Studio: international art (60.1914)

Art School Notes

“the lord strathcona and mount royal.” bust

BY FREDERICK LESSORE

due course be installed in the terminal station at
Montreal. H. M. L.

ART SCHOOL NOTES.

ED ON. — Except in sculpture the work
shown last month at the Royal Academy
prize distribution was disappointing.
The honours in painting were carried
off not by the medallists of the year but by Miss
Williams, the winner of the gold medal of 1911,
whose work executed during her travelling student-
ship elicited high praise from the President. The
subject in the competition decided last month for
the gold medal and travelling studentship of £200
was The Pool of Bethesda, and it was taken by
Mr. G. L. Brockhurst with a composition which,
though carefully worked out, displayed no great
qualities of painting and was certainly no better
than two at least of the other illustrations of the
subject. The same subject was set thirty-five
years ago, when Mr. H. H. La Thangue, R.A.,
carried off the medal. It is capable of considerable
diversity of treatment, but strangely enough in last
month’s competition only one student introduced
the angel into his picture. The prize for the best

design for the decoration of a portion of a public
building brought forth a weak set of drawings, and
the first award was withheld. The Turner medal
and prize of ^50 for landscape were not awarded
and the competing works for the Creswick prize
(A Pebbly Brook) were probably the poorest ever
seen in this competition. The prize painting, by
Miss G. E. Bury, had, however, the virtue of being
a good illustration of the subject. One of the best
things shown among the prize works was the
cartoon A Suppliant by Miss H. M. Hechle,
which was well drawn, and expressive in spite of
the fact that the face of the suppliant was hidden.
Good also were the four drawings from the life by
Mr. Y. N. Rainbird, which had more individuality
than most of the work usually seen in Academy
competitions. Mr. Gilbert Ledward won the gold
medal and travelling studentship of S2°° for com-
position in sculpture (Diana and Endymion) with a
group that was excellent alike in design and model-
ling. Mr. D. J. Chisholm gained the gold medal
and travelling studentship of 200 in architecture
with a good design for “ A Town Hall for an
Important City.” W. T. W.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

PPans PPolbein the Younger. By Arthur B.
Chamberlain. (London : Geo. Allen and Co.)

2 vols. fl?) 3s■ °d- net.—Mr. Chamberlain has
spared no pains to bring our knowledge of Holbein
up to date. His book takes advantage of the many
revisions of judgment on the painter’s work recently
made but not incorporated in any standard work.
The connection between the art of Velasquez, of
Rembrandt, or even of the Italian primitives, and
the ideals pursued in various schools of modern
painting is so obvious that the research into their
art and the history of their times has been exhaustive,
but there is no such obvious connection between
the conception of art that inspired Holbein and
that which inspires art to-day. Interest in Holbein’s
portraiture has never flagged, but, as far as the wider
public are concerned, Holbein’s other masterpieces
do not hold the important place in the imagination
of the Anglo-Saxon public wrhich is given to the
more famous works of painters of other European
schools. His penetrating study of character has
aroused modern enthusiasm, but for all the resources
of his powerful imagination and profound genius
for design Holbein has seemed to fail us on the
side of mere emotion, confusing dramatic qualities
in composition with the more mystical ones of
religious feeling. Besides his extensive research
into the questions relating to Holbein attributions

33i