Studio: international art (58.1913)

Reviews and Notices

year by some of the students to illustrate episodes
in the Nibelungen Lied, are still in the studios, and
several other paintings of a similar kind are in
progress. _ W. T. W.

The first annual dinner of the Association of
Old Students of the Royal College of Art, South
Kensington, was held early last month, when Mr.
Alexander Fisher, president of the Association,
took the chair. The formation of the Association,
which already has a membership sf over a hundred,
the list including three old students who have
attained Academy rank (Mr. Clausen, Mr. Drury,
and Mr. Derwent Wood), was prompted by the
Report of the Departmental Committee appointed
by the Board of Education to inquire into the
working of the College during the ten years 1901-
1910. The conclusions of that Committee have
caused much resentment among many who have
graduated at the College, and one of them,
Mr. Frank P. Brown, who is acting as hon. secretary
of the association and is head master of the
Richmond (Surrey) School of Art, has recently
published a vigorous defence of the College in a
volume entitled " South Kensington and its Art
Training " in which the findings of the Committee
are reviewed and criticised at length.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

The Art and Craft of Garden Making. By
Thomas H. Mawson, Hon. A.R.I.B.A. Fourth
edition. (London: B. T. Batsford.) £2 10s.
net.—The very fact that a fourth edition of this
work should be called for within a comparatively
short time after its first appearance is perhaps the
best testimony to its value as an authoritative treatise
on the subject of garden making. Mr. Mawson
has, indeed, by his proved ability to grapple with
all the manifold problems which have arisen in the
course of his twenty-five years' practice established
for himself a unique reputation, and the respect in
which he is held is due not a little to his broad
and liberal views of the functions of a garden-
designer. Recognising the organic connection of
house and garden, and paying due respect to this
relationship in his designs, he nevertheless always
betrays that ardent love of nature which is a by no
means unimportant qualification for those who
practise the art of garden-designing. It is an art
which calls for a greater exercise of the imagination
than is generally supposed; the garden-designer
has to think ahead and perhaps may never see the
complete realisation of what his mind's eye con-
84

jectured when his design was first put into shape.
Mr. Mawson, however, has happily lived to see the
work of years ago come to maturity and in this new
edition of his book he is able to offer photographic
illustrations of numerous gardens of which only
the perspective drawings were given in earlier
editions. Among the gardens thus illustrated are
those which Mr. Mawson planned for Sir W. H.
Lever, Bart., at The Hill, Hampstead, some views
of which were given in a recent number of this
magazine, though his name was omitted through
oversight. Besides making this important change,
the author has gone through the entire work and
introduced various improvements and additions, so
that it is in reality a good deal more than what is
usually understood as a new edition. The volume,
with its handsome binding of "art" canvas, now
consists of 400 pages, crown folio format (15 by
10 inches) and is illustrated by 435 plans, sketches
and photographs, and seven colour plates.

Cambridge and its Story. By Arthur Gray.
(London : Methuen and Co.) \os. 6d. net.—The
author, who was recently elected Master of Jesus
College, tells us here the story—he prefers not to
use the word History—of the University in its
relation to the national life, showing how the
curriculum has been, as time went on, modified
and adapted to the particular intellectual needs of
the day ; at the same time he gives a sketch of the
character of Cambridge at certain epochs in its
history and a picture of the life as lived there
during the residence of some of its most famous
alumni. The book is illustrated by sixteen photo-
graphs and sixteen pictures in colour by Mr.
Maxwell Armfield, who, in some at least of his
drawings, which are, generally speaking, pleasant in
themselves, seems unfortunately to have missed the
true spirit of the place; and this is the more sur-
prising considering the abundance of subjects of
eminently " paintable " character which Cambridge
affords to the sympathetic artist.

A History of English Glass-Painting. By
Maurice Drake. (London: T. Werner Laurie.)
£2 2S. net.—It is for those who do not possess the
requisite technical knowledge that Mr. Maurice
Drake has produced this volume containing thirty-
six plates after drawings by Mr. Wilfred Drake
among them being a few in colour. To call it a
" history " however, is rather misleading as implying
a larger treatment of the subject than is given, but
as fulfilling the purpose for which it is written—
namely, " to enable the collector to buy with
intelligence, to know the approximate date of this
or that piece of dirty glass that may come in his