Studio: international art (71.1917)

Studio- Talk

"THE SCULPTOR BARTLETT." BY CHARLES
GRAFLY

{Pennsylvania A cademy) "

STUDIO-TALK.

(From Our Own Correspondents.)

LONDON.—A considerable part of the
buildings of the Victoria and Albert
Museum has been assigned by the
—' Government for the accommodation
of the Board of Education, whose offices in
Whitehall have been taken to provide further
accommodation for war staff, and consequently
until the end of the war and possibly for a
considerable time thereafter only a compara-
tively small portion of the Museum collections
will* be accessible to the public. The Prime
Minister, in communicating the decision of the
War Cabinet to the Minister of Education, regrets
the necessity for this step and hopes that it may

not be needful to close the Museum entirely,
but he appeals to every one concerned to accept
the position " as one of the many lamentable
necessities of the war."

In the current exhibition of the New English
Art Club in Suffolk Street there is not much of
arresting significance, nor, on the other hand,
is there a great deal that is either feeble or
freakish. Several of the leading supporters of
the Club are not represented—such as Mr.
A. E. John, Professor Brown, Mr. Walter
Russell, Mrs. Swynnerton, and Captain Philip
Connard (whose absence is accounted for by
his " one-man" show at the Leicester Gal-
leries) ; and Mr. McEvoy contributes to the
display only one example of his very - personal
work as a portrait-painter, while at the recent
National Portrait Society's exhibition he was
represented by something like a dozen. Por-
traiture, in fact, is not a strong feature of
the display, and beyond a small group com-
prising this portrait by Mr. McEvoy, Mr. Wilson
Steer's Portrait Sketch, Mr. Southall's portrait
of a member of the Chamberlain family (repro-
duced elsewhere in this number), Mr. G. W.
Lambert's Mrs. E. P. Reed, and a boy's portrait
by Mr. Gere, there is little to be noted in this
connexion. In landscape Mr. Gere is seen to
advantage in a fine study of Clouds Lifting,
and both Mr. C. J. Holmes and Mr. Collins
Baker are represented by work of distinction—
the former particularly by his Rossett Gill and
Snow Showers on Malham Moor, and the latter
by Cader and Bird Rock. Mr. Mark Fisher,
Mr. Lucien Pissarro, Mr. David Muirhead,
Mr. A. W. Rich, and Professor W. Rothenstein
all contribute characteristic work. In the room
assigned to drawings and prints the chief items
are some of Mr. Muirhead Bone's " Western
Front" drawings, and Mr. Francis Dodd's
portraits of British generals.

The war has been responsible for the revival
of an interesting branch of decorative art
which had a considerable vogue in the eigh-
teenth century. We refer to the painted
furniture now being produced in the workshops
of Messrs. Tredegars, as agents for Lady Kinloch,
by whom the revival was inaugurated with the
laudable motive of providing an occupation for
artists whose opportunities of earning a living
have been very seriously diminished by the

69