Studio: international art (59.1913)

Reviews and Notices

French, Mr. A. J. Mavrogordato, Miss M. H. Clay,
Mrs. G. Blacklock, and Miss E. Houseman.

A. R.

The School of Art which has for many years
been an important department of the Birkbeck
College is to be discontinued at the close of the
current session, as the result of an arrangement
between the Governors of the College and the
London County Council, by whom the institution
is now largely maintained. The fact that the
County Council has in the near vicinity two other
art schools under its exclusive control—one being
the Central School—no doubt furnishes the reason
for the arrangement come to. Several members of
the teaching staff at the Birkbeck have received
appointments in one or other of the numerous
art schools controlled by the Council, but it is
stated that some difficulty has arisen in regard
to making similar provision for Mr. Mason, who
during the many years he has held the post of
head master has earned the esteem of the hundreds
of students who have studied under him.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

The Decora tive Art ofLeon Bakst. Appreciation
by Arsene Alexandre. Notes on the Ballets by
Jean Cocteau. (London: The Fine Art Society.)
Rs net.—All who saw the collection of designs
by M. Bakst in the galleries of the Fine Art Society
a few months ago will agree that it would have
been a thousand pities had this remarkable series
of drawings been dispersed—as indeed all or most
of them have been—without some adequate per-
manent record being made of them. The Society
wisely recognised that monochrome illustrations
would have altogether failed to do justice to such
work as this, in which, as M. Alexandre remarks in
his Appreciation, the artist has realised a veritable
“ orchestration ” of colour in unison with the true
colour of music, and taking advantage of the modern
process of colour engraving they have therefore
issued this folio volume with the majority of the
illustrations in colour. From our recollection of
the originals these reproductions appear to us to be
very satisfactory; not only is the wealth of colour
which makes these drawings so fascinating vera-
ciously rendered, but the delicate line-work which
occurs in many of them has been done justice to.
There are nearly eighty plates in all, and each
is mounted on pale grey paper with deckle edges,
on which also the introductory letterpress is printed.
The sumptuousness of the contents is enhanced by
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the cover with its vellum back and corners relieved
by broad lines of gold. There is also an edition de
luxe bound entirely in vellum and containing an
original drawing.

Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors,
and Architects. By Giorgio Vasari. Newly trans-
lated by Gaston Du C. De Vere. (London:
Philip Lee Warner.) Vols. Ill and IV. 25s-. net
each.—Dealing as they do wTith the remarkable
period during which the arts of painting and
sculpture reached their noblest development and the
great Renaissance in architecture was inaugurated
in Italy, the third and fourth volumes of the new
translation of Vasari’s “ Lives ” are perhaps the
most important of the whole series. The former
includes Piero della Francesca, who did so much
to systematise the study of perspective; Fra
Angelico, whose spirituality sets him apart from all
his contemporaries ; Fra Filippo Lippi, the first of
the Italian painters to introduce true landscape in
his compositions; the brilliant colourist Ghir-
landaio ; the sympathetic interpreter of classic
subjects, Botticelli; the erudite Mantegna; and the
gifted Bellini brothers, with many of their less
celebrated fellow-artists who paved the way for the
great galaxy of geniuses considered in vol. iv. As is
well brought out by the writer, Leonardo da Vinci,
Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio
combined in their works all the excellences of
their predecessors whilst retaining in each case
their own distinctive individualities, the idiosyn-
cracies of which are hit off with some felicity
by their critic, who again has been most faithfully
interpreted by his translator. The general level of
excellence of the, illustrations in this truly noble
edition is extremely high, and the finest coloured
plates in the volumes now under consideration are
Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, Gentile Bellini’s
N. Dominic, Botticelli’s Giovanni Tornabuoni, Peru-
gino’s National Gallery Triptych, and Giorgione’s
Figures in a Landscape, in all of which the colour-
values are admirably rendered, whilst the black-and-
white reproductions, too, are excellent.

The Letters of a Post-Lmpressiofiist: being the
Familiar Correspondence of Vincetit Van Gogh.
Translated from the German by A. M. Ludovici.
(London : Constable.) js. 6 d. net.—The tale of Van
Gogh’s life is the tragedy of genius that stopped
short of completion; but his correspondence as
here translated reflects a mind which in its division
against itself is curiously modern, and in their
sincerity the letters form an interesting document.
Addressed to a favourite brother, and in some cases
to a friend, and written without the intention or