Studio: international art (65.1915)

Reviews and Notices

best suited for the process, and the different sorts of
metals that may be employed; the preparation of
these materials; lithographic chalks, inks, and
acids and their manipulation; the instruments and
utensils necessary—remarkably few are absolutely
necessary; transfer and printing papers, presses
and printing, and so forth; and there is a special
chapter on colour lithography. It is this com-
bination of historical and technical information
that gives the volume its unique value, and we can
predict with confidence that it will have a great
success, the more so as in the matter of illustration
the authors have been particularly lavish.

The Art and Genius of Tintoret. By E. P. B.
Osmaston. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.)
2 vols. y. net.—Mr. Osmaston’s book was

much demanded. It is a curious fact that
Tintoret’s genius always has seemed to stand in
the shadow of greater names. Or is it that he had
not genius—is it that we are always conscious in
his intricate and inventive compositions of their
machinery, the very element which
the purest form of artistic inspira-
tion always has the power to con-
ceal ? That would not be Mr.

Osmaston’s solution; he rather
claims for Tintoret in this book the
place that has been denied him
with the greater names in the world.

Though the author is not one who
leaves the minutice of scientific
criticism on one side, he freshens
his book with some original thought,
and pays a tribute to Ruskin, who,
by the way, always considered him-
self the discoverer of Tintoret even
while challenging him. A lengthy
appendix is given over to a dispute
with the nineteenth-century critic
as to his theory of a relationship
between moral feeling and colour.

We do not support Mr. Osmaston
in advancing reasons against Rus-
kin’s theory. It is not to be met
by reason. Ruskin was in this
matter a mystic, and in spite of
the examples instanced by Mr.

Osmaston against the theory we
still feel the connection between
state of mind and colour which
Ruskin tried to establish. Perhaps
the difficulty in obtaining for
Tintoret the full measure of recog-
nition due to him rests with the
216

fact that religious subjects frequently engaged him,
in which he does not exhibit complete sympathy
with the text. In composition alone his invention
is always tamed in such subjects when they are
compared with his historical and mythical pictures.
It is in the more legendary character of the Old
Testament subjects that he is most impressive as
a religious painter. Tintoret possessed an almost
overpowering sense of material beauty; he hardly
stands below any master in this possession. Mr.
Osmaston is inspired by this fact in connection
with his art, and his two volumes, packed with
carefully selected illustration, and step by step
studying each phase of the master’s career, will go
perhaps further than any preceding work in
advancing the claims of its subject to a deeper
consideration than has yet been accorded him.

The price of the portfolio of reproductions pub-
lished by the Birmingham Art Gallery and recently
noticed by us is 2s. 6d., not one shilling as stated.

BY LEOPOLD SEYFFERT

PORTRAIT OF MISS JOSEPHINE DODGE

(Philadelphia Art Club.—See p. 2ij)