Studio: international art (65.1915)

Studio-Talk

“JOFFRE AND THE GALLIC COCK ” BY E. CARTER PRESTON

(Fine Art Society.—Photo, Malcolm Arbuthnot)

and amusing also was The Rose of Lancaster, in
which Mr. Churchill, seated Britanniawise, has
dropped his submarine-headed trident, to take up
an emblem of his subsequent appointment.

The fine, and at the moment eminently appro-
priate, exhibition of Naval and Military Works of
Art now being held at the Guildhall Art Gallery,
has proved a great attraction. Here are to be
seen a number of paintings of famous military
exploits, among them many old favourites, lent
by various private owners and Galleries, many
coming from the National collections of France
and from Belgian artists. In much painting of
warlike scenes the interest of the subject, of course,
far transcends the importance of the picture from
a purely artistic point of view; but to-day, when
our hearts are stirred with the knowledge of the
magnificent deeds of our brave sailors and soldiers
and those of our gallant Allies such an exhibition
as this makes the strongest claim upon our interest,
expressing, as in so many pictures we find ex-
pressed, the highest ideals of patriotism, self-
sacrifice, and great-hearted devotion to duty.

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Some portraits of famous person-
ages in the public eye at the
moment are prominent features of
the exhibition, such as Sargent’s
fine Sir Ia?i Hamilton; a richly-
colouristic portrait of the Czar by
V. Sieroff; Herkomer’s portrait,
dated 1890, of Earl Kitchener, and
the same artist’s Lord Fisher-,
General Joffre, painted by Henri
Jacquier; Sir David Beatty, by
Hugh G. Riviere ; Sir John French,
by J. St. Helier Lander; a painting
by C. W. Furse of Lord Charles
Beresford-, Laszlo’s Rt. Hon. A. J.
Balfour-, Lavery’s Rt. Hon.
Winston Churchill; Fiddes Watt’s
Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith; and
Logsdail’s Sir Edward Grey.
France has always counted among
her artists a distinguished school of
military painters, and the exhibition
contains examples by, among
others, Meissonier, J. L. Gerome,
A. de Neuville, E. Detaille, A. P.
Roll, J. Berne Bellecoeur, G.
Jeanniot, and G. Hoffbauer.
Among our own artists who have
painted naval or military subjects,
some of the best things are the
works by Lady Butler, Robert Gibb, W. L. Wyllie,
Norman Wilkinson, and Bernard Gribble, and we
also remember with pleasure Bertram Priestman’s
Launch of H.M.S. Thunderer, and The Wash of
the Next Ahead, by Arthur J. W. Burgess.

A Special Exhibition of the Royal Society of
Painters in Water Colours, held during July with
the worthy object of helping the Artists’ General
Benevolent Institution, contained many good and
characteristic works by various of the members.
Among the best things, to mention but a few of
them, were Mr. Henry E. Crockett’s Pleasant
Meadows; four works by Mr. Albert Goodwin;
some agreeable pastoral pictures by Mr. R. Thorne
Waite; Mrs.' Laura Knight’s sunny Cornstack;
beautiful studies in pencil by Mr. Sims for two of
his well-known pictures; interesting works by Mr,
Clausen; a fine Bolton Abbey, Yorks, by Mr.
Lamorna Birch ; Mr. Robert Little’s Lake of Coitio
from “ Pliny's Villa ” ; wonderfully simplified but
eloquent studies of pigeons, and a Sketch in Majorca
by Mr. Edwin Alexander; and good works by the