Studio: international art (51.1911)

Reviews and Notices

sentative of the most advanced tendencies of modem
times, are the German, Liebermann; the Englishman,
Brangwyn ; the Belgians, Fr6d£ric and Laermans ;
the Dutchman, Van Gogh; the Scandinavian,
Diriks; the Frenchmen, Dufresnoy and Lacoste;
the Italian, Segantini; the Russian, Tarkhoff; the
Algerian, Noire; the Canadian, Morrice; and the
Franco-Tahitian, Gauguin. Examples not in every
case very well chosen (Brangwyn and Segantini being
inadequately represented) are given of the work
of all these men, and though few will share M.
Leblond’s enthusiasm for Van Gogh’s, Anglada’s
and Dirik’s rendering of women, all must admire
Tarkhoff’s Moisson; Frederic’s Ages de VOuvrier;
and, above all, Laermans’ Soir de Grlve, and Lieber-
mann’s Jesus among the Doctors.

Modelling and Sculpture. By Albert Toft,

Hon. A.R.C.A., M.S.B.S. 6s. net. — Human

Anatomy for Art Students. By Sir Alfred D.
Fripp, K.C.V.O., etc., and Ralph Thompson,
M.B., F.R.C.S. js. 6d. net. (London : Seeley &
Co., Ltd.).—These two additions to the New Art
library series of copiously illustrated handbooks
edited by Mr. M. H. Spielmann and Mr. P. G.
Konody call for the highest commendation we can
give them. They are books which we can un-
hesitatingly recommend to the art student, because
they are written by men who are thoroughly at
home in the subjects treated of, and who, moreover,
have been mindful not to encumber their expo-
sition with unnecessary minutiae. Mr. Toft’s treatise
especially will be found an invaluable aid to the
student who is taking up sculpture seriously—and,
as he very properly insists, only those who devote
themselves wholeheartedly to it can hope to
succeed. His book, starting with the elementary
stage of modelling, takes the student step by
step through the various technical processes essential
to the sculptor’s training, such as portrait bust
modelling, figure and group building, waste
moulding and casting, gelatine moulding and cast-
ing, modelling in relief, modelling for bronze and
marble, etc., the text being supplemented by over
a hundred excellent illustrations.

The Life of Giorgio Vasari. By Robert W.
Carden, A.R.I.B.A. (London: Lee Warner.)

i6j. net.—While Vasari’s Lives are familiar to all
students of art, a life of the writer was a work that
was needed, for although in the edition of the Lives
for which Bottari was responsible an attempt was
made to complete the autobiographical supplement
with which Vasari originally concluded his book,
by the inclusion of a cursory compilation from
Vasari’s own letters of the period, this formed but

an incomplete survey of the life of this painter-
architect - biographer. Mr. Carden admits that
Giorgio Vasari’s works in painting and architecture
do not call for an exhaustive treatise, but he has
felt urged to his task by the fact that while we may
read in the Lives the story of the infancy, the
youth, and the manhood of the arts, for the
history of the senile decay which inevitably
follows, and which coincided very nearly with the
period of Vasari’s life, we must turn to his biography.
Mr. Carden’s book bears evidence of great pains
and careful research, and illustrated as it is with
29 plates and including an index, it forms a
valuable addition to the history of art.

Old English Lnstruments of Music. By Francis
W. Galpin, M.A., F.L.S. (London : Methuen &
Co.) 7s. 6d. net.—Readers of these pages in

The Studio must be by now very familiar with the
excellent series ot the Antiquary’s Books, to which
this volume is a most interesting addition. In
order to confine this enormous subject within
limits possible to the size of a single book, the
author decided to restrict himself to a description
of instruments used in Great Britain from the
earliest times up to the close of the Xlllth
Century. He laments the lack in this country of
any complete collection of musical instruments
such as may be seen in the admirably arranged
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or in
Brussels or Berlin. The book is well illustrated
with over one hundred reproductions of photographs
and drawings, and its value is enhanced by an
excellent index and appendix.

The December number of The English Review
—a double number consisting of 232 pages—con-
tains, among other interesting contributions, an
article by Mr. C. Lewis Hind on “ The New
Impressionism,” and another by Mr. Francis
Grierson on “ Art, Science and Beauty.”

A visit to the show-rooms of the Duchess of
Sutherland’s Cripples’ Guild of Handicrafts at 13
and 14 New Bond Street, London, may be recom-
mended to those who wish to get value for their
money and at the same time to help forward a
deserving institution. The stock on view com-
prises a large assortment of articles for table and
other domestic use and ornament, such as dishes,
castors, tankards, beakers, mugs and cups, lamps,
coal containers, clocks, etc., hand-wrought in
silver, copper, and other metal, by the proteges
of the Guild, after excellent designs, some of them
being reproductions of Georgian and other early
examples,

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