Studio: international art (79.1920)

STUDIO-TALK

of public appreciation. To have within
but a short time carried to completion over
a hundred life-sized busts was certainly no
light task, and considering the circum-
stances under which the work was accom-
plished it must be regarded as a very
remarkable achievement. In many cases
it necessitated his travelling over various
parts of the Continent, England, and
America, working in the strongholds of his
models, or the corner of some busy com-
mander's study. Apart from being excel-
lent portraits, these busts are all delightfully
characteristic of the vision and distinct
personality of the artist. Fortunately some
few among his models found time while
visiting Paris to give him sittings either in
his own studio there or in their own homes.

Amongst some of the finest results of his
work are the busts of the Rt. Hon. A. J.
Balfour, Marshal Foch, the Hon. E. M.
House, Marshal Joffre, M. Clemenceau,
General John J. Pershing, General A. Diaz,
Hon. Robert Lansing, Mr. Paderewski, and
Rabindranath Tagore the poet, and to this
list should be added an extremely charac-
teristic portrait of President Woodrow
Wilson, which was executed at the White
House in Washington. 000

Excellent, however, as Davidson is as a
portraitist, he is nevertheless equally virile
in that class of work which calls for the
exercise of the more creative side of the
imagination. His power in that direction
will be immediately evident to any one who
has seen his decorative panels in stone, his
statuettes, or his large figure cf War. And

it is again manifested by a work which he is
now completing—a colossal figure for a
cemetery in memory of the fallen soldiers
of the American Expeditionary Force. It
is, however, impossible in a short note such
as this to do adequate justice to Davidson ;
his striking personality and his work require
a little volume to themselves. a 0
Paris, besides being the home, at least
technically, of the painter, is also the home
both technically and artistically of the
sculptor. Near the corner of the Boule-
vard Montparnasse and the Boulevard
Raspail, one will meet many artists and
writers of all nations, and perhaps the little
group most notable at the present time is
that of the Jugo-Slavs, in whose number
M. Branco Deshkovitch figures as a dis-
tinguished sculptor. Of a strongly marked
poetical temperament combined with an
equally pronounced patriotic fervour, one
finds in him the complex character of a
hard thinker and a dreamer. In his sculp-
ture, strength is the predominating feature,
displayed in conjunction with some mytho-
logical or very modern incentive. The
very human side, too, of life attracts him,
and not the least interesting of his work is
the portrayal of animals in stone or wood,
in which he always manages to capture the
sadness or dignity connected with them.
Some of his small “ notes " in clay, as one
might term them, which he did during the
war are exceptionally expressive of the
tragedies of which he had been a witness.
Of the accompanying illustrations, The
Effort is taken from the smaller sketch in

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FRAGMENT FROM 44 THE EFFORT”
BY BRANCO DESHKOVITCH