Studio: international art (62.1914)

Miss IVillebeek Le Mair s Illustrations

yellow, red, and white lime colours, from the year iy m ISS WILLEBEEK LE MAIR'S
1597, with the old cupboards and tables. Next l\ /I ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHIL-

DREN'S BOOKS.

comes the " blue" room, its lime colour orna-
mentation dating from the year 1650, since which
year the old cabinet has been in the house. The It is now more than three years since the sight
" Pyramid salon" brings us another fifty years of an attractively illustrated book of nursery
nearer our own time, its decoration and furniture rhymes in a Regent Street shop window aroused
hailing from the year 1700. Some seventy years my interest in the charming work of H. Willebeek
younger is the room with the white furniture and Le Mair, whose drawings have now become familiar
the clavichord, on which one should notice the through the enterprise of Mr. Willy Strecker, who
ivory keys. Amongst the men who have succeeded as head of Augener Ltd., the music publishers,
in forming and consolidating the Aarhus Museum, was quick to discern the genius of this young artist,
special praise is due to M. Peter Holm, who for Miss Le Mair's drawings are indeed full of technical
years has had this matter at heart. accomplishment and are marked by a very rare and
I fear the dry and cursory details to which I have sensitive appreciation of all the unconscious grace
felt compelled to confine myself in this article are and unsophisticated charm of childhood ; and
but ill-fitted to arouse that interest in the subject looking through a large number of her original
which it so fully deserves. Still I hope some not drawings, as it has been my good fortune to do
too distant day will see the open-air museum lately, one is at once struck very forcibly with three
transplanted into English soil, where favourable characteristics which one had already in a great
conditions for its growth simply abound. • measure recognised from those reproductions of
- her work which have so far appeared. Firstly, the

THE British Water-Colour Society has just been pronounced feeling for decoration and the marked
formed under the presidency of Mr. Burleigh Bruhl, skill displayed in the harmonious elaboration of
chiefly for the benefit of water-colour painters who various details in the composition ; secondly the
do not belong to any of the existing art societies exquisite quality of her line, which for all its
of the United Kingdom. The rules provide for extreme delicacy never wavers or betrays any hint
two degrees of membership—Associates and full of weakness or uncertainty; and lastly, the sweet
members—and it is proposed to hold exhibitions sensitiveness to all the beauty of child life un-
twice a rear in one or other of the principal art troubled by any care for the morrow but passing
centres of the country. The Director and Secretary is happily like a beautiful dream in its faery world of
Mr. J. Paul Brinson, R.B.A., of 54 Tilehurst Road, toys and make-believe.

Reading, from whom particulars are obtainable. Since the days of Kate Greenaway, of whose

work despite all its great
charm one is often a little
impatient — if it be not
rank heresy to say so—I
know of no one who has
caught so well the pure
spirit of childhood as Miss
Le Mair ; in her work one
feels that the naturalness,
the simplicity of children
is interpreted in its most
attractive phase, with no
suspicion of any attempt
to ape the manners of
elders, no hint of pre-
cocity, no posing, no
straining after an effect of
studied artlessness.

A member of one of the
oldest Dutch families, the

OPEN-AIR MUSEUM, LYNGBY, DENMARK : PART OF AN OLD FARMSTEAD FROM . , ;

NAS, near kesleholm IN western sweden artist, who IS Still quite a