Studio: international art (57.1913)

Studio-Talk

FRONT ELEVATION OF AN HOTEL AT HRADEC KRAI.OYE,
BOHEMIA. PROF. JAN KOTERA, ARCHITECT

has been started this year, and when finished it will
represent a town of about 500 workmen and their
families, with all possible modern improvements
within reach, such as swimming baths, club-build-
ings, schools, storehouses, &c. At present Kotera
is engaged in the preparation of plans for the new
building of the Bohemian University at Prague ; he
is professor at the Academy of Art in that city, and
both as teacher and as artist he is well capable of
leading others.

STUDIO-TALK.

(From our Own Correspondents.)

tON DON.—The forty-eighth exhibition held
by the New English Art Club came to a
close at the galleries of the Royal Society
—^ of British Artists a few days ago, and
though it cannot, in our opinion, be regarded as
quite so successful as some of the exhibitions held
3l6

by the Club in recent years, there was
much in it that was quite worthy of ranking
amongst the best efforts of the Club’s
members and guests. The list of absten-
tions was rather considerable, including
such prominent supporters as Mr. J. S.
Sargent (who, however, is not an invariable
contributor to the winter exhibitions), Mr.
Muirhead Bone, Mr. Philip Connard, Mr.
Cayley Robinson, Mr. W. W. Russell,
Prof. Tonks, Mr. F. H. S. Shepherd, Mr.
Max Beerbohm,and Mrs. Swynnerton. Mr.
Augustus E. John’s painting The Mumpers,
a work of heroic dimensions scarcely justi-
fied by the subject—a group of gipsies in
various attitudes—drew a great many
people to the galleries, some to extrava-
gantly praise, others to deplore, for the
immense canvas gave evidence alike of the
genius and wilfulness of its painter. The
source of the great vitality informing its
affected incompetence may safely be
ascribed to the realistic and not to the
decorative elements of the painting. At
all points there was proof of original and
close observation of life, and it was this
which imparted vitality and stirred the spec-
tator, in spite of the deliberation with which
it was cloaked in bizarre colour and ex-
travagance of outline. Mr. William Orpen,
in his picture Morning Breeze (an entirely
appropriate name to give to it) and in his
other picture called In the Tent, showed him-
self peculiarly sensitive in the interpretation
of atmosphere, both these two small canvases being
fragrant with fresh air—and this is the more remark-
able as coming from the greatest painter of interior
genre that we have. Like Rossetti, Mr. A. McEvoy
has so much temperament, and imparts so much
of it, and also so much poetry, to forms which in
another artist’s woik would assert incompetence,
that one cannot use that word in relation to the
works exhibited by him. Seeming to fail on the
surface as judged by the readiest standards, his
pictures impart something to our imagination ; even
a portrait group of an everyday character is not
presented to us by the painter without a glamour
unconsiously transmitted to the theme. Another
very interesting artist exhibiting on this occasion
was Mr. J. 1). Innes. His landscapes perhaps
recall scenes from old paintings rather than from
nature, but they are all the more romantic on this
account, and the romance is sustained by a pro-
found sense of colour. The exhibition contained