DOI Heft:
No. 234 (September 1912)
DOI Artikel:Reviews and notices
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21157#0360
Reviews and Notices
Whitebait, Champagne and Grog, and Poetry and
Painters as contributing causes towards the achieve-
ment of Turner’s Fighting Temtraire. Who has
not in his time followed with despair the theory of
“ cause and effect,” after the fashion of Mr. Furst,
and before a picture, or anything else, vaguely
looked back in imagination upon the sequence of
events that possibly led up to the moment of being
in its presence ? Quite lately the metaphysicians
have scrutinised this phenomenon and seen an
escape from the apparent vanity of human ideals in
the spontaneous or creative element of evolution.
Mr. Furst deals with a truth not so often remembered
in connection with results in art as in life, and his
essay written round Turner’s Fighting Temtraire
may enable some people to regard the picture in a,
to them, new and interesting light. But we very
much doubt whether it will be in the light of the
whole truth about artistic creation. Mr. Furst’s
book is a slight corrective to the modern tendency
to exploit “ individuality,” and as such is welcome.
But to banish the whole idea of individuality or
spontaneity from the face of the earth, which is
what Mr. Furst does, at any rate in effect, is going
further than the principle of “ cause and effect,” to
the extent to which we at present understand it,
will allow. The book is illustrated with pictures
after Turner, Paul Bril, Claude Lorrain, and William
van de Velde the younger.
Educational Needlecraft. By Margaret Swan-
son and Ann Macbeth. (London: Longmans,
Green and Co.) 4s. 6d. net.—Earnest and intelligent
interest in art and craft is still very active in the
North ; not content with organising a new departure
in stitchery at the Glasgow School of Art, and
throughout the western division of Scotland, Miss
Swanson and Miss Macbeth have issued an
exhaustive handbook on the subject. The new
system may be described as a common-sense
method of teaching needlecraft, beginning with
the child of six, before the eye has developed to
normal vision. By graduated instruction the young
student is initiated in the interesting and important
work of tacking, over-seaming, hemming, herring-
boning, darning, button-holing, chain-stitching,
binding, gathering, and numerous other stitching
exercises, and all the while she is encouraged in
self-reliance, the foundation note of individuality.
Over two hundred carefully drawn diagrams em-
phasise the clearly written instructions, while six
coloured plates direct attention to the higher
accomplishment in new embroidery. The work is
a timely contribution to the modern art movement,
m which Glasgow has played a conspicuous part,
338
and experience and ability have enabled the
authors to produce a book that should become a
classic in needlecraft.
Christ Church, Oxford: An Anthology in Prose
and Verse. Selected by Arthur Hassall, M.A.
(London: Hodder and Stoughton.) 63s-. net.—
The letterpress of this fine volume, bound in white
buckram and bearing the arms of the college it
celebrates emblazoned on both covers, is a little
disappointing. Preceding the anthology there is
an interesting narrative of the history of this famous
institution, but the anthology itself, in spite of some
entertaining reminiscences by alumni, is hardly
worthy of a college which has in our own days
given Britain several of her Prime Ministers, and
has besides nurtured a whole host of men distin-
guished in various walks of life. Of some of these
we get glimpses here and there in the book, but in
this respect the letterpress lacks the interest of the
illustrations, which are all in colour and include
reproductions of the portraits of some of the
eminent personages associated with Christ Church,
such as Cardinal Wolsey, its projector, from the
portrait attributed to R. Greenbury; King Henry
VIII., its actual founder, from Sonmans’s painting ;
Queen Elizabeth, from a portrait attributed to
Zuccaro; Dean Aldrich and John Locke, by
Kneller ; John Wesley, by Romney; Dr. Pusey, by
G. Richmond; Gladstone, by Millais; Dean Liddell,
by Watts; and Canon Liddon, by Herkomer.
These portraits are, in fact, the chief attraction of
the volume, which also contains a dozen or more
reproductions of paintings by Arthur Garratt, who
has presented various views of the college and its
surroundings.
The Works of Man. By Lisle March Phillipps.
(London: Duckworth and Co.) 7s. (id. net.—
Many of the essays included in this volume have
already appeared in periodicals and teem with
original suggestions, notably those on “ What Art
Meant to the Greeks,” in which the differences
between Greek and Gothic architecture are well
defined, and that on the Gothic Contribution,
which brings out forcibly the essential qualities of
the Pointed style and the delight taken by its
exponents in “the vitality of the arch principle.”
