Studio: international art (46.1909)

Art School Notes

Colley. The tableaux also included living repro-
ductions of the statuary of Onslow Ford, Mr.
Hamo Thornycroft, and Mr. Mervyn Lawrence,
who is the modelling master at West Ham. Mr.
Legge, who is assisted by Mr. Alfred Bourton,
makes a point of insisting that his students should
work at home as well as at the school. The home
work may be more imperfect than that done under
the master’s eye, but its execution makes the student
think for himself, and if any of the designs brought
by him to the school are above the average in
merit he is encouraged to carry them out. The
course of study at West Ham includes the appli-
cation of art to such crafts as metal work and
enamelling, under Mr. Walter Stoye; wood-
carving, under Mr. G. W. Redmond, and em-
broidery, under Mrs. Legge. The architectural
class, under Mr. W. Godfrey, is believed to be the
only one in London east of Aldgate. At the con-
versazione excellent work in various departments
of the arts and crafts was shown by Mr. Percy
Willats, Mr. Dyer, Miss H. Jacobs, Miss P. M.
Legge, Mr. Stanley Lefaux, Miss Shilling, and
Mr. H. Willis.

Mr. W. Frank Calderon’s new methods of demon-
strating the anatomy of the horse should be of
value to the student of animal painting. As a
rule in the larger art schools, the anatomy lectures
are given by a surgeon whose knowledge of the
subject is naturally more comprehensive than that
of any layman. Unfortunately the surgeon does
not always appreciate the points that alone are
useful to the student of external form, and some-
times bewilders him with technicalities beyond the
range of painters’ or sculptors’ anatomy. Mr. Cal-
deron is a painter who has made equine and canine
anatomy his special study, and his demonstrations,
recently given for the first time at the School of
Animal Painting, were remarkable for their clear-
ness and simplicity. With the skeleton of a horse
before him, Mr. Calderon in his opening address
explained the construction and characteristics of
the bony form, and then, by a method of his own,
proceeded to clothe the skeleton bit by bit with
ligaments of wax and muscles of some red flexible
substance, pointing out as he did so how and where
each one joined the bone and its effect on the
motion of the particular limb under discussion.
Side by side with the skeleton was a coloured
diagram of a horse, life size, with muscles and
ligaments exposed, and the name of each written
upon it, and every student was provided with a
similar diagram on a small scale. On both
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diagrams the bones that show on the surface of
the animal were carefully indicated. The School
of Animal Painting in Baker Street is rich in
anatomical casts and specimens, many of which
were prepared in its class rooms by Dr. Armstead
and Mr. Calderon in conjunction. It may interest
some to know that within a few hundred yards of
the school, lived and died the famous animal
painter and anatomist, George Stubbs, A.R.A.,
whose original drawings, made to illustrate his
well-known book on the horse, are in the possession
of the Royal Academy.

Mr. J. H. F. Bacon, A.R.A., who distributed
the prizes last month at the Putney School of Art,
paid a well-deserved compliment to the head-master,
Mr. J. Bowyer, and his staff. He said that so
much slovenly work was done nowadays in art
schools, that it was a real pleasure to him to see
the care and thoroughness of the studies shown at
Putney. Mr. Bowyer, in his report, was able to
show a steady increase of students, and some
excellent results in the winning of prizes and
scholarships. One of the highest awards at the
disposal of the Board of Education, a National
Scholarship of ;£ioo for drawing and painting, had
been gained by a Putney student, Mr. Edward A.
Waite, and a number of medals and prizes had
been carried off in the National Art Competition.
Sir William Lancaster, who took the chair at the
prize distribution, amused the students by his
quaint description of the way a “ lightning impres-
sionist ” had made the portrait of him that he un-
rolled for the inspection of the audience. The
work by students shown in the room included, in
addition to the regular art school work, some
specimens of pottery — the first efforts of the
newly-founded pottery class, under Mr. Irvine
Bately—and examples of woodcarving and em-
broidery. The studies of “The Lion in Art,” for
which Mr. G. F. Rhead was awarded a silver
medal in the National Art Competition, were of
their kind as good as they could be. Miss Enid
Ledward, who won Sir William Lancaster’s prize
for book illustration, exhibited some sympathetic
studies of children in black and white and colour
that give promise of better things to come later on
in the young artist’s career, and the cushion cover
with which Miss Hilda W. E. B. Hartt gained the
Council’s prize for embroidery, was the best of
several good pieces of needlework, contributed by
Miss B. Edwards, Miss M. Guy, Miss G. Brooke
and others. A National Bronze medal was gained
by Mr. W. H. Howland, National Book prizes by