BOOKS ON ART

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25549, 17 July 1948, Page 3

BOOKS ON ART

PER ARDUA Mr Charles Johnson, official lecturer at the National Gallery, has written in THE GROWTH OF TWELVE MASTERPIECES (Phoenix House. 106 pp.) a critical study of the process of trial, selection, and correction which great artists have followed in producing their finest works. He begins with Ugolino and ends with Constable, Ingres, and Cezanne. In between come, for example, Bellini, Leonardo, Titian, El Greco, and Rubens. He takes one work of each and shows what it owes, finally, to the example of earlier works (as the pose rf Ingres’ Madame Moitessier Seated xS indubitably due to conscious or unconscious recollection of the Herakles and Telephus at Herculaneum), to the technical influence of other masterpieces (as Constable suddenly and richly drew on Rubens), to the artist’s sketches and studies and first versions, and to the painter’s alterations of his design as he worked on his board or canvas. (Infra-red photography has most instructively revealed much that the brush had obliterated. it would have seemed to the artist, for ever.) This admirable and fascinating interpretative exercise is carried out without the slightest pedantry and will be as much enjoyed by amateurs of art as by practitioners, teachers, and students —it may be, even more. Illustration, of course, is indispensable; and Mr Johnson has illustrated his 12 studies with 61 reproductions in colour and monochrome. One of the best of the 12 is that of Constable’s "Leaping Horse.” IMMORTALISING BRONZE

Marguerite Milward, a sculptor of high standing, formed the purpose of collecting models of typical heads from among the small and dying tribes which, among the hills and jungles of India, still preserve physically and in their customs evidences of their descent from peoples who inhabited the country before the Aryan conquests and of their kinship with the present aboriginal peoples of inter-tropical Africa and Australia. The two expeditions in which she pursued this pur?ose are recorded in her book, ARTIST N UNKNOWN INDIA (T. Werner Laurie LtjjL 274 pp.), which carried the reader far from the beaten tracks of the travel-writer in India. She had thought first and foremost of working among the Todas, a tribe reduced at the last census to 600 souls—itself a statistical measure of the importance of bringing art to the service of ethnography before it is too late; but she moved far and wide, from the Bombay Presidency, Hyderabad, the Nilgiri Hills, Bastar. the Chota Nagpur district near Calcutta, and Assam to Nepal, and “collected” among Kanikars, Haran Shikaois, the Bonds (among whom Verrier El win has worked ,so fruitfully), Chenchus, Oraons, Abors, Mishmis, and many others. The work she did is illustrated in about 100 photographs and drawings; and in a sense the book is a commentary on these. It is much more. Mrs Milward never loses sight of the work in hand; but a sculptor is not always modelling and casting—consider the long journeys, the search for the best subjects, the problems of always having clay on the spot and of getting models safely packed and away—and the circumstantial part of the record is none of it superfluous and none of it flat. Professor H. J. Fleure, F.R.S., contributes an informative introduction.

OUR FATHER Messrs Evans Brothers Ltd. are to be congratulated on the production of THE LORD’S PRAYER, a beautiful book in which seven pictures painted by Frank Salisbury to illustrate the prayer are reproduced in full-page colour facsimile, an interpretation of each is printed overleaf, and a commentary on the prayer, phrase by phrase—the work of Sir Robert Evans —comes last. The pictures are admirably developed examples of straightforward Symbolism; they are highly stylised, held sensitively true to their style, and will not fail, with the help of the earnest and moving commentary, to spread the all-suffici-ent message of the Lord’s Prayer and press home the spiritual truth and beauty that inspired them. ALFRED FELTON Russell Grim wade’s FLINDERS LANE (Melbourne University Press. 105 pp.) gathers and arranges recollections of Alfred Felton to form a sufficiently complete sketch of his life and character. This is the Alfred Felton, partner in aJMlelbourne chemical wholesaling house, who left the net residue (£383,000) of his estate to a trust, which divides the revenues evenly between charities and the purchase of works of art for the National Gallery and museums of Victoria. Up to June last year, £750,000 had been provided for each purpose. The annual income has been as high as £50,000; but it has fallen with falling interest rates. The author’s father was Felton’s partner in founding the firm and conducted it with him for 37 years; his portrait is hardly less distinct than Felton’s, nor his a much smaller part of the story. This culminates naturally in an account, partly imaginative,' of episodes, conversations, and reflections that carcaried Felton, a self-contained rather than a lonely man, to the resolve he expressed in his. will. The book is de. orated with wood engravings by Hel n Ogilvie, who has very successfully brought elegance and grace out of the obdurate stiffness of wood. She has us?d West Australian sandal-wood and Tasmanian Huon pine, by the way, nstead of Turkey box. FABER GALLERY Additions to the 1 ber Gallery of reproductions from oi ’ and modern masters are CHARDIN (1699-1779) and KLEE (1879-1940). The introduction and notes to the first are by Walter de la Mare; to the second, by Herbert Read. It may be taken for granted that some will welcome the Chardin and not bother their heads over Klee; while others will be as peryerse the other way round. It is not uiuch use

arguing; but the modernist who has no sympathy with the charming, domestic realism of Chardin is so much the poorer, and the anti-modernist who can find neither lovely colour nor strong and sensitive design nor fascination in the contrasted tenderness and ruthlessness of Klee’s fantasy is so much the poorer, too. It is worth hunting for the right light to get the best out of both sets of reproductions. OTAGO AND VICTORIA Though belatedly, a welcome is to be offered to an Otago centenary publication, A CENTURY OF ART IN OTAGO, edited by H. H. Tombs and published by Harry H. Tombs, Ltd. This survey of the work of Otago’s painters, writers, and musicians is of course abundantly and very well illustrated. The contributing historiancritics are H. V. Miller (art in OtagO), an anonymous writer on the Dunedin public gallery, H. D. Skinner (Maori art in Otago), F. G. Shew’ell (School of Art, Dunedin), J. C. Reid (letters in Otago), and Margaret Campbell (music through the century). Pride of place is taken by Frances Hodgkins, whose Ebb Tide (among other works) is well reproduced in colour. Volume one, Part three of THE AUSTRALIAN ARTIST (Victorian Artists Society) is held generally to the theme, What Is Art Worth? This reorganised periodical is well worth buying for such reproductions of drawings, etc., as George Grosz’s “The Rider is Loose Again” in this issue. They are admirably chosen. But to emphasise this is not to disparage the critical and other contributions, which are, not uniformly good, of course, but a very good average, with occasional excellences. MINUTE BY GOD AND BY GUESS The guiding principle of a judge in deciding cases is to do justice; that is, justice according to law, but still justice. I have not found any satisfactory definition of justice. . . . Wnat is just in any particular case is what appears to be just to the just man, in the same way as what is reasonable is what appears to be reasonable to the reasonable man. —BARON WRIGHT, Lord Justice of Appeal: quoted in George Paton’s “Textbook of Jurisprudence.”