Studio: international art (60.1914)

Studio-Talk

PORTION OF FRIEZE ROUND THE “ARMADA” ROOM AT THE IMPERIAL HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, DESIGNED AND

EXECUTED BY NORMAN S. CARR

exhibition at the Fine Art Society’s galleries,
represented this well-known member of the Old
Water-Colour Society as a painter in oils. The
chief charm of the small panels of which the
exhibition was composed lay with colour and with
the pleasant spontaneous style which the painter
has taught his admirers to expect in the slighter
medium at the Water-Colour Society’s exhibitions.

We reproduce one panel of a scheme of decora-
tion carried out by Mr. Norman S. Carr in the
“Armada” room, which is one of the features of
the new extension to the Imperial Hotel, Russell
Square. The frieze, which is fifty-four inches high
and is executed in oils, consists of pictures of the
old-time Spanish galleons, gay with bright pennons
and pompous with their bellying sails, and is
a decorative achievement upon which the artist
may be congratulated. The largest panel shows
the Invincible Armada advancing in the famous
half-moon formation, while the others, among them
the one we reproduce, show the rival fleets hotly
engaged. Though working in a style familiar
through the productions of Mr. Morton Nance and
the late Mr. W. J. Neatby, a number of whose
decorations are to be seen in the original wing of
the Imperial Hotel, Mr. Carr has an individuality
of his own and, as one who takes a keen interest in
yachting and sailing, has brought to this task an
expert knowledge of the subject. Mr. Carr did not
undergo any art school training, but was intimately
associated with Mr. Neatby for about twelve years.
While working at the Royal Doulton Potteries Mr.
Carr executed decorative panels in ceramics and

a variety ot tile work. He has also illustrated a
number of nautical books and articles in yachting
papers. Three decorations more are in the Hall of
the Imperial Hotel and he is engaged upon two
others. He has just completed a large panel of
The “ Victory ” at Trafalgar, twenty feet long, for a
building at Portsmouth.

The Fine Art Society have been holding an
exhibition of the photographs taken by Mr. Herbert
G. Ponting with Captain Scott’s Antarctic Ex-
pedition. It is perhaps in photography so matter-
of-fact that the virtue of the camera as an artistic
medium most reveals itself. A large part of what
is beautiful in art rests with the revelation of what
is beautiful in nature. This was shown in the
delicate—almost photographic—realism of Dutch
art. And one can well believe that Van de Velde
would have delighted in such a photograph as Mr.
Ponting’s The Terra Nova Icebound in the Pack,
in which, if we did not know that the rhythmic folds
of the sails and the graceful lines of the rigged ship
were not emphasised, we might well believe them
to be so, and by an artist cunning in the emphasis
of the salient features of his composition.

The examples of lettering which we reproduce
were culled from an unusually interesting and
instructive exhibition held at the South London
Art Gallery in Peckham Road throughout the
month of October and early part of November.
The purpose of the exhibition, in the organisation
of which Mr. Percy J. Smith, lecturer in lettering
and allied subjects at the Camberwell School of

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