Studio: international art (83.1922)

STUDIO-TALK
{From our own Correspondents).

LONDON.—Recent exhibitions of draw-
ings at the British Museum and the
Victoria and Albert Museum have, one
may hope, been instrumental in stimula-
ting a greater interest in and appreciation
of draughtsmanship, both as the all im-
portant foundation for plastic art of every
kind and for the sake of its intrinsic merits.
Of no small interest in the same direction
was a collection of drawings exhibited last
month at the Goupil Gallery of Messrs.
Marchant & Co. in Regent Street—a
collection brought together by u two
lovers of drawing and all that it means,"
and consisting of examples by various
great masters of the near and remote past,
intermingled with others by artists of the
present who have either made a name for
themselves already or promise to do so
ere long. Here in close proximity were
drawings by Benozzo Gozzoli, Bartolomeo
Montagna, del Sarto, Carpaccio, Signorelli,
and Giovanni Bellini, who flourished four
centuries ago or earlier, by Tintoret,
Parmigiano, Rubens, Claude, Rembrandt,
Poussin, Paul Veronese,Van Dyck, Tiepolo,
Watteau, Ingres, Daumier, Fragonard,
Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, Girtin
and other masters of succeeding genera-
tions, and by Charles Keene, Rossetti,
Millais, Mendel, du Maurier, Conder,
Sargent, Augustus John, Wilson Steer,
Walter Sickert, D. S. MacColl, Muirhead
Bone, F. Brown, Francis Unwin, and two
or three others not yet middle-aged, in-
cluding one, R. C. Guthrie, who was born
in the present century. It was a bold
experiment thus to place side by side the
work of ancient and modern, and the
motive of the organisers was apparently
to enable those interested u to discover
if the modern works bear any relation to the
old, and, if the falling off is very great, in
what it consists." It would be hazardous
to base any sound generalization on the
material thus provided for comparative
study, but this much can be said, that the
display as a whole revealed a remarkable
degree of congruity, and, so far as the
artists of to-day and yesterday are con-
cerned, we do not think any unbiassed
judge would deny that they possess in
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large measure that faculty of perception
and sense of form which distinguished
the great masters of the past. 0 0

The Winter Exhibition of the Royal
Academy is a unique event in the history of
that institution, for never before has it paid
homage to so many departed members atone
time. Of the thirty-six Academicians and
Associates represented therein no fewer
than twenty-four have died since 1913. It
is, of course, predominantly a picture exhi-
bition, as twenty-eight of the artists whose
works are shown were painters, and their
paintings occupy seven of the principal
galleries, while the exhibits of sculpture
and architecture are located in the Central
Hall, and a collection of water-colours,

“ MARGARET IN PRISON"
PEN AND SEPIA DRAWING
BY D. G. ROSSETTI

(Goupil Gallery)