Studio: international art (84.1922)

REVIEWS

duced by Richard C. Lambert, and
decorated with woodcuts by Nell Lambert.
(Wembley Hill : The Stanton Press.
£i is.)—Orchestra, or A Poeme of Daunc-
ing. By Sir John Davies (1596). Newly
reprinted at the Stanton Press. £1 is.
These two reprints emanate from one
of the small number of private presses
devoted to the printing of books by hand
in limited editions, and the quality of the
work is such as to entitle them to the
earnest attention of bibliophiles. The type
used is a bold " old face " roman of the
Caslon style, which shows up well on a
page with ample margins, as in these books,
and also has the pre-eminent advantage
of easy legibility. The composition and
printing are done by Mr. and Mrs.
Stanton, the latter contributing also the
woodcut illustrations and decorations. The
" Scacchia Ludus " of Vida, the Latin text
of which is reprinted opposite Mr. Stan-
ton's English rendering, was pronounced
by Pope Leo X. to be almost superhuman
in the novelty of its subject and the ease
and dignity of its verse. 000
Goya as Portrait Painter. By A. de
Beruete y Moret. Translated from the
Spanish by Selwyn Brinton, M.A. (Lon-
don : Constable & Co., Ltd.) 52s. 6d.
net.—The volume before us is the initial
instalment of a work which, when com-
pleted, will place English readers in pos-
session of an exhaustive study of the
achievements of Francisco Goya as a
painter and etcher by that distinguished
critic, the late Don Aureliano de Beruete,
who, for some years before his death last
June, was Director of the famous Prado
Museum, Madrid. The Spanish edition
of this first volume was published in 1915,
and was followed by a second edition three
years later ; the other two volumes, of
which the English versions are in prepara-
tion, were published in 1917 and 1918
respectively. Mr. Brinton's able transla-
tion of " Goya as Portrait Painter " is
accompanied by 58 plates reproducing by
the collotype process a whole gallery of
those portraits which have placed Goya
among the world's great masters of human
characterisation—Mr. Brinton, indeed, is
disposed to regard him as " the greatest
portraitist who ever lived," a claim which,
of course, can only be accepted or rejected

354

when the true criteria of greatness have
been established beyond question. Beruete's
study follows the painter throughout the
half-century during which he painted
portraits, and terminates with a reference
to a very important work executed a year
before Goya's death and when he was 81.
The extraordinary feature of this painting
—a portrait of his friend Don Juan de
Muguiro—is its vibrating technique, its
execution with small strokes of the brush,
and the evidence it gives of endeavour
" to aspire to the spiritualisation of human
images, to give us the sensation of what
these feel, speak, and think—in a word,
of their actual life." 000
A Book of Woodcuts. Drawn on wood
and engraved by Lionel Lindsay.
(Sydney : Art in Australia, Ltd. London :
Constable and Co., Ltd.) £2 2s. net.
This album of twenty woodcuts, all of
which save the frontispiece are printed
in black, has been wholly produced in
Australia and does credit to those respons-
ible for it. The subjects are varied,
including landscapes and figure and
animal studies, and all, with one or two
exceptions, have been made direct on
the blackened block. The " white line "
manner of Bewick is the one preferred by
the artist, who believes that the drawing
of the whites with the graver directly on
the dark ground is the only way to do truly
original work in the medium and establish
the woodcut by the side of the etching as
an original method of expression. 0 0

SATAN." WOODCUT BY
LIONEL LINDSAY

(From " A Book of Wood-
cuts," Constable and Co.)