present-day
schools of art, are the methods of convention
employed by many of the past-masters of painting
in their sketches or studies. In looking over a
quantity of students’ drawings of recent date, we
cannot but be struck by the monotonous uniformity
of their treatment. Pen work in Indian ink, with
or without a little wash in neutral tint, or finely
stippled black or red crayon studies, are, perhaps,
the most ordinary methods of expression. A
mixture of black and red crayon on the same
drawing is a daring innovation, and the use of a
green crayon for outline work—common enough in
some Paris ateliers—would, in many British art-
schools, be regarded as ridiculously fantastic.
Some forty years ago, a young architect who had
studied in Paris, and who afterwards was a pupil
in the office of a famous London architect, quite
shocked his chief by making some drawings upon
brown paper and heightening certain effects with
Chinese white. This was a common method
practised in Paris, but, until then, not practised in
London. Among the
works of the early Dutch
and Italian painters, and
the French and English,
more particularly of the
eighteenth century, one
finds a refreshing and
most delightful variety in
these purely technical and
conventional methods of
treatment. In presenting
a series of reproductions
of the most interesting of
these in the pages of The
Studio, the Editor believes
he will be rendering a
service not only to the
art-loving public, but also
to many students and
painters to whom the
originals are inaccessible.

Their true value lies in
their suggestive and stimu-
lating character. The one
selected for illustration this
month is a study in pastel
for a portrait by Sir Peter

Lely, the original of which is in the British
Museum. This is a careful but free sketch made
in black and white chalk, with a slight tinting of
grey and red. The graceful line, the charming
composition, the reticence of the drawing, are alike
singularly happy both in conception and execution,
and the study is one which cannot but enhance the
reputation of the artist. There is little that is not
well known in the treatment of the drawing, but
it constitutes a lesson which may be found of value
to the present-day worker.

Ancient bedsteads and

CRADLES. BY A. S. LEVETUS.

The French Academy has defined a
“lit,” or bed, as “ meuble dont on se sert pour y
coucher, pour y reposer, pour y dormir,” and has
further defined it as comprising in general all that
of which this article is composed : “ sgavoir, le bois
de lit, le tour de lit, le ciel, la paillasse, le sommier,
le matelas, le lit de plume ”—in short, the bedstead,
bedding, and bed clothes. And Webster also tells
us that the word “bed” often includes the bedstead.

Records which have come down to us from
archaic times show that bedsteads were in use
among the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Medes