Studio: international art (65.1915)

Studio-Talk

President Mr. Alfred Parsons, Mr. Walter West.
Mr. W. Eyre Walker, and others.

Few of the personages associated with the stage
in our days have engaged the attention of artists
so much as the talented Russian danseuse, Mme.
Anna Pavlova. The statuette we reproduce has
just been on view at the Royal Academy and is
the work of Miss Lorna Adamson, who made her
debut as an exhibitor at Burlington House four
years ago, when she was but sixteen. Miss
Adamson is wholly self-taught as an artist, and
has found great advantage from a sedulous cultiva-
tion of the memory, which has enabled her to dis-
pense almost entirely with notes and sketches.

The Royal Society of Miniature Painters’ Twen-
tieth Annual Exhibition, at the Modern Gallery,
contained a large number of works, many of which,
aiming at nothing more than a mere coloured
photograph effect, were disappointing. The best
things in the exhibition were Miss Nellie Hepburn
Edmund’s Helen, daughter of Lord Edward Cecil,
agreeable in composition, delicately painted, but

“ANNA PAVLOVA TN THE SWAN DANCE”

BY LORNA ADAMSON

with appropriate freedom in the handling of the
dress; and Miss Mabel Edwards’s two exhibits, of
which Muriel, a girl in a violet-coloured early
Victorian dress, was the more attractive. A satis-
factory military miniature was that of Major-Gen.
E. S. Bulfin, C.V.O., by Victor Wyatt Burnand;
works delicate in handling were contributed by
Count Mario Grixoni, Dora Soutten (a well-drawn
Portrait), Edith M. Hinchley (a clever study of an
old woman), and Lydia Isabel Howorth. Some
fine jewellery by Miss Kate M. Eadie, whose work
is well known to our readers, and a case of medals
by Mr. Cecil Thomas (now 2nd Lieut, in the 13th
Middlesex), particularly an excellent one for the
Hindhead Golf Club, were by no means the least
interesting of the exhibits.

To the majority of people the name of the Hon.
John Collier is associated with those “ problem ”
pictures with which, from time to time, he has
titillated the palate of the lovers of drama in paint
who go to Burlington House in search of a thrilling
“picture of the year.” Besides, however, his
activities in portrait and figure painting, the artist
depicts landscape, and a number of his studies
were to be seen at the Leicester Galleries last
month. Of these a clever picture of Olives at
Bordighera, Autumn at the Villa Serbelloni, and
two airy little seascapes, Woolacombe Sands and
The Beach at Saundersfoot, were among the most
interesting. _

Mr. Edgar Wilson and Mr. D. Atherton Smith
held in June last a joint exhibition of work at the
Twenty-One Gallery, York Buildings, Adelphi,
consisting of drawings and etchings by the former,
and some attractive little sketches in oils by
Mr. Atherton Smith, similar in technique to those
we reproduced in colour at the beginning of last
year. Ten of this artist’s fresh and luminous
impressions were included in this exhibition,
several being scenes in Tunis and Algiers; but the
most attractive were the two entitled On a Canal
Side, Venice, a charming study of pink sails; and
the little beach scene, sparkling with light, Paris
Plage. Mr. Wilson’s Silenus, the figure-head of a
ship seen against a background of masts and
cordage, and two excellent tinted drawings entitled
Locomotion, showing, decoratively, the early days of
the railroad, were among the best of his pen-and-
ink drawings. His etchings included a second set
of ten small etchings of London. There is a little
stiffness in the composition of these small plates
which is not disagreeable; and the etchings as

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