ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2237, 14 January 1897, Page 47

ART AND ARTISTS.

• . • A sinoere appreciation of art ia one of tbe characteristics of the Empiesa of Russia, Meeting the French animal paiater, Rosa Bonheur, duringithe recent Imperial visit to Paris, the Emprps engaged her in oonversation for a icDg iltne, and gave her a cordial invitation to visit her in Russia. "As many of your paintings as we have been able to buy are there before you," was the graoioos> remark of her Imperial Majesty.

ANECDOTE OF Da MAURIER. ! j George dv Maurier lias left -personal estate of the value of £47,380 14a 8(J, Lloyd's correspondent sends a hitherto unpublished . story about the late -lamented artist and author, which notTonly shows hlo humour, but also his generous nature. There was some years ago in tbe Hamp^tead road a pavement artist, now deßfi, Dv Maura* often dropped n coin into the poor man's hat. One cold day the author of "Trilby" told him to leave his " pitch " and go to tbe model soup'kltohen in Euston road to get some food. Dv Maurier, as a joke, consented to take oharge of the hat. When the man ,wao out of night he proceeded to wipe oat the pictures o£ battle nasnea and faithful doge, &0., and commenced drawing portraits in chalks of the society ladies and gentlemen made famous by him in Pnnoh. Passersby stopped to look, and remunerated the deputy, and when, an hour later, the man returned, he was pleased to find so much in his hat, bat regretted that his work bad been destroyed. " This, may attraot some people, but it ain't art," he said to the amused Da ; Maurier, as he commenced "killing" the sooiety males and female;). " This pleases everybody," he continued, drawing tbe -picture of a soldier.

A UJIEAT FAINTEB. In Dronrijp, near Leeuwordsn, in FriehJacd, Laurence Tadeina was bora on January 8, 1836, the con of a notary in the village. Precocity, the clarion of the great, marked out his future career. At the age of four, so promising was his talent for art, he received drawing lessons ; at -five he corrected his drawing master's work — that is to say, he pointed out faults which hia astonished preceptor was forced... w^th sonao little mortifica- . tion, perhaps, to adroit. The circumstance WRB of good omen, for had not Michel Angelo as m obild corrected the finished drawing of Domenioo Ghirlandajo and reduced it, as Vasari says, to a " perfect form " P In due time, howover, young Tadema was set to follow his father's profssoion of the l»*r ; bat; he had chanced upon Leonardo da Vinci's treatise in the village shop, and then upon a book on perspective, and he read them again and again until he knew most of them by heart. Bo aa he grew np he formed the determination to become an artist— a resolution which his prudent mother, now at this fcima widowed, sought in vain to shake, and to which (the only yielded when the dootors warned her that her delicate sdh was fritting himself to death by her opposition to his withes. With art as tbe now recognised goal he soon mended, and he applied himself with energy to study, turning his attention principally to the classics. Tedema scon left his native village, and in 1852 became a student under Wapperg, " Davids antidote." He was a baro -working, rollicking student, always painting throughout the* day, never reaohing his ideal of good work, and constantly destroying his pictures j never diKooaraged, always trying, tfsaally improving. Indeed, with the Hole exception^ " The Oracle," all his oarij works have been burned by his own han4. Another act, based on sense and expediency not less sound, was the assumption of the " Alma* which is prefixed to Mb name ; it added grace and ©uphony to the name, but, what was to bettor and more practical purposes far, it lifted him in the exhibition catalogues out. of the .T's. and deposited him in the A's, near the beginning -- *an arrangement of especial advantage ia tho case of foreign catalogues of exhibition?. A typical example, this, of the discernment and sagaoity that distinguish him as a shrewd man of'the* world. Tfie disoovery of some Merovingian antiquities near the village ot Dronrf jp emphasised «nd developed young j Tadema'B tasfce for medkeval and olrssio themes. I trupposo that the* leading oharacteristio of Mr Almn-Tadera&'a artistio mind is his conscientiousness. His brilliant "Spring" was scraped out more than onoe — with its multitude of exquisitely painted details and lovely heads and figures— as it did not seem to him to " coma well " as a whole ; so that in its final form it represents ! the labour of two or three pioturee, and 1 comes as near to the intention of its painter ias well could be. No part of a canvas is I ever scamped or " faked," and Mr Tadema haa told me that the little glimpse of sunny pea and iky in tha top corner of many o£ his piotures often gives him aa much trouble as all the reet of the picture, ffor this con1 scientiousnees and self-application hostile oritlcß in the press and in his'own profession fall foul of him— for where lives an artist who has no such critic among his fellowworkers 1 "Ga sue!" they exclaim In tbe elegant slang of the studio, ignoring the fact that it waß by honest sweat that Ter Borcb, Gerard Dow, Metsa, De Hoogb, ,Van Miens, evss Melßsonier in our own day, reached tho heights of their achievements, and ifchat it Ss by the same infinito caro that Alma-Tadoma hea risca to his plaoe,— JJVora "Jtanrence Ta'Swßa," a sk«tch by M, H. Spiblmann in the new serf?- of %*s« Magaslne of Art.

Hanmeb Plains— Visitors to 4foa- Eanmen Springs will find the besb aoeomtps(§Pffia »t WXR Lahmerfc's, Jack's T*bs Temperfccft tfctes fes 37b and 253 week. — [Advt.l

f~ The world would never know how muoh a shoe plnohed it jroa did notoroolalm the

— When a man takes your hand with a firm, cordial grasp, it is a sure sign that his heart ti fall or biajjurw empty.