Studio: international art (49.1910)

Studio- Talk

Humbert purchasing more than one of Serra’s
pictures in the course of the next few years.
Among other royal patrons have been the King
of Spain, the King of Bavaria, and the German
Emperor, whilst several examples of Serra’s art
have found their way to the Academy of Fine
Arts at St. Petersburg. In 1888, at the Inter-
national Exhibition in Rome, he was awarded a
medal for a landscape of the Roman Campagna.

Rome and the country around it have always
been Enrique Serra’s favourite sketching ground.
“ He is enamoured of Rome as of a lady,” wrote
an Italian critic recently. He is as studious of
its glories as an historian. In his pictures of
Roman life he has all Fortuny’s weakness for rich
colouring and decorative detail, but he has given
them besides the spirit of present-day actuality.
His series of Travaux a Rome, of which three
subjects are reproduced in these pages, present to
us scenes of real workaday life such as may be
witnessed at any time by visitors to the Eternal
City. Le Marche d Terrasina lacks somewhat the
vitality of the Roman pictures, but it is perfectly in
harmony as a piece of the romantically picturesque.
The subject of Pompeii has become common-
place for Italian painters, but Serra’s sense of
“atmosphere ” enables him to present with a charm
that is all his own the scene of classic ruin. In
nature the painter would seem to prefer the more
neutral shades; it is only amid the bright move-
ment of the city that he gives full play to his
powers as a colourist. A. M.

STUDIO-TALK.

(From Our Own Cor?-espondents.)

LONDON.—By the death of Sir William
Quiller Orchardson, R.A., British Art
has lost one of its most distinguished
and most individual painters. Born in
Edinburgh in 1835, his early studies were carried
on under the famous Robert Scott Lauder, whose
sound methods laid the foundation of so many
successful careers. He was early attracted to
London, where, in association with John Pettie, he
soon began to give expression to that great ability
which steadily brought him fame. To the general
public he is best known as a genre painter, for his
Napoleon on board the “ Bellerophon” ; Hard Hit;
Manage de Convenance; First Cloud; Her
Mother’s Voice ; Young Duke ; and many other not-
able works, are fraught with dramatic incident and
romance. To the artist his splendid series of por-
traits probably make the stronger appeal, and many
of them, notably his own portrait in the Uffizi
Gallery, place him in the front rank of his con-
temporaries. During the last few years his output
has been limited, and though he may sometimes
have failed to maintain the high level of his greatest
achievements, his mastery, technique and sense of
design have never failed him.

Of the various picture exhibitions which are
open in London during the present month
several are noticed below; but as regards the

“LAVEUSES PRfcs LE T1BRE”

3°°

BY ENRIQUE SERRA