Studio: international art (52.1911)

Reviews and Notices

deep attention by the students, who became
even more interested when at the close of his
criticism Mr. Murray Smith commenced the
delicate task of selecting the best three works
from the large number exhibited. The best,
in the order named, were by Miss D. Busse,
Miss Hilda Trefusis and Miss Joan Wodehouse.
With the compositions were shown some paint-
ings of the draped figure done in sittings of
an hour and a half in the popular afternoon
class devoted to time studies in colour. Some
of these rapidly executed paintings were re-
markably successful in suggesting the action
of the model and the general scheme of colour.

W. T. W.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.
Essays on the Purpose of Art. By Mrs.
Russell Barrington. (London: Long-
mans, Green & Co.) 12s. 6d. net. — Mrs.
Barrington's new and fascinating volume has
been prepared, she herself explains, as a kind
of sequel to her earlier publications on George
Frederick Watts and Lord Leighton, and in it
she has, she says, endeavoured to recall in a
more exhaustive manner than before, the aspira-
tions and aims of the two artists whose close
friendship it was her privilege to enjoy. That
she has, on the whole, succeeded in her main
ambition will be at once conceded, so clearly
does she define the distinctive peculiarities of
their personalities, noting their few points
of union as well as the wide differences
that separated them. " It was," she remarks,

chiefly by their conversations that they
stamped their abiding beliefs most convincingly
on the memory. Their unstudied, ' undraped'
spontaneous talk was of the best, far and away
more characteristic than their more deliberate
and formal utterances." " Leighton," she adds,

had the more independent mind of the two.
He had the confidence of the conquering races.
Watts had the slumbering susceptibility of the
Celt — the Welsh Celt." In familiar inter-
course with their chosen friends, these qualities
were -very clearly revealed, as is amply proved
by many interesting incidents recorded, such
as readers of the book would gladly have had
multiplied. Mrs. Barrington, however, suddenly
deserts her main subject and launches forth into
long dissertations on such topics as Present
Conditions unfavourable to the Creation of
Permanent Art, the Finer Facts of Nature,
National and Personal Individuality, &c, in
which Leighton and Watts are only referred
164

to en passant. It is only towards the very
end of her work that the writer once more
concentrates her attention on them, dwelling
in two eloquent chapters on the something each
of them said that had not been said before,
and supplementing her own estimate of the
ethics of their teaching by quotations from
other expert judges. With regard to Leighton
it must be confessed she gives a very uncertain
sound, evidently finding it impossible to sum
up succinctly what it was that set him apart
from all his contemporaries, but of Watts, she
observes, "The something he said embodied
the sense of noble Greek severity emotionalised
into passion by the temperament of the Celt."

Canova. By VlTTORIO malamani. (Ulrico
Hoepli, Milan.) 36 lire.—It is somewhat
strange that an artist so exceptionally gifted
as Antonio Canova should" have been com-
paratively neglected by the critics of his native
land. Volume after volume has of late years
being issued dealing exhaustively with the
masters of the Renaissance, their predecessors
and immediate successors, but concerning the
man who for a time at least revived the great
traditions of Italian plastic art, there existed
in Italy until quite recently but one biography
worthy of the name, that from the pen of the
Abate Missirini. The scholarly and richly
illustrated monograph of Signor Malamani,
which it is to be hoped may be translated into
English, may therefore justly be said to fill a
long-felt gap in Italian art literature. He has
devoted himself for over twenty years to the study
of Canova as a man and an artist and into a
narrative of absorbing interest, bearing on every
page the stamp of high culture, he has woven
with much of the original criticism that in these
days of plagiarism is becoming ever more rare,
many a hitherto unrecorded anecdote bringing
into relief the warm heart and generous disposi-
tion, the stern sense of rectitude and noble
ambitions of his hero. Copies of MS. docu-
ments difficult of access and a series of very
complete Indices give added distinction and
value to a volume which will be of the greatest
possible value to the future student.

.Japan : A Pictorial Record. By Mrs.
Lasenby Liberty. (London: A. and C.
Black.) £2 2s. net.—By far the most beauti-
ful series of photographs of Japan, published in
the West, is the one now under review. Mrs.
Liberty has selected her subjects with much
skill in obtaining the most satisfactory points
of view, and the excellent photogravure repro-