Studio: international art (46.1909)

Studic-Talk

“a CHODOW girl” BV VACLAV MALY

(By permission of the Editor of “ Zlata Praha," Prague)

were very few examples of plastic art, but these
few were very good. Jan Stursa proved himself
also to be a sculptor of merit in his crouching
figure, while Sandor Jaray (Berlin) exhibited
some fine bronzes and plaster figures. An exhibit
of much interest was the magnificent work “An
Ehren und an Siegen reich,” which was presented
to the Emperor in honour of his jubilee. The
binding and other decorative features of this work
were designed by Heinrich Lefler and Josef Urban,
and mark an era in the art of book production.

The exhibition of modern Russian artists at
the Secession was of great interest notwith-
standing the fact that not a few artists of note
were unrepresented, perhaps because their work
is already familiar to the Viennese. Among the
artists represented were N. Rerich, J. Bilibin,
Maliutin, Dobuzhinski, Pasternak, A. Sredin,
Sarubin, Seroff, B. Anisfeld, Boris Kustodieff,
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Miliotti and Vaznetzoft. Each ot these artists
has his own peculiar “ touch ” which distin-
guishes him not only from his fellow country-
men, but also from other artists of the same
genre; some of them strong, individual and
pre-eminent in portrait painting or in landscape,
others like Miliotti, full of romantic mysticism.
The true Russian tinge is also to be seen in
the lithographs and woodcuts by Madame A.
Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Anna Kriiger-Pra-
choff, two ladies whose work shows great talent
and individuality. A. S. L.

BERLIN.—The early death 01 Walter
Leistikow has bereft German art of
a really national painter. It was he
who discovered the beauties of the
much neglected Mark Brandenburg, and he
never tired of rendering the quiet charms of
pretty lakes in which the modesty of fir and
birch was mirrored. He saw idyll and romance
where Prussian rationalism only felt “ the sand-
strewing box of the Holy Roman Empire.” The
posthumous exhibition in the Salon Cassirer
proved that in spite of the artist’s versatility he
remained true to the last to the domain of his
preference, and this faithfulness was rewarded
by an ever-expanding art. What Rembrandt
and Ruysdael did for their Dutch plains, Troyon
and Rousseau for their Barbizon woodland,
Leistikow has accomplished for the Mark. Yet
he travelled much and reproduced nature wher-
ever he was staying. Norwegian fjords, Swedish
coasts, and especially the beauty of the Danish
downlands, recur in his art. He had a hand
for snow and hoar frost, for mist and forest gloom,
and, although he could also closely watch the
sun penetrating such privacies, he felt happiest in
afternoon moods. Leistikow’s fascination issues
from his genuine poet’s soul. He is never the
mere copyist—every branch of a tree, every ripple
of water, is penetrated with poetical essence. Senti-
ment, not sentimentality, the melancholy of the
contemplative, not of the morbid, mind is his dis-
tinction. He loves to dwell in stillness, not in
storm. The exhibition afforded a comprehensive
study of his work. We could see him first as the
careful Eschke pupil; then different influences—
Liebermann, Willumsen and Manet—were traceable,
until he quietly and decisively asserted himself. He
appears to have been strongly touched by the sum-
marising, decorative tendency of his time, less by its
impressionism. After having attempted landscape-
fresco, the execution of which was frustrated by his