Other articles, however, especially that on the
temples of Egypt, cannot fail to provoke hostile
criticism. To be able to see in the noble
sanctuaries of the Land of the Nile nothing but
a triumph of matter over mind, and to condemn
all Egyptian sculpture as “ barren of intellectual
insight and intellectual interest,” seems to betray
on the part of the author a strange insensibility to
Whitebait, Champagne and Grog, and Poetry and
Painters as contributing causes towards the achieve-
ment of Turner’s Fighting Temtraire. Who has
not in his time followed with despair the theory of
“ cause and effect,” after the fashion of Mr. Furst,
and before a picture, or anything else, vaguely
looked back in imagination upon the sequence of
events that possibly led up to the moment of being
in its presence ? Quite lately the metaphysicians
have scrutinised this phenomenon and seen an
escape from the apparent vanity of human ideals in
the spontaneous or creative element of evolution.
Mr. Furst deals with a truth not so often remembered
in connection with results in art as in life, and his
essay written round Turner’s Fighting Temtraire
may enable some people to regard the picture in a,
to them, new and interesting light. But we very
much doubt whether it will be in the light of the
whole truth about artistic creation. Mr. Furst’s
book is a slight corrective to the modern tendency
to exploit “ individuality,” and as such is welcome.
But to banish the whole idea of individuality or
spontaneity from the face of the earth, which is
what Mr. Furst does, at any rate in effect, is going
further than the principle of “ cause and effect,” to
the extent to which we at present understand it,
will allow. The book is illustrated with pictures
after Turner, Paul Bril, Claude Lorrain, and William
van de Velde the younger.
Educational Needlecraft. By Margaret Swan-
son and Ann Macbeth. (London: Longmans,
Green and Co.) 4s. 6d. net.—Earnest and intelligent
interest in art and craft is still very active in the
North ; not content with organising a new departure
in stitchery at the Glasgow School of Art, and
throughout the western division of Scotland, Miss
Swanson and Miss Macbeth have issued an
exhaustive handbook on the subject. The new
system may be described as a common-sense
method of teaching needlecraft, beginning with
the child of six, before the eye has developed to
normal vision. By graduated instruction the young
student is initiated in the interesting and important
work of tacking, over-seaming, hemming, herring-
boning, darning, button-holing, chain-stitching,
binding, gathering, and numerous other stitching
exercises, and all the while she is encouraged in
self-reliance, the foundation note of individuality.
Over two hundred carefully drawn diagrams em-
phasise the clearly written instructions, while six
coloured plates direct attention to the higher
accomplishment in new embroidery. The work is
a timely contribution to the modern art movement,
m which Glasgow has played a conspicuous part,
338
and experience and ability have enabled the
authors to produce a book that should become a
classic in needlecraft.
Christ Church, Oxford: An Anthology in Prose
and Verse. Selected by Arthur Hassall, M.A.
(London: Hodder and Stoughton.) 63s-. net.—
The letterpress of this fine volume, bound in white
buckram and bearing the arms of the college it
celebrates emblazoned on both covers, is a little
disappointing. Preceding the anthology there is
an interesting narrative of the history of this famous
institution, but the anthology itself, in spite of some
entertaining reminiscences by alumni, is hardly
worthy of a college which has in our own days
given Britain several of her Prime Ministers, and
has besides nurtured a whole host of men distin-
guished in various walks of life. Of some of these
we get glimpses here and there in the book, but in
this respect the letterpress lacks the interest of the
illustrations, which are all in colour and include
reproductions of the portraits of some of the
eminent personages associated with Christ Church,
such as Cardinal Wolsey, its projector, from the
portrait attributed to R. Greenbury; King Henry
VIII., its actual founder, from Sonmans’s painting ;
Queen Elizabeth, from a portrait attributed to
Zuccaro; Dean Aldrich and John Locke, by
Kneller ; John Wesley, by Romney; Dr. Pusey, by
G. Richmond; Gladstone, by Millais; Dean Liddell,
by Watts; and Canon Liddon, by Herkomer.
These portraits are, in fact, the chief attraction of
the volume, which also contains a dozen or more
reproductions of paintings by Arthur Garratt, who
has presented various views of the college and its
surroundings.
The Works of Man. By Lisle March Phillipps.
(London: Duckworth and Co.) 7s. (id. net.—
Many of the essays included in this volume have
already appeared in periodicals and teem with
original suggestions, notably those on “ What Art
Meant to the Greeks,” in which the differences
between Greek and Gothic architecture are well
defined, and that on the Gothic Contribution,
which brings out forcibly the essential qualities of
the Pointed style and the delight taken by its
exponents in “the vitality of the arch principle.”
Other articles, however, especially that on the
temples of Egypt, cannot fail to provoke hostile
criticism. To be able to see in the noble
sanctuaries of the Land of the Nile nothing but
a triumph of matter over mind, and to condemn
all Egyptian sculpture as “ barren of intellectual
insight and intellectual interest,” seems to betray
on the part of the author a strange insensibility to