Studio: international art (80.1920)

tions at the Victoria and Albert Museum
numbers of jade and hard-stone carvings
can be seen lighted and arranged with
great skill and taste. Here can be studied
the exquisite effect of carvings of two-
coloured stones (as hard as jades) in which
the skill of the Chinese sculptor is revealed
at its best, for here he displays his in-
genuity in utilizing the natural contrast
of the colours of a stone—such as the red
and white of the carnelian magnolia (here
reproduced), the red and white of the
famous Fishes carved in agate and many
examples of flowers and fruits in parti-
coloured jades and other equally precious
stones—an ingenuity to which he does not
seem to have sacrificed any of his inspira-
tion. George Sheringham.

(The illustrations of objects in the Vic-
toria and Albert Museum are from official
copyright photographs supplied by the
Museum for the purpose of the foregoing
article.) 00000

GOURD IN LIGHT GREEN JADE

(Victoria and Albert Mus-'um,
Florence Bequest

l8o

THE DRAWINGS OF HENRY
EDRIDGE, A.R.A. BY FRANK
GIBSON. 00000

EDRIDGE, an artist of the Early
English Water-colour School, seems
to have been rather forgotten of late years,
quite undeservedly, for he was not only
an excellent miniature artist but also a
draughtsman with the lead pencil both
in portraiture and landscape, particularly
the latter. 00000
Born in 1769, he had a very successful
career as a miniaturist and portrait
draughtsman, though at first he had in-
tended to be an engraver. To acquire
this art he was apprenticed to William
Pether, the mezzotint engraver, who was
also a landscape painter. Edridge then
studied for a while under Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who advised him to take up
miniature painting, so he gave up the
graver for the lead pencil and the brush.
Success as a miniaturist and portrait
draughtsman apparently came to him
very quickly. His work, first exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1786, seems to
have been welcomed there, for he was
afterwards a frequent exhibitor. Sitters
flocked to his studio and he became
quite the fashion and drew truthful and
delicate likenesses of celebrities and others.
In 1803, when he drew portraits of King
George the Third, Queen Charlotte, and
many others of the Royal Family, he was
at the height of his fame as a portraitist.
He was at that time able to move from
Margaret" Street, where he lived, and set
up a fine house, like Romney did, in
Cavendish Square, where he died in
1821, quite a successful man in a worldly
as well as an artistic sense. 0 0
Edridge was undoubtedly a master
with the lead pencil. His portraits in
this medium consist of whole or half-
length figures most delicately drawn with
precision and firmness on paper or card-
board. Their chief defect is that the
pose of the sitters is often rather con-
ventional. It is different, however, when
the subject is one in which he was really
interested. The three portrait drawings
in Mr. Francis Wellesley's renowned and
varied collection of portraits demonstrate
the power and talent of Edridge in this