Studio: international art (60.1914)

Reviews and Notices

My Dog. By Maurice Maeterlinck. Illustrated
by Cecil Aldin. (London: Geo. Allen and Co.)

35-. 6d. net.—Mr. Cecil Aldin’s work is popular and
deservedly so, for in his drawings there are qualities
of humour and of sympathetic understanding that
are most attractive. This excellent translation by
Mr. A. Teixeira de Mattos of Maeterlinck’s charm-
ing little essay “ Sur la Mort d’un Petit Chien ”
from “ Le Double Jardin,” is accompanied by six
reproductions of water-colour drawings of a little
bull-dog pup that show all the artist’s accustomed
ability.

The Children’s Bine Bird. By Georgette
Leblanc (Mme. Maurice Maeterlinck). With
illustrations by Albert Rothenstein. (London :
Methuen.) 55'. net.—If we study Mr. Albert
Rothenstein’s pictures in this book simply as pictures,
we cannot fail to find in the best of them a con-
siderable art in attaining the old-world -feeling of
picture-books illustrated with great vividness. Mr.
Rothenstein strikes a note of colour fantasy far
removed from the commonplace, like the tale of
the Blue Bird itself. But the tale breathes reverence
and enchantment, and if anything could dispel these
qualities, we think it would be Mr. Rothenstein’s
work, for its effect rests entirely with a clever
fantastic distribution of colour. In the region of
caricature his mockery of the contours of life,
animate and inanimate, may be exhilarating because
it is artful and novel, and amusingly clever in its
way, as well as anything but tame ; but for us as an
interpretation of “ The Blue Bird,” it expels that
story’s gracious, happy charm.

The Fairy Book. Illustrated by Warwick Goble.
(London: Macmillan.) 155.net.—The sub-title of
“The Fairy Book” is “The Best Popular Fairy
Stories, selected and rendered anew by the author
of ‘ John Halifax, Gentleman.’ ” Mr. Warwick
Goble’s pictures are thoroughly typical of the high
standard reached in the best colour illustration
of to-day, and we are sure that this volume will
find favour with the best critics of such books as
these, namely, the children who receive them as
presents. We ourselves should have preferred
more original interpretations of the stories, but
the young are conservative and dislike to see their
old favourites in new clothes. The cover of the
book is delightful.

The Walpole Society has issued to its subscribers
its second annual volume, containing papers on
various topics of much interest accompanied by a
large number of plates in photogravure, colour, and
ordinary half-tone, the printing of which reflects the
highest credit on the Oxford University Press. In

view of the fact that the society was founded for
the purpose of encouraging the study of British
Art, it is a little curious to find one-third of the
volume allotted to a paper on a painter who, though
he lived and worked in England for many years,
was an alien by birth and training. This is the
painter whose monogram IE is found on numerous
portraits of royal and other notable personages
who, lived about the middle of the sixteenth century.
Mr. Lionel Cust, as the result of much research, is
able to establish the identity of this limner of society
in those days. It appears that he came from the
Netherlands, and that his full name was Hans or
Haunce Eworth, but many variations of the name
are given from contemporary documents. The por-
traits he painted, though they cannot be claimed as
products of British art, are nevertheless of consider-
able interest as paintings as well as historically. The
second paper concerns the de Critz family of
painters who came to England from Antwerp,
and were also successful in securing the patron-
age of the Court. In the latter half of the
volume the topics discussed are more strictly
British. Mr. E. F. Strange gives an account of the
fine rood-screen of Cawston Church in Norfolk
with its painted panels and carved figures, which
the evidence he adduces shows to have been the
work of English artists and craftsmen ; and again an
English origin is asserted by Mr. Kendrick with a
good show of reason for the Hatfield tapestries of
The Seasons. Mr. W. G. Strickland reviews the
work of Hugh Douglas Hamilton, a portrait painter
of the eighteenth century who practised first in
Dublin and then in London. M. A. Dubuisson
writes in French on the influence of Bonington and
the English School of landscape painting in France,
which began to make itself definitely felt in 1824
when a group of seven English painters exhibited
at the Paris Salon. The volume closes with a
paper by Mr. A. J. Finberg on “ Some of the
Doubtful Drawings in the Turner Bequest at the
National Gallery,” accompanied by reproductions
of numerous drawings which he has been able to
assign to their rightful authors, Thomas Girtin, de
Loutherbourg, and Dayes, the attributions being
corroborated by other drawings by these artists,
which are reproduced by way of comparison.

Miss Gladys Wynne has written for Messrs.
T. C. and E. C. Jack’s “ Shown to the Children ”
Series a little book on architecture (25. 6d. net) in
which, with the aid of numerous illustrations, she
tells in a vivacious conversational way, well suited
to juvenile comprehension, the chief facts concern-
ing the development of European architecture.

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