Studio: international art (42.1908)

Studio-Talk

hardly at all with a realistic
presentation of it, he has
yet achieved something
which realist and impres-
sionist alike often miss—he
has succeeded in transfer-
ring to his canvases some-
thing of the evanescent
and mysterious beauty, so
elusive and yet so distinc-
tive, which clothes the hill-
sides of his native land.

E. D.

V

'IENNA.— A few
months ago the
art-world suffered

'the game of hen and chickens" by george russbix ▼ a heavy blow by

the death of Wilhelm

ot his work—work which is lyrical rather than Bernatzik, one of Austria's most prominent artists
dramatic, and which is characterised by simplicity and of the modern school. The deceased painter was
spontaneity, and by a deep and abiding sympathy. one of the original founders of the Vienna Seces-

- sion, and he was also among those who joined the

Mr. Russell has a vivid sense of the mystery and seceders from this body when the split was brought
charm of Irish landscape, and his delicate percep- about. After that event the artist lived a quiet
tion is expressed in fluent colour phrases, in designs secluded life in the midst of his work, so much
that tremble with a frail beauty. His pictures are so that often his friends neither saw nor heard
haunting melodies in colour that embody the fleet- anything of him for months together. The recent
ing expressions of blue mountains as they rise above exhibition of his works at the Miethke Gallery
dim lakes, the inner radiance that glows beneath was arranged by his fellow seceders (that is the
the earth and sea, that hidden beauty, which, to Klimt Group, as they are now called), out of
the ^poet, shines through
the) garment of the actual
and seems to emerge from
the Dare brown ridges with
their walls of loose stones,
from the dark pools set in
the midst of wide heather
fields, from the stretches
of lonely sea-shore over
which an eternal silence
seems to brood. Much
of the charm of Mr. Rus-
sell's work comes from the
element of design in it.
In all his landscapes,
however slight in treat-
ment, one is conscious of
this quality of design as
a positive force. And
while, like many modern
artists, Mr. Russell is
chiefly concerned with his
interpretation of nature and " in Donegal " by george russell

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