Studio: international art (60.1914)

A House

On your way to the Piccola Marina you pass old
Spadaro’s hut ; he is out there busy drying his
nets. This old fellow was both fisherman and
model. Then on to the Piccola Fortina, an old
disused fort. Pfere an artist friend of mine lived;
there was only one large habitable room, which he
had fitted up in the quaintest fashion as a studio.
A wild, roving sort of fellow this artist, he wore
sailor’s dress and walked about like the natives,
barefooted. The vaulted ceiling of this cave-like
dwelling was utilised by him for hanging up his
nets, and in a dark recess burnt a tiny lamp in front
of a figure of the Virgin. Our friend married old
Spadaro’s daughter, and here in this Crusoe-like
dwelling, surrounded by his monkeys and parrots,
he lived and painted his pictures.

So great are the changes that have taken place
on the island since the days of which I write, one
could almost exclaim with the poet:

Great Pan is dead ? Ah no ! he lives. ’Tis we
Blind with the scales of centuries on our eyes,

Have lost belief and thus the power to see.

E. B.

No ! Great Pan is not dead. He lives, lives for
those who still can hear his whispered music
amongst the reeds from which he fashions his

THE OLD FISHERMAN AND MODEL, SPADARO

in a JVood

CAPRI GIRLS IN THEIR OLD-TIME COSTUME

pipes, for the sweet song of the Siren never ceases
to lure the artist and poet to the beautiful Island of
Capri. Frank Hyde (Capri).

A HOUSE IN A WOOD. BY M. H.
BAILLIE SCOTT.

In the design of country houses nothing
is perhaps so important as the nice relation of the
building to its natural surroundings. Much of the
charm of old houses lies precisely in this quality.

The old cottages and farm-houses of England,
apart from their intrinsic beauties, delight us with
their fitness to their place in the world. They are
illuminating commentaries and marginal notes on
the essential attributes of the particular domain
they adorn. To appreciate the true inwardness of
Sussex it is not enough to wander over the South
Downs. There must be the village nestling in a
hollow of the hills to summarise and complete the
impression of their character. Nor would the
barren uplands of the Cotswolds suffice us without
the austere beauty of their pearly-grey buildings.
And so through the length and breadth of the land
we shall find that the old buildings are always modi-
fied in many subtle and beautiful ways, so that they
seem to explain to us and to make articulate the
dumb appeal of the country-side.