Studio: international art (82.1921)

THE CENTRAL SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS

CARVED WOOD PANEL
BY E. H. LEACH

Benson's etchings and dry-points of wild-
fowl decorating the air and the watery-
spaces with rhythm of flight, one might
name, for their charm of spontaneous art
with happy skill of craft, Old Squaws,
Morning Flight, Geese Alighting, The
Alarm, Morning, Pintails, Black Breast
Plovers in Flight, Migrating Geese, Male
Whistler, Redheads, and Souvenir of Long
Point, 1978. That the etcher has con-
centrated the vivacity of his art also on
the water-fowl moving in their native
element is patent in the masterly little
plate, entitled Sprigtail, where a few
essentially suggestive lines bring to pictorial
life the swirling water as vividly as the bird
itself. 0 0 a — ~ 0 a a

Mr. Benson's artistic interest, however,
is not confined to the wild fowl he pursues
with gun, pointer and boat as keenly as
with his ready sketch-book. He has
etched some portraits with distinction,
though in these he is not so absolutely
individual as when he finds his subjects
in the wilds where no other etcher has
been before him. But, innate sportsman
as he is innate etcher, his copper-plates
testify to the human interest of his sport-
ing life. Here, for instance,in the vivacious
plate, Bound Home, we see him in his boat,
scudding before a very fresh wind, pipe
in mouth and content in the very look
of him, content not only with his day's
sport but with the etcher's joy in giving
such graphic life to the lines of his beloved
boat and the buoyant waters. Boats at
Dawn shows with fine design the activity

ioo

of preparation for the day's adventure :
but in The Gunner, a splendidly live
etching, the very spirit of the hunter's
sport is interpreted ; for here the virile
artist is seen wading knee-deep through
the marshes under a driving rain, carry-
ing his gun and the brace of wild duck
which, when they lived, he loved with an
artist's love, yet as a sportsman he had
to kill. a 0 0 M. C. S.

THE CENTRAL SCHOOL OF ARTS
AND CRAFTS. 000a

OF the history and general organisation
of this school, the most important in-
stitution of its kind in England, if not in the
United Kingdom—the Glasgow School of
Art being perhaps its closest rival—an
account was given in these pages from the
pen of Mr. W. T. Whitley just a year ago,
when a number of illustrations were given
of work executed by students during the
preceding session, which were supple-
mented, in the last issue of The Studio
Year Book of Applied Art by further
examples falling within the scope of that
publication. 00000
The illustrations now given have been

CARVED WOOD BREAD PLATTER
BY MISS A. B. ELLIS