Studio: international art (53.1911)

Studio- Talk

STUDIO-TALK

(From Our Own Correspondents.)

IONDON.—The world of art sustained two
great losses last month in the death of
Mr. Edwin Austin Abbey, R.A., who died
—J at Chelsea on August I, and of Josef
Israels, the most widely known artist of the modern
Dutch school, who died at The Hague on August
12. Mr. Abbey was the leader of a school of
decorative painters in England, but there are
some who think that nothing that he ever did as
a painter rivalled the pen drawings he made for
Messrs. Harper Brothers in illustration of Shake-
speare. His fame with the general public may
have rested largely upon his paintings exhibited
at the Royal Academy; with artists it rested, and
will, we think, rest securely, upon his admirable
touch as a pen-draughtsman and his remarkable
ability as an illustrator to enter into the very
spirit of his themes. Perhaps in Shakespeare's
country it may be said that Mr. Abbey was the
greatest, because the most Shakespearean, of all
the poet's illustrators, although he did not settle
here till after he had reached manhood, his earlier
life having been passed in America, where he was
born in April 1852, his birthplace being the

EMBROIDERED CUSHION-COVER. BY JESSIE E. DONE
(STOCKPORT)

(National Competition)

City ot Philadelphia. His chief successes in
painting were in the Arthurian series of panels
made for the Boston Public Library, in which
he showed an unsuual instinct for mural decora-
tion, giving a tremendous impetus by his success
to an art for which there is so much scope in
modern life. Mr. Abbey was elected
associate of the Royal Academy in 1896
and a full member in 1898.

Israels, who was an honorary R.A., was
born at Groningen in 1824, and commenced
his career as an historical painter, but sub-
sequently passed to the genre now always
associated with his name, and to portraiture.
He showed in narrative painting a dignity
of artistic conception seldom to be found
now in that kind of art. It has been said
that he became an Old Master in his life-
time, his death not occurring until after he
had passed his eighty-seventh year. His
portrait paintings were the subject of an
article in a recent issue of this magazine.

We have received from the delegates
for Great Britain at the Sixth Inter-
national Exhibition of Fine Art held this
summer at Barcelona a list of awards
made to artists exhibiting in the British
section. Mr. J. J. Shannon, R.A., has
received the unique distinction of a
medaille d'honneur for his portrait of

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