Studio: international art (86.1923)

STUD 10-TALK.

{From our own Correspondents.)

LONDON.—Our frontispiece this

month is a reproduction in colours of
a page from “ The Song of Solomon,”
written and illuminated by Miss Jessie
Bayes. It would be difficult to name any
one among the small but enthusiastic band
of illuminators at the present day who
excels Miss Bayes in the practice of this
delightful art, in which she combines,
with due respect for its great traditions, a
quite modern manner of expression. Some
examples of her work in this and kindred
directions were on view at the twenty-
eighth annual exhibition of the Royal
Society of Miniature Painters, held early
last month at the Gieves Art Gallery, in
Bond Street, and, with a few other things,
served in no small measure to strengthen
an otherwise rather indifferent display.
The ideals which seem to be uppermost
among modern miniature painters are like
those which prevail among the fashionable
portrait painters (and in both cases their
patrons also), and the result is that while
the paintings may, as skilfully executed
likenesses, be very acceptable to the sub-
jects portrayed and their friends, they not
infrequently lack those qualities which
would commend them to others. Many of
the miniatures in the exhibition referred
to gave the impression that the painters,
while displaying much executive skill, are
content to follow a rather rigid formula.
One would like to see more work of a less
stereotyped character, and a greater striving
after that decorative charm which we get
in the miniatures of the Old Masters of the
art. Mrs. Houle’s Paula was a welcome
exception—one of a very few—to the
general type, and Miss Phyllis Legge’s
Pleasance in the medium of enamel was
also attractive as a decoration in miniature.
The exhibition contained in addition to
miniature paintings some interesting
sculpture of a diminutive kind—notably a
dancing bear in anhydrite and jasper, and
a fancy head in agate, by Mr. A. L.
Pocock, a Little Dare Devil in bronze by
Miss C. Gregory, and statuettes in metal
by Mr. Omar Ramsden ; as well as a group
of woodcuts by Miss Molly Power. a
A recent issue of the Journal of the Royal

Institute of British Architects contains an
obituary notice of Mr. Harry Inigo Triggs,
a Fellow of the Institute, whose name is
familiar to most of our readers as that of
one of the most able upholders of the best
traditions of rural domestic architecture in
England. After studying successively and
with distinction at the Chiswick School of
Art, in the classes of the Carpenters’ Com-
pany under Banister Fletcher, and in the
RoyalAcademy Schools,Mr.Triggs became
assistant to various architects in turn, and
finally to Mr. Unsworth, with whom, later,
he entered into partnership. His career was
one of continuous activity, despite chronic
ill-health. He died on April 9th at Taor-
mina in Sicily, whither he had gone to
spend the winter, and was buried in a
little mortuary chapel of his own design.
He was forty-seven years of age. a a
Later, in the same month, death from
a sudden onslaught of pneumonia carried
off at the same age Mr. Maurice Drake,
one of our best authorities on stained glass,
and the author of various books on its

PORTRAIT OF THE LATE
MRS. W. T. SMEDLEY
BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD
(Royal Academy, 1923)

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