Studio: international art (62.1914)

Reviews and Notices

Architecture will be a " Courts of Justice " fulfilling
certain specified conditions; and in sculpture and
decorative painting candidates have to submit
various kinds of work in accordance with the
printed particulars, the last date for delivery in each
case being January 30. The final examination
will follow three or four months later and will be
confined to a small number of select candidates.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Brush and Pencil Notes in Landscape. By Sir
Alfred East, R.A. (London : Cassell and Co.,
Ltd.) 10s. 6d. net.—Very beautiful both in their
decorative qualities and in their compelling sense of
fidelity to and love of nature as are the paintings of
Sir Alfred East, whose death leaves so great a gap in
the ranks of our landscape painters, his genius
was pre-eminently revealed in his water-colours, in
which, apart from their beauty of colour, he evinces
such amazing skill in the rendering of atmospheric
effect, and again in the pencil drawings—so sug-
gestive and so profound in the knowledge of tree
forms—with which he filled countless sketch-books.
As Mr. Edwin Bale tells us in his sympathetic
introduction, it was the artist's own conviction
that he was a better painter in water-colour than in
oils, and the sincerity of his very personal attitude
towards Nature is admirably seen in the beautiful
works he executed with such mastery in the former
medium. Thirty-one examples of his sketches in
water-colour are illustrated in facsimile in this
volume together with twenty-nine pencil-sketches.
The reproductions are in the main excellent, though
occasionally the colour plates leave something to be
desired, and the pencil reproductions are printed on
an "antique" paper which while it certainly gives
something of the surface quality of the original
sketches does not allow of quite full justice being
done to the blocks. The book contains an article
written by Sir Alfred East himself on " The Artist's
attitude towards Nature," which, taken in conjunc-
tion with the examples of his work here illustrated,
should prove very helpful and suggestive to the
student sketching from Nature.

An Introduction to English Church Architecture
from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century. By
Francis Bond, M.A. &c. (Oxford University
Press.) 2 vols. £2 2s. net.—The number of
books dealing with English Church Architecture
from the standpoint of the non-professional student
is legion, but we cannot recall any that treats of the
subject so systematically and thoroughly, and is so
extensively illustrated as this new work by Mr.
Bond, whose exhaustive knowledge of the subject,
168

already attested by the various books which have
appeared under his name during the past few years,
is here again abundantly demonstrated. The
author's aim is, to use his own words, " to give
a plain, straightforward account of mediaeval build-
ing construction as controlled by mediaeval ritual,"
and in pursuance of this aim the analytical method
has been followed throughout the bulk of the work.
Thus after preliminary chapters on the churches
belonging to the various orders of monks and
canons, the requirements of the greater mediaeval
churches, the planning of churches of monks and
canons, and the planning and growth of the parish
church, he proceeds to discuss and exemplify in
turn the numerous constructional details met with
in these edifices—such as vaulting, the abutment
system, walls and arches, the pier and its members,
the various kinds of windows and their tracery,
doorways and porches, the triforium and bay
design, the clerestory, the roof and other devices
for securing protection from rain, and finally towers
and spires. The comprehensive scope of the
treatise may be judged from the fact that the two
volumes contain no fewer than 1400 illustrations,
including besides photographic views and drawings
of exteriors and interiors, numerous plans and
sections, while the Index Locorum fills no
fewer than twenty pages. There is also an excellent
glossary as well as an exhaustive Index Rerum, and
as evidences of careful elaboration are everywhere
present the work will undoubtedly rank henceforth
as a standard authority on pre-Reformation Church
Architecture in England.

Spring. By YV. Beach Thomas and A. K.
Collett. (London : T. C. and E. C. Jack.) io.f. 6d.
net.—This is the second volume of the series of
three delightful works in which the authors are
giving us a kind of Nature-lover's diary of " The
English Year." The first, dealing with Autumn
and Winter, was reviewed in these pages some few
months ago, and now Messrs. Beach Thomas and
Collett give us similar fascinating essays upon all
the manifold and varied happenings in woods and
fields during March, April, and May. As before,
the volume is illustrated by very numerous ad-
mirable drawings in the text by Mr. Allen Seaby
and contains twelve colour plates after works by
Conder, East, Arnesby Brown, Harry Becker and
Tom Mostyn.

The Pigments and Mediums of the Old Masters.
By A. P. Laurie, M.A., D.Sc. (London: Mac-
millan and Co.) 85. 6d. net.—For some years past
Dr. Laurie, who succeeded Sir Arthur Church as Pro-
fessor of Chemistry to the Royal Academy in 1912,