Studio: international art (55.1912)

Art School Notes

combine landscape with animal life like Friese,
Zimmermann, and Ungewitter, aroused the chief
interest. Another event at the same galleries was
a comprenensive collection of works by Ludwig
Dettman, a painter with an open eye for nature’s
glories, and one who has trained his colour-sense
to the highest pitch of receptiveness. His brush
is particularly skilled in catching the sparkling
vibrations of the morning sun. Recently he has
shown a fondness for painting the birth of Christ,
but all his versions of the subject seem merely to
have been sought as opportunities to excel .in the
art of rendering the diffusion of brilliant sunlight.
The marine painter, Hans Bohrdt, who has been
showing at Schulte’s, wields his brush with delicacy
and charm, avoiding all opacity when depicting
the sea under various aspects. He knows all
the technique of navigarion, and thus his render-
ings of ships have a note of actuality. Count
Hans Albrecht von Harrach, the son of the dis-
tinguished painter, proved a worthy continuator of
the noble artistic family tradition in a series of
portrait sculptures.

Lovis Corinth, the new president of the Berlin
Secession, has undergone a severe illness, but no
falling-off of pictorial power was discernible in the
new collection of pictures he has been showing at
Cassirer’s. J. J.

ART SCHOOL NOTES.

C~DON.—Mr. A. P. Laurie, the new Pro-
fessor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy,
gave his first course of addresses last
month. In one of his lectures Mr.
Laurie spoke on “Grounds and the Methods of
Painting,” in the course of which he gave a care-
ful description of the best ways of preparing
grounds and mediums for tempera painting, and
mentioned among other things that there was no
safer panel for tempera pictures than a piece of
good yellow pine. Mr. Laurie also showed, in some
striking and beautiful experiments, how the hues of
pigments and of silk fabrics of various kinds were
affected by the colours of the spectrum. Sir Edward
Poynter paid the new Professor a compliment by
taking the chair at his lecture in the place of the
Keeper, who usually presides on such occasions.

The March exhibition of the Heatherley Art
Club was on the whole the most successful of those
that have been held since Mr. Massey became its
president. More than seventy works were shown

and their general quality was well above the aver-
age. The critic on this occasion was Mr. Haldane
Macfall, whose careful and discriminating comments
were listened to with great interest. The club is
probably the oldest of its kind in London. At a
recent meeting a well-known artist who is now
president of one of the Royal societies stated that
he could remember Fred Walker coming to one
of the club meetings as a small boy in an Eton
jacket. W. T. W.

Apropos of Mr. Catterson-Smith’s account of
his experiments in teaching memory-drawing at
Birmingham, we have received the following letter
from Mr. L. D. Luard :

“ At the end of his notes upon ‘ Memory-Drawing and
Mental Imaging in Art-teaching ' in the February number
of The Studio, Mr. Calterson-Smith refers to my trans-
lation of the * Training of the Memory in Art ’ by Lecoq
de Boisbaudran, and makes certain comments upon his
teaching which give an inaccurate impression of his
methods and their value. For while admitting that
Lecoq • had the same object ’ as himself, that is, ‘ the
cultivation of the faculty of mind-picturing,’ he accuses
him of not appearing ‘ to have made any distinction
between memory and visualisation.’ Yet Lecoq clearly
states that 1 as practice develops the power of seeing the
object though no longer present, the conscious methods
(i.e. calculation of points, &c.) become gradually less
necessary,’ and declares frequently that 1 to see the
object when absent is the real goal to which all these
exercises should lead.’

“That Lecoq’s methods were successful in achieving
his and Mr. Catterson-Smith’s purpose, the memory-draw-
ings by his pupils reproduced at the end of the volume
conclusively prove, for they show a power of mental
visualising which surpass any other drawings of the
kind that I know.

“I have no intention of suggesting that Lecoq’s
methods are beyond criticism, and the criticism of Mr.
Catterson-Smith has the authority and special value of
his large experience in memory-teaching, but I wish to
protest against the unfair impression that is necessarily
created by a depreciation which condemns a part of
Lecoq’s teaching and the oversight which forgets to
mention that it is only a small part of the whole. ’’

To this letter Mr. Catterson-Smith replies as
follows :

“Let me at once admit that I should have used the
words ‘ not sufficient distinction ’ instead of • not any
distinction.’ At the same time I think if the importance
of the distinction between visualisation and memory had
been realised by Lecoq he would have given his book
another title. As it is memory is given the prominent
place.

“ I should like to state that in my opinion the drawings
at the end of the book do not • conclusively prove,’ as Mr.
Luard says, that they were visualised; for they might
also have been drawn from memory without any visuali-
sation having taken place. I am anxious to press forward
the importance of mind-picturing, and to make it clear

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