ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 34

ART AND ARTISTS.

The success of the pastel exhibitions at Grosvenor Gallery has led to the formation of the Society of British Paste lists, of which Sir Ooutts Lindsay is president.

The King of Sweden has presented the National Gallery at Stockholm with a very fine and most interesting collection of portraits of the principal royal personages of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

At a meeting of the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, one of the subjects under discussion was the sale of the Photiades Paoha collection of coins in Paris. The owner is an educated Turk, who has passed most of his life in gathering Grecian antiquities. This collection of coins is said so be the most complete in existence. It numbers 1530 pieces, and all the old cities of Greece, from the time of Solon to Alexander, are represented. The collection is valued at £20,000.

Artists and scientific men have long wondered about the beautiful " azzurrino " found in the ruins of Pompeii. M. Fouque, the mineralogist, with a mixture of silicate of copper and of lime, has now obtained the brilliant crystalline " azure " of Pompeii. It is a tint perfectly unchangeable, and identical with the Alexandrian blue which was known to the Ptolemies, and imported into Italy in the first year of the Christian era.

The cost of some of the pictures in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington was as follows : — John Vanderlyn's " Landing of Columbus at San Salvador," cost 12,000dol ; W. H. Powell's "De Sota's Discovery of the Mississippi," cost 15,000dol; John Gadsby Chapman's "The Baptism of Pocahontas," cost 10,000dol ; Robert W. Weir's " The Embarkation of the Pilgrims," cost 10,000dol, and John Trum bull's "The Declaration of Independence," " The Surrender of General Burgoyne," " The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis," and "The Resignation of General Washington," cost each 8000dol. Then in the Hall of Representatives is Bierstadt's "First Landing of Henry Hudson" and " Discovery of California," cost each 10,000dol, and over the staircases outside this hall Leutze's " Western Emigration " and F. B. Carpenter's " Lincoln's War Cabinet," presented to the United States, and valued at 25,000d01. NEW CHANCES FOR HUNTERS AFTEE " OLD

MASTERS."

In the last year or two there has been an increased interest in "old masters." This has brought to light several brilliant examples of the older schools, but it is also responsible for the appearance of pictures valued chiefly because they bear the marks of jage, Pictures attributed to Rembrandt, Reubens, or some other master have been brought out for examination or exhibition, and there will probably be a revival of the familiar stories regarding wonderful discoveries of "old masters" in garrets and cellars.

IN LOVE WITH HIS STATUE.

Gibson took five years to complete for Mr Preston the celebrated statue of Venus, known as " The Tinted Venus." This was

a replica of a statue (uncoloured) which he had executed for Mr John Neeld, shortly after his return from Lucca to Rome. He describes it as " the most carefully laboured work I ever executed, for I wrought the forms up to the highest standard of the ideal. The expression I endeavoured to give my Venus was that spiritual elevation of character which results from purity and sweetness, combined with an air of unaffected dignity and grace. I took the liberty to decorate it in a fashion unprecedented in modern times. I tinted the flesh like warm ivory — scarcely red,— the eyes blue, the hair blonde, and the net which contains the hair golden." He became almost as enamoured of this statue as Pygmalion of Galatea. "At moments," he wrote, " I forgot that I was gazing at my own production ; there I sat before her long and often. How was I ever to part with her 1 " He was at last compelled to give her up, by the remonstrances of Mrs Preston, four years after the statue was completed. This " Venus," with Lady Marian Alford's " Pandora," and Mr Holford's "Cupid," all coloured, were exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. — " Life of John Gibson, the Sculptor," in the " Dictionary of National Biography."

ART TO ORDEK. , " There is a difference between manufactured illustrations and illustrations that are not," remarked an artist recently as he spread out a copy of the London Illustrated News before him. " Now, observed this illustration. Should you say it was made up in pieces or that it is a bit of Nature. 7 "

" The former," responded the visitor. " Eight you are. I know the artist well, and know his methods. He gets an order for a picture : ' Attractive young woman — simply attired — standing in a pensive attitude — rural scene.' Then he turns to his scrap book, wherein are posted innumerable photographs. The fence he takes from one photograph, the house from another, and bits of landscapes from many others. Then he uses his wife as the model for the pensive, and lays in the drapery by painting from the dummy. In this manner the black and white sketch is manufactured. It is sent to the publisher. Perhaps it comes back with comments. ' Girl not pretty enough ; or not young enough, or not pensive enough ' — the English like pensive subjects—'put a cow in the background, and a purling brook at the girl's feet.' Well, the face is toned down to the proper degree of melancholy. The cow and the brook are added, and the picture appears. And that is the way the black-and-white pot-boilers work. — Detroit Tribune.