Studio: international art (85.1923)

if there is any writer or artist in England
who has studied the works and theories
of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso as care-
fully and thoroughly as Mr. Brockhurst.
He has even put their theories to the test.
I have seen some of the Post-Impressionist,
Cubist and Vorticist pictures which he
has painted. These studies and experi-
ments convinced him that the whole
Romantic movement in art had exhausted
its possibilities ; that Romanticism as a
working-creed was dead, and that what is
still called by belated writers the u ultra-
modern movement ” in art is merely a
desperate attempt to galvanise a corpse
into life. 0 0 0 0 0

I am warned by the harm which I have
seen done to youthful artists by extrava-
gant and ill-judged praise to refrain from
superlatives in speaking of Mr. Brock-
hurst’s work. I will only say that I regard
him as one of the most original and gifted
of the young English artists of to-day.
Everything he does is done in his own way,
and even his aims have been created by his
own thought and feeling. There is some-
thing fresh and living about his work,
something first-hand and original, that
bears the stamp of a free and courageous
personality. Above all I admire the
decision and cool audacity with which he
has turned his back on the time-worn con-
ventions of the nineteenth century. If art
is to be a living force in our lives it must
respond to the new requirements of our
age. This generation has its own tasks and
duties. Mr. Brockhurst is one of the first
of our younger artists to answer to the
call of the new century. What he has done
cheers and delights me, but I believe his
best work is still to come, 000

OME SCHOLARSHIPS.—Particu-

lars of the competition for the
Scholarships offered by the Commissioners
of 1851 and the British School at Rome in
the faculties of Engraving, Decorative
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture have
been issued, and notice should be sent on
the prescribed form before the end of the
year, to the Hon. General Secretary of
the British School (1 Lowther Gardens,
London, S.W. 7) by those who intend to
compete. Candidates must be British
subjects. 0 a 0 0 0

THE ALBIZZI MADONNA OF
LEONARDO DA VINCI. * *

BOUGHT in Italy by Mr. G. B.

Dibblee, now Bursar of All Souls’
College, Oxford, in 1897, and known at
first as the Signa Madonna from the region
of its origin, the beautiful bas-relief of
which the full-face and profile are here
reproduced has been recognised by Adolfo
Venturi as the only carving by Leonardo
da Vinci which has yet come to light. The
various proofs of authenticity have just
been collected by Sir Theodore Cook in

THE ALBIZZI MADONNA
OF LEONARDO DA
VINCI : PROFILE VIEW
251