Studio: international art (83.1922)

SKETCHES BY ARNESBY BROWN, R.A.

and the latter, with a foreground of sage
brush and sand, the effect of banking thun-
der clouds behind the curious,tabular, wind
weathered rocks which scar the horizon.

Mr. Burr has spent more than ten years
in this neighbourhood, studying it in all its
forms and all its seasons. He has executed
numerous other etchings ; the u Desert
Set " begins at Plate 184, but the writer has
only been privileged to see a few of the
earlier works. They include many remark-
able studies of trees ; a dry-point Evening
and an etching Winter Morning (which was
awarded a silver medal by the St. Paul
Institute in 1916), being among the most
pleasing. But his best work is to be seen in
the series illustrated here ; and it is note-
worthy that the subjects chosen are of a
type that many etchers would reject as un-
workable. For here are no Venetian
Palaces, no soft and juicy highland moun-
tains to give opportunity for the lavish use
of what Mr. Simpson in his book on

Modern Etchings calls u smudge/' but
only the clear, dry air of the desert; the
empty spaces bastioned by rocky moun-
tains, where

“ barren and bare

the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

E. L. Allhusen.

SOME LANDSCAPE SKETCHES IN
OILS BY MR. ARNESBY BROWN, R.A.

THE four oil sketches which are here
reproduced have an interest of their
own as revealing one of the methods
pursued by the distinguished painter in the
practice of his art. Painted direct from
nature on small wood panels, they
obviously make no pretence to being
“ finished ” in the usual sense in which
that term is employed ; rather they are
to be regarded as notes or memoranda
made with a few rapid strokes of the brush
to serve for reference when the effects

144

SKETCH IN OILS BY
ARNESBY BROWN, R.A.