ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 956, 16 May 1889, Page 31

ART AND ARTISTS.

It is said that no profit was made in New York on the sale of the grand piano which has recently cnanged hands at the price of £68<& The lid of this remarkable instrument was painted by Mr Alma Tadema, and the panels by M. Meissonier. M. Albert Wolff has just returned to Paris from a visit to England. He has been dazzled by the marvellous private collections of paintings which he saw, and w^s particularly amazed at the magnificent ancient and modern masterpieces possessed by the Duke of Westminster and Sir Richard Wallace.

The monument to Emperor William, in the chapel at Charlottenburg, is to be of pure white' marble, in order that it may match the famous statues of his parents, who are also buried there. The sarcophagus, which is to be riohly ornamented, will be surmounted by a recumbent effigy of the late Emperor in white marble.

A memorial has just been ereoted to Mrs Henry Wood, the well-known writer of fiction. The monument is of Aberdeen granite, and is set up in Highgate cemetery, where the remains of the novelist repose. It is in the form of a sarcophagus, and is an exact counterpart of the 1 tomb of Soipio Africanus, at Home. The memorial bears this very simple inscription': "The Lord giveth wisdom." All the masterpieces that endure and become a part of our lives are characterised by simplicity. The eje, like the mind, hates confusion and All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos, are simple— as simple as the lines in a Nile pioture : the strong river, the yellow deßert, the palms, the pyramids ; hardly more than a horizontal line and a perpendicular line ; only there is the sky, the atmosphere, the colour,— those need genius.— "Atlantic Monthly." Lovers of fine engravings (says the Athenjßum) have long lamented that Mr T. O. Barlow's large and noble plate after Turner's "Vintage at Macon," a picture lately seen at the Academy and Grosvenor Exhibitions, has remained unfinished for more than a quarter of a century. The very few trial proofs of this plate which connoisseurs have caught sight of excited the warmest wishes for the completion (which did not, of course, depend upon the engraver) of a masterpiece promising to be one of the beßt mezzotints after Turner. We are I happy to say that, thanks to the generosity of the present Earl of Yarborougfy the picture is now' in the hands of Mr Barlow, who is finishing the plate which foasbeen so long lying jaJais/Htbine