Studio: international art (81.1921)

STUDIO-TALK

Miss Eileen Soper, whose delightful
etching, La Barriere Cassee, we reproduce,
is the gifted daughter of Mr. George Soper,
the well-known etcher, but, although she
is only fourteen years of age, her talent is
entirely her own ; there is no hint whatever
of parental influence in her vision, her
manner or her technique. Her handling of
the etching needle and the acid, extra-
ordinary for one of her age, shows no less
vitality than her drawing. Those children
are actually singing on that gate, the tiniest
of them struggling with all her might to
keep on ; but what is quite inspiring is the
responsive vivacity of the bitten line, with
the promise of etching power it reveals in
one so young. 0000

The double loss which the Royal
Academy sustained in the last week of
February by the death of two of its
veterans—Mr. George Dunlop Leslie and
Sir William Blake Richmond, K.C.B.—

was of more than ordinary significance,
from the fact that both these distinguished
painters were themselves the sons of Royal
Academicians. Mr. Leslie was born in
1835, and his father, Charles Robert
Leslie, Constable's friend and biographer,
was one among several young Americans
who crossed the Atlantic to study art at
the Academy during the presidency of
Benjamin West, in the second decade of the
nineteenth century. The long and intimate
association of father and son with the
Academy, extending over a century,
furnished the latter with abundant material
for his interesting book on " The Inner
Life of the Royal Academy," published
by Mr. Murray in 1914. 000
Sir William Blake Richmond was seven
years younger than Mr. Leslie, and
entered the Academy Schools when the
latter had reached the Painting School,
the final stage in the course of training.

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