Studio: international art (51.1911)

Studio- Talk

RECUMBENT STATUE OF CARDINAL MANNING IN THE NEW WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL BY JOHN ADAMS-ACTON

STUDIO-TALK.

(From Our Own Correspondents.)

LONDON. — The recumbent statue of
Cardinal Manning reproduced on this
page was the last work of Mr. John
Adams-Acton, who died on October 28th
last, in the Isle of Arran, at the age of 79. Mr.
Adams-Acton, who was born at Acton in Middle-
sex and distinguished himself as a student in the
Royal Academy Schools, executed numerous im-
portant commissions, among his sitters being
Gladstone, Beaconsfield, John Bright, Spurgeon
and Dr. Parker, Pope Leo XIII. and Cardinal
Manning. The bust of George Cruikshank in St.
Paul’s Cathedral, the Wesley Memorial in West-
minster Abbey, and several statues of Queen
Victoria erected at various places at home and
abroad, were executed by him.

Every year it becomes more difficult, and a
greater honour, to join the exhibiting ranks of the
New English Art Club. They perhaps require first
of all that a contribution shall be interesting—and
to be interesting is certainly not a quality to be
attained at will. Everything that some men do is
interesting, and the Club has done right to favour
these; its success might, were it analysed, be
traced to its recognition of a quality that denotes
unmistakably the presence of art, even where touch
falters and colour goes astray. It is the reverse of
the Academic policy, which leans first of all to
standard technical accomplishment, on occasion
putting the best elocution before the profoundest
message. There was no falling off in the exhibition
of the Club this season; it was as stimulating as

ever, but on this occasion the chief interest of the
exhibition seemed to rest with the younger
members. Mr. John did not exhibit; nor was this
one of Mr. Steer’s great years ; and as if to show
that his versatility is never coming to an end, Mr.
Orpen made a change of front, being intent now
upon the suffusion of his figures with bright sun-
light. One sometimes wonders whether Mr. Orpen
cares for any one thing in this life more than
another; he is more nearly becoming a great artist
than almost any painter of our time, and yet his
talent seems at the mercy of whatever stimulus it
accidentally encounters. Some of the pictures in
this Exhibition which should be mentioned are
Mr. Gerald Chowne’s After Lunch; The Little
Chest of Drawers, by Miss Rowley Leggatt; Ruth,
by Mr. William Nicholson; Portrait of Miss Mary
K. Butler, by Mr. Donald MacLaren ; Portrait, by
Mr. Henry Lamb; A Summer Evening, by Mr.
R. J. E. Mooney; Penmoor d Riec, by M. Lucien
Pissarro. Very interesting was Mr. C. J. Holmes’s
Near Musgrave. This painter is so attached to the
art of decorative composition, that he seems to
sacrifice too much to it. In this picture behind the
belt of trees, there is a little silver light breaking in
the sky—this is quite emotional for Mr. Holmes, and
gives more than usual success to his work. Mr.
Holmes had a disciple in Mr. Elliot Seabrooke,
whose name was new to us; his picture, The
Rainbow, showed wonderful promise, and though
perhaps over sweet and honeyed in its general
effect, it was an unusual performance. As usual
the room of drawings contained some of the master-
pieces. Mr. J. S. Sargent’s The Green Parasol,
and Ln the Mountains; Mr. Mark Fisher’s water-
colours ; Dunster Castle—The Horse Show, by

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