Studio: international art (38.1906)

Studio-Talk

NEEDLEWORK PANEL—“THE SANDPIT” BY KATE BUTTON

Our coloured supplement, representing a needlework panel
by Miss Joan Drew, is interesting on account of the singularly
successful attempt the artist has made to bring within the
limitations of her difficult medium all possible effect of
variety and vibration of colour, and thus to attain a decora-
tive charm such as will appeal to the eye of an artist, but
which we remark is seldom captured within the precise and
decorative laws which govern the art of needlework.

Miss Kate Button, whose work we reproduce, has made
some exhaustive experiments with her needle in the treatment
of landscape; working direct from nature, she attempts such a
careful matching of tones as a landscape painter attempts with
paint. Miss Button has chosen wool or silk as her medium
in preference to paint, and has achieved some results of
remarkable beauty, but we do not find ourselves able to
commend this forcing of the art outside those spheres of
decoration where it is most useful and effective to bring it
into useless competition with the more responsive medium of
paint. Needlework, despite the artist’s persevering attempts,
has not the properties for imitative art. The fact that her
experimi nts have afforded her in her work such artistic self-
expression as, she tells us, is denied to her in painting, justifies
Miss Button’s art from one point of view and makes it par-
ticularly interesting.

The pictures of Mr. Alexander Young recently acquired by
Messrs. Agnew and Messrs. Wallis form one of the most
interesting and important collections of works by the Bar-
bizon and Modern Dutch Schools ever brought together.

Though they number nearly 700 ex-
amples, they are noteworthy for their
quality rather than their quantity, for
Mr. Young was satisfied only with
the best. When it is stated that the
collection contains over fifty Corots,
including Le Lac (the master’s most
important work), The Bent Tree and
Les Baigneurs ; J. F. Millet’s Solitude,
Hagar and Ishmael and The Little
Shepherdess ; Rousseau’s Le Marais ;
Daubigny’s Les Bords de l’Oise; and
first-rate examples of Diaz, Troyon,
Jules Dupre and Charles Jacque, and
amongst the modern Dutch pictures,
Israel’s Shipwrecked Fisherman and
Cottage Madonna; James Maris’ Bridge
and Passing Shower, beside works by
Mauve, William Maris, and Bosboom,

NEEDLEWORK PANEL—“THE BY KATE
VILLAGE ON THE HILL” BUTTON

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