Studio: international art (55.1912)

Studio-Talk

VASE DESIGNED BY PRITSCHE FOR THE
ROYAL BERLIN PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY ;
OVER-GLAZE DECORATION BY FI.AD

colours over the glaze are preferred for works
with irregular surfaces in the old porcelain style,
whilst quiet tones under the glaze are chosen for
large forms. Prof. Schmuz-Baudis is a friendly
and assiduous collaborator among his staff of
artists and understands how to discern real talent.
He has retained early members of the staff like
Prof. Schley and the painter Lang, and has won
excellent new helpers in the sculptors Amberg,
Fritsche, Hubatsch, Himmelstoss, Schwegerle, and
Josef Wackerle.

The Royal Academy has been honouring Rein-
hold Begas and Ludwig Knaus with memorial
exhibitions, neither of them exhaustive, as in both
cases a number of important works were not
procurable. Thus Begas was to be studied in
groups, statues, and busts, but not in his monu-
mental creations. We enjoyed the serious student
of nature, and the decorative composer enamoured
with baroque exuberance. The bygone era of
German sentimentalism and romanticism came
back before the portraits, peasants, gipsies,
cockneys, fauns, and nymphs of Ludwig Knaus.
We could follow the career of the painter whose
innate refinement profited by Parisian teaching,

but who was born to achieve work that ranks with
that of Metsu, Stevens and Meissonnier.

The Cassirer Salon has been having an in-
structive display of modern methods. Leo Klein-
Diepold translates trees, park-villas, gardens, and
channels into almost plastic forms. His paintings
require distance but even then they disclose tender-
ness. Oskar Moll tries to combine Cezanne and
Signac, but his landscape work can only be regarded
as brush experiments. Max Pechstein, the leader
of the Neue Secession, appears to be an adversary
of both naturalism and impressionism. He seeks
to achieve triumphs by pure colour, but as yet this
daring experimenter can be accounted only as a
barbarian in method and subject. Fritz Rhein is
steadily gaining in freedom of facture and delicacy
of colour in his ladies’ portraits and town aspects.

The Winter Exhibition of the Secession was of
unusual interest as a display of graphic art. It
revealed great diversity of expression and brought
to light much real talent. The new president,
Lovis Corinth, whose own contributions included
some charming work of great delicacy, did homage
to the distinguished draughtsmen of the early
nineteenth century, and among such as Schadow,
Genelli, Schwind, Carstens, and Cornelius—as
indeed among all the exhibitors—Anselm Feuer-

CAKE-BOX DESIGNED BY RUTTE-PREUSS FOR
THE ROYAL BERLIN PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY

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