Studio: international art (51.1911)

Reviews and Notices

in the style of a mosaic, and exceedingly well
adapts itself to the place. The subject that sym-
bolizes the victory of enlightenment over darkness,
of knowledge over ignorance, is certainly very
fitted for a school.

Other recent valuable gifts to the same school
are two reliefs in granite : one representing Bathing
Boys is adapted as a fountain; the other one
portrays Naked Boys running a Race. Both are
given by the late Miss Eva Bonnier, who did so
much for the decoration of the Swedish Schools
with good works of art, and are the work of the
sculptor Carl Eldh (born 1873). like so very
many Swedish artists, Eldh is the son of poor people.
He began his career in the workshop of a cabinet-
maker, studied in the technical school of Stock-
holm, and then went to Paris, where he stayed
some years, working both as a cabinet-maker and
as a pupil in the Atelier Colarossi. Like all other
really good Swedish sculptors, as Per Hasselberg
Eriksson and Carl Milles, Eldh has begun with
handicraft and by-and-by developed into a real
artist. When seven years ago he came back to
Sweden from Paris his name was already well
known in his own country, and he immediately
received many orders. Eldh has executed all the
sculptures on the main entrance of the Northern
Museum in Stockholm, and many other decora-
tive sculptures in buildings in Sweden; he has
also successfully portrayed several more or less
famous Swedes, viz., the busts of the author, August
Strindberg (National Museum, Stockholm); the
painter, Richard Bergh (Museum in Gothenburg);
the poet, Gustaf Froding, in the character of an
old Greek philosopher, and many others.

The field in which Eldh seems to me most
successful is in the “ Kleinplastik,” as the Germans
call it. He has executed any number of small
statuettes, mostly nudes, carved in wood or cast
in bronze or silver. This year Eldh has taken
part in a competition for a statue of the student-
poet, Gunnar Wennerberg, to be erected in Upsala,
our oldest University town. Eldh has made
an excellent sketch for this statue, representing
Wennerberg as a typical romantic young poet:
but it is not yet decided whether he will receive
the commission or not. Th. L.

(Our Art School Notes are, owing to pressure on
our space this month, held over with a number of
reviews' and other matter until next month.—
Editor.,)

250

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Frank Brangwyn atid his Work. By W. Shaw-
Sparrow. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner
& Co.) 1 or. 6d. net; ed. de luxe, ,£5 5r.—
Readers of The Studio will not be unacquainted
with the work of Frank Brangwyn, for it has
been our privilege on many occasions to refer
to and illustrate it. We welcome Mr. Shaw-
Sparrow’s very comprehensive and excellent volume,
with its numerous fine illustrations in facsimile
colour and collotype, as we consider it to be a
work that should be found in the library of every
true lover of art. Mr. Brangwyn is probably the
greatest decorative painter and etcher of his day.
The virile individualism which characterises every-
thing he undertakes compels our sincere admiration!
Although his technique is unapproachable, he is an
artist who is not the servant of his tools—his
brush, his pen, or his etching needle. So little is
this apparently the case that one might imagine that
if he were deprived of paints and brushes, pens and
ink, or graver and etching needle, he would find some
means at hand—a rag with some red or browm
earth, or a burnt stick—and still be able to produce
in a powerful and convincing manner some conceit
of his imagination, some expression of his ideas.
In the construction of his paintings he is not over-
burdened by naturalism, although we can readily
perceive that his perception of Nature in all her
varied moods of form, of colour and of action is
of the keenest. Take, for example, the painting
in the Art Gallery at Johannesburg—well repro-
duced in colours in Mr. Sparrow’s volume— entitled
The Return from the Promised Land. Here we find
a scheme of brilliant and varied colour, suggestive
of an abundance of simple but joyous prosperity,
of a home-coming richly laden with the fruits of
the earth—portrayed in such a manner that no
merely naturalistic presentation could compare
with it in forcibility. Or again, in The Buccatieers,
also illustrated in this work, and reproduced here
by the courtesy of the publishers, we find an
expression of lawless freedom and of brutal energy
combined with a glow of colour and picturesque-
ness of scene which brings the subject home to the
imagination with an absolutely convincing power.
We might multiply other instances of equal force,
but for these we must refer our readers to the
illustrations in Mr. Sparrow’s excellent book.

The Holy Land. By Robert Hichens. Illus-
trated by Jules Guerin. (London: Hodder &
Stoughton.) 2$s. net.—We had really begun to
wonder whether we were asking for the impossible,