Studio: international art (77.1919)

STUDIO-TALK

“ OLD POTTERY WORKS, GUSTAFSBERG,
SWEDEN*” FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING
BY WILHELM KAGE

(See Stockholm “Studio-Talk” next page)

of the death, after a long illness, of a valued
correspondent and contributor, Professor
Richard Mobbs, who, besides making the
work of Swiss artists familiar to the English-
speaking public, was instrumental in dis-
seminating among the people of French
Switzerland a knowledge of our great
masters of literature from Shakespeare
down to the present day, and of English
art. Born at Beccles in Suffolk in i860,
Prof. Mobbs went to Geneva nearly thirty
years ago to teach the English language and
literature, and in late years he held the
position of Privatdozent or Lecturer in the
University of Geneva, gaining the esteem
of a large number of students, who profited
by his clear manner of delivery and were
infected by his enthusiasm. When the war
broke out he ardently championed the cause
of the Allies, and his spirited defence of
their cause never failed to carry conviction.

A brief dispatch from Helsingfors pub-
lished in the “Weekly Dispatch” of August 3
announced the shooting by the Bolsheviks
of “ Vasnetsoff, the famous Russian artist,
founder of a school of painting.” It is not
clear to which of the two brothers of that
name, both of them artists of distinction,
this tragic message refers, but we presume
it is to the elder, Victor Mikhailovitch
Vasnetsoff, many of whose pictures have
been reproduced in this magazine from
time to time. He was the leading painter
of religious pictures in modern Russia,
and the work he did in this direction for the
cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev was the
subject of an article by Dr. Hagberg Wright
which we published some three or four
years ago. His younger brother, Apolli-
narius, noted chiefly for his pictorial recon-
structions of ancient Russian life and
scenes, of which several examples were

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