Studio: international art (47.1909)

Art School Notes

but in any case it is- a dangerous thing.” And he
went on to tell them how he, too, in his youth, had
had a pattern, and that it had been almost a life
struggle to get rid of it. He was obsessed by Fred
Walker, and the obsession blocked his way—even
now he was furious to think of it—for he could
only see in nature what Walker saw. It had
been curious to him to have seen recently, at the
Quilter sale at Christie’s, Walker’s Bathers side by
side with his own Chelsea Pensioners, the picture
in which at length he freed himself from the bond.
“ And yet,” he said, “ I hated the Pensioners be-
cause it was so unlike Walker.” Many other
stories, autobiographical and otherwise, did the
artist tell the students, to whom he confided that
he had never been able to sketch, and that he
envied those who could, and that his present
obsession was the development of a certain form
of black-and-white—the making of a new art out
of an old one. Sir Hubert told them something,
too, of the history of his house at Bushey, and
then, as if a thought had struck him, said suddenly,
“ But I can tell you much better about this in the
house itself. Come and see it, come all of you, as
soon as I come back from my holiday in Ger-
many.” It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the
invitation was joyfully accepted.

Some excellent examples of design and crafts-
manship were shown at the exhibition held at the
end of the summer term at the Central School of
Arts and Crafts, Southampton Row. The exhibi-
tion was composed of works submitted in compe-
tition for the London County Council scholarships
and exhibitions, in which for the first time the
judges were assisted in making the awards by the
representatives of the newly organized Consultative
Committees, composed of employers and employees
selected by the various Associations and Trades
Unions. In the examinations Sir George Frampton,
R.A., Mr. Charles Ricketts and Mr. Selwyn Image
acted as judges, assisted by Mr. FI. Wilson and
Mr. C. J. R. Smith, representing the Goldsmiths,
Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Trades, and by
two delegates from the Committee on Book Pro-
duction, Mr. Emery Walker and Mr. Douglas
Cockerell. The exhibition, which included, among
other things, examples of cabinetmakers’ work,
bookbinding, jewellery, pottery, printing, engraving,
stained glass, book illustration, and many kinds of
design, was admirably arranged, but its value was
discounted by the absence of a catalogue, and of
those portions of the aggressively orange-coloured
labels that showed from which school each work

had come. And if the exhibition could be kept
open for a month instead of only two or three days,
it would be an interesting object lesson to the
hundreds of provincial students who come to
London in the autumn to see the National Art
Competition works:

The principals of the St. John’s Wood Art
.Schools are entitled to congratulation on the
result of the recent examination of students for
admission to the Royal Academy. Out of a total
of five from all England they passed in three, one
being the only girl student admitted.

At the Heatherley School in Newman Street
Mr. Henry G. Massey intends during the coming
winter still further to develop the Quick Sketch
classes from the nude, by posing models not singly,
as before, but in groups of two and three. These
classes, which are on the same lines as the cours de
croquis in the French schools, were so popular last
year that many applicants were unable to obtain
admission to the Heatherley School in the early
part of the winter. W. T. W.

Birmingham.—a Day School of
Architecture has been founded at the
Municipal School of Art in Margaret
Street with the object of providing
architectural students in the Midlands with a
thorough training in all the branches of their
profession and preparing them for the examina-
tions of the Royal Institute of British Architect?.
The school course will be spread over four or
five years. It is intended that the first two
years shall be spent at day classes and that they
shall take the place of the first two years of
articled pupilage. The latter two or three years
will be spent at evening classes and will run
concurrently with articled pupilage. A large
number of prominent architects in the Midlands
have promised to forego the whole or a portion of
the fee ordinarily received by them in the case of
pupils who shall have attended the school. The
syllabus for the first year includes lectures on archi-
tectural history, building construction, elementary
physics and geometry; demonstrations and prac-
tical work in stone-masonry, carpentry and brick-
laying ; simple planning, elementary design ; per-
spective drawing and lettering. For the second
year, studies in ancient architecture, including
measuring ; practical work ; lectures on the historic
styles and on iron and steel construction, physics,
etc.; design. The third and fourth years will be

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