Studio: international art (40.1907)

Reviews and Notices

years the constant employer of Birket Foster, Mr.
Herbert Cundall was also personally acquainted with
the latter, and it was at his suggestion that in 1880
the veteran painter made his first etching on copper,
the success of which led to his devoting consider-
able time to similar work. In collecting the
material for his book Mr. Cundall has had the
assistance of the artist’s eldest son, and also of
his niece, Mrs. Evans, who placed at his disposal
many drawings and sketches, as well as much
literary matter not before published, including
the journal of a fellow traveller of Birket Foster’s
that is full of interesting incidents. All, perhaps,
will not endorse the biographer’s claim that the
dainty water-colour drawings, of which a very repre-
sentative selection is here reproduced, “ appeal to
the majority of the British public more than the works
of any other artist,” for the style of which their
author was a typical exponent is now somewhat
old-fashioned; but everyone must appreciate the
original technique, delicacy of execution and feeling
for the poetic side of English country life many of
them display. Beginning his art career as a mere
boy in the humble position of apprentice to the
wood-engraver, Ebenezer Landells, who was one of
the originators of “ Punch,” Birket Foster designed,
drew, and cut some of the initial letters in the
earliest numbers of that popular periodical, and he
also worked for some time on the “ Illustrated
London News” under his master. It was not,
indeed, until he was thirty-three years old that he
gave up working for the wood-engravers to devote
himself almost entirely to painting in water-colour,
and to the last the influence of his early training
was very distinctly noticeable in everything from
his hand.

Five Italian Shrines. By YV. G. Waters.
(London: John Murray.) 12s. net.—It would be
difficult to over-estimate the significance of the
fact that in the great revival of sculpture that
took place in Italy in the thirteenth century, its
exponents should in so many cases have found
their noblest expression in monuments to the
dead, some of which still remain uninjured to
bear witness not only to the remarkable tech-
nical skill and wealth of imagination of their
authors, but also to their deep religious feel-
ing and belief in the immortality of the soul.
Of these, four—the tombs of St. Augustine at
Pavia, St. Dominic at Bologna, St. Peter Martyr
at Milan, and St. Donato at Arezzo—have been
selected by Mr. Waters as specially typical of
the great Pisan school, which led the way in
the new movement, and he has strained a point

to class with them a work of a very different kind
—the Tabernacolo of Orcagna in Or S. Michele at
Florence—justifying its inclusion, though it is not
a personal memorial, by pleading its extraordinary
beauty and the romantic interest of its creation, an
argument that would apply with equal force
in several other cases. Imbued with an en-
thusiasm akin to that which rendered possible
the evolution of the masterpieces he describes, the
author of a book that will delight all lovers of
Italian plastic art at its best, paves the way for its
true appreciation by an able essay on Tuscan
sculpture, in which he defines the peculiarities that
differentiate it from, that of any other country, and
dwells on the fact that classic influence had much
to do with its early emergence from the hampering
trammels of tradition. In dealing with the four
shrines he tells the life-story of the man com-
memorated, describes their gradual growth, and
gives numerous excellent illustrations, some of
them in photogravure, of each work as a whole
and of its finest details.

Staffordshire Pots and Potters. By G. Woollis-
croft Rhead, R.E., and Frederick Alfred
Rhead. (London: Hutchinson.) 21s. net.—The
joint work of two practical potters who have
achieved high distinction in their profession, and
are, moreover, men of wide culture, this volume
on the Staffordshire workers in clay might well be
called the romance of English ceramic art, so
forcibly realised are the personalities of the crafts-
men presented to the reader, so skilfully are the
accounts of their technical triumphs interwoven
with their life stories, and so vividly is the local
colouring of their environment reproduced. To
the amateur as well as to the expert collector, the
book, with its clear definitions of the peculiarities
differentiating the work of one potter from another,
and its wealth of illustrations, some of them in
colour, of the treasures in museums and private
collections, will be a mine of wealth; but it will
also appeal forcibly to the antiquarian and historian,
for the authors have made a point of tracing the
connection between the progress of their art and
the advance of civilisation, dwelling on the relics
left behind them by pre-Roman, Roman, and
Anglo-Saxon potters, as well as the triumphs of
the Tofts, the Elerses, Whieldon, Wedgwood,
Minton, and their contemporaries and successors.
Moreover, they have supplemented the photo-
graphic reproductions of typical examples of
ceramic ware with a number of clever pen-and-ink
drawings, some of them, such as the Roman Potter
in Britain and the Mediceval Encaustic Tile-maker,