Studio: international art (60.1914)

Studio-Talk

eighteenth century to Ingres the master-draughts-
man, are among the riches of the exhibition; finally
Degas, disciple of Ingres, provides a link with the
present day and with the moderns whose interests
the exhibition is organised to serve. Opportunity for
studying the practice of the old masters is afforded
in one or two most interesting unfinished canvases,
notably Gainsborough’s Mary Gainsborough; and
consolation may perhaps be derived by some artist
of to-day from the fact that the picture of Lord
Melbourne’s children, now accepted as one of the
greatest of Reynolds’s works, was returned by the
noble who commissioned it because it failed to
satisfy him, and was bought from the executors of
the painter for the collection of Earl Cowper, in
which it remained.

We give on this page illustrations of some nursery
tiles from a series designed by that versatile artist,
Mr. John Hassall, for Mr. Hugh Walford, of Bir-
mingham. The motifs are, as will be seen, derived
from our old nursery rhymes.

An air of invigorating freshness pervaded the
little Twenty-One Gallery in the Adelphi, hard by
the Strand, when the landscape work of Mr. D.
Atherton Smith was shown there during the early
days of dull November. Though a resident of
Paris for some years, where one gets a glimpse of
his work from time to time in thevarious exhibitions,
Mr. Smith is a Glasgow artist, but his art reveals no
trace of his early associations with that grey city.
In its excellent frame-setting and individual
execution each of his thirty odd canvases shown
appealed by its spontaneous vitality and light, and
of especial charm were the Landscape, Switzerland,
The Beach, and The White Yacht, all three un-
commonly attractive on account of their simplicity
of composition and colour. Among his larger
exhibits, his breezy Jour de Mistral and Corner oj
the Marketplace, with its clean sparkling paint and
movement, were particularly notable. Not the
least attractive amongst the smaller works were the
two sketches we reproduce in colour, A Glimpse of
the Adriatic Lido, and Vue de Beg-meil Finistere.

The Dowdeswell Galleries have been exhibiting
humorous and other drawings by Vera Willoughby.
This artist has very un-
usual power as a designer,
and an intense, if not
always pleasant, imagina-
tion ; an inexhaustible
fund of invention comes
to her aid in handling her
humorous designs, but the
element of humour seems
less spontaneous than that
of fancy. Her decorative
skill, however, is such
that it places her work on
a high plane in the field
of illustration.

The pictures and sketches in the Near and Far
East by Mr. H. S. Hopwood, shown in a recent

The lithographs by
Mons. A. Belleroche at
the same galleries were
delightful in the province
of portraiture, for the
touch of the artist is most
sympathetic and skilful;
it is only in the “subject-
picture” that he falls
away, failing to maintain
the same reticence
and directness of treat-
ment.

3°6

DESIGNS FOR NURSERY TILES

DESIGNED BY JOHN HASSALL, R.I.