Studio: international art (51.1911)

Edward J. Detmold's Drawings and Etchings

from the artist To be a success, an artistic pub-
lisher should, in these things, have no ideas at all,
but should leave these to the artist.

Before the death of Mr. Detmold’s brother one
never thought of the :two artists apart. The late
Mr. Maurice Detmold’s talents took just the same
direction as the surviving brother’s, whose recent
work is here in review. They collaborated in all
their most important works, most notably perhaps
in the illustrations to Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s
“Jungle Tales,” and the Peacock, reproduced, re-
presents this phase of Mr. Edward Detmold’s
career. Since then there has been no departure
in his intentions, he still seeks to achieve in the
same direction as that which the brothers first took
together. As an illustrator his style is particularly
suited to that kind of work, especially in regard to
its line qualities. That such qualities
have a decorative affinity with leaded
type, which was always appreciated by
the old engravers for books, cannot be
denied, yet these qualities have had, in
modern illustrations, to give place to the
sloppy impressionism which the use of
wash drawings was to bring in its train
—we are not speaking of impressionism
as sloppy, but “ sloppy ” impressionism.

In his own wash and colour illustrations
Mr. Detmold fails us a little; in
them he makes first for variety and
interest of outline, often apparently to
defeat this aim with after washes. His
attention to local colour—that is, detail
of colour—is of course the logical out-
come of his method of drawing, but it
sometimes leads him too far from that
variety of tone contrast which alone en-
ables that decorative sense of pattern to
survive which redeems wash-work as a
method of book decoration. The remedy
seems to lie in some modification of his
point of view, and this would be inter-
esting in Mr. Detmold’s case. Whilst we
can give ourselves no greater pleasure
than acknowledging the fruitful results of
his style up to the present, we should not
feel that his appeal would lessen in
interest if sometimes framed a little differ-
ently. An artist is all the more an artist
in the self-restraint that voluntarily sub-
mits itself to a chosen convention; but
the most interesting convention can at last
imprison an artist’s fancy and restrict his
outlook. T. Martin Wood.

296

NEW MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY, JOHANNESBURG, TRANS-
VAAL.—This gallery was inaugurated on Novem-
ber 29 by His Royal Highness the Duke of
Connaught, who referred in eulogistic terms to the
founders and organisers of the Gallery and those
who had so generously contributed to its valuable
collection of pictures and statuary, prominent
among them being Sir Julius Wernher, Mr. Otto
Beit, Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Phillips. Sir Hugh
Lane is acting as Honorary Director of the Gallery,
and to him is chiefly due the organisation of the
collection, in which artists of the modern British
School, and especially the younger men, are well
represented. Gericault, Falguiere, Puvis de Cha-
vannes, Harpignies, Sisley, Monet, Rodin, Jacob
Maris, Jongkind, Alfred Stevens, are among the
foreign artists whose works have been acquired.

AN ILLUSTRATION TO THE BOOK OF ISAIAH (WATER-COLOUR)'

BY E. J. DETMOLD