ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1905, 25 May 1888, Page 30

ART AND ARTISTS.

Water-colour painting is the sole art that can make good its claim to be called in every sense of the word " National." In England it had its birth, and in England it has been nurtured and perfected. Its power and beauty are recognised by foreign nations as peculiarly our own, and they willinelv acknowledge that in this branch of art we reign supreme. THE DECOBATION OP PICCADILLY CIRCUS. When the recent improvements were completed at Piccadilly Circus it was proposed to erect an archway over the road between the two small plots of vacant land, and to flank it on either side with statuary groups. This scheme was naturally opposed, as another Temple Bar in the West End would have been an intolerable nuisance, and it was consequently abandoned. Mr Lawes, the sculptor, had modelled a group tp stand by the arch, and he now seeks the verdict of public opinion before offering to form part of the proposed decoration of Piccadilly Circus. It will be a gift to the public from the hands, we believe, of a few gentlemen, and of the generosity of such a gift we cannot speak too highly. The subject is best explained in the lines from " Mazeppa," used by Mr Lawes as his title :—: — They bound me on, that menial throng, Upon his back with many a thong ; Then loosed him with a sudden lashAway ! away ! and on we dash ! But for reasons of which we fail to see the sufficient force, Mr Lawes has turned Mazeppa into a woman, and so rendered the statue rather meaningless. From an artistic point of view, however, the group is a fine one ; the figure of the woman lashed on her back to the horse is strikingly good and full of feeling, while the action of the horse, about to break away on its wild journey, is exceedingly spirited and fine. " For lovers there are many eyes," Mazeppa tells us in the poem ; but, as Mr Lawes wishes to place this in the eye of London, we do not consider it -a subject appropriate to the spot, nor one which will appeal to the general public in any way. We most sincerely, at the same time, endorse Mr Lawes' opinion, that we want in our London squares and public places statuary groups as objects of interest and beauty only, and not endless effigies apotheosising the memory heroes and statesmen frequently obscure. We have ample room for" both. —Public Opinion.