Studio: international art (82.1921)

STUDIO-TALK

sun, presents a scene suggestively full of
life. For nine of the plates Mr. Nevinson
has chosen dry-point as his medium, but
his outlook is a painter's rather than an
etcher's, and in his use of the medium he
has gone for shapes of tone rather than
the expressive line. This is notable in
such plates as 2 A.M., with the huge tall
buildings lighted against a dark sky sug-
gesting some oriental palace; Broadway
Down Town, in which an admirably just
sense of scale suggests a true relation
between the traffic of the street and the
enormous heights of the houses ; Looking
Down on Down Town ; Statue of Liberty ;
Under the Elevated Railway ; Stock Ex-
change, with its vivacious suggestion of
noise and bustle ; and New York — An
Abstraction. For his impression of 43rd

Street at Night, with its eerie effect of
lights and shadows, Mr. Nevinson has
had recourse to mezzotint, a a a
As an essay in self-portraiture the
print, reproduced on p. 291, in which that
talented young artist, Mr. Leon Under-
wood, through the medium of the bitten
line presents his own personality in the
act of sketching, is a really remarkable
piece of work, vital in conception and
expression, as admirable in the drawing
as in the planning of the plate, man and
landscape composing with decorative har-
mony. Mr. Underwood learnt his etching
originally in the Engraving School at the
Royal College of Art under Sir Frank
Short, but that was before the war, and
he did not go very far with it. Painting
and mural decoration occupied him, then

290

"THE ROAD TO THE
DOWNS." BY JAN DAUM