ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1927, 29 January 1891, Page 36

ART AND ARTISTS.

Cornelius Vandcrbilt has given £16,000 for two of Turner's famous pictures in London.

The Pebit Journal says that a picture of " St. Joseph Carrying the Infant Jesus " has been discovered in a .village near Belford, and that connoisseurs believe it to be a Kaphael. *. Professor Hartley, of the Dublin College of Science, declares, as the result of his experiments, that we may expect water-colour drawings to last 400 years, provided they are protected from the influence of direct sunlight. The progress of art in Russia is attributed in some part to the influence o£ the Empress, who is herself said to be a painter of no mean ability. She is a great admirer of Meissonier, and once devoted several hours almost daily for over a year in copying twp of his works.

While repairing the roof of, the cupola in the cathedral of Cahors, a series of frescoes representing eight prophets, and having in the centre the lapidation of St. Stephen, to whom, the church is dedicated, has been discovered.,' These works are in good pre* servation. The French journals say that it is M. .Ohauchard, a rich colleotor, who has bought for his own gallery the " Angelus " of Millet, and that for this picture, the sale of which to the American Art Association stirred half Europe with its sensational details, he has given 750,000fr. The sellers reserve, it is said, to themselves the right of exhibiting 1 the picture in the United , States until' January next, when it will be returned to France. — Athenaeum.

ISRAELS.

It is seldom that an .artist who breaks away from old traditions lives to see his art so thoroughly recognised as Jozef Israels. He is not only the founder of a new school in his native country, but counts his followers by the soore in England and France. Born at a time when art in Europe was at its lowest ebb, and spending the first year of his artistic life in vain attempts to secure distinction by painting history, like De la Roche, and religious sentiment, like Ary Scheffer, he in this and other respects resembling J. F. Millet, found in the realities of humble life a poetry and a beauty; which vitalised his energy and gave a true inspiration to his work. Not in the fields of Barbizon, but on the sand dunes of Zaandvorfc, did his revelation come to him ; and it was the life of the fisherman, and not that of the peasant, which impressed him with its elemental pathos ; but otherwise the two men have so much in common that Israels may be said to be the Dutch Millet. Both are leaders in that path of poetic realism which is the most notable and distinct of the many tracks of the art of the nineteenth century. Like all great artists, Israels is not only of his time but of his country ; for, though he is a Jew, as his biographers do not fail to point out, he is a Jew of Groningen and Amster.dam and The Hague, and is a Dutchman born and bred. Nothing can, indeed, be further from the sentiment of the Dutch school of the seventeenth century than that of Israels. The beer ,and skittles of the boor and tho Rheinweia. .and oysters of the burgher which invigorated the art of Jan Steen and his fellows yield no inspiration to their modern followers, and the careful enamelled canvases of Gerhard Dow and Mieris show a very different ideal of execution to those of Mesdag and Maris; but yet the subtleties of light and shade scarcely less engage the attention and call forth the skill of the modern Dutch artist j his subjects, if not the same, are svill racy of the soil ; his interest in humble life, if not more active, is deeper than ever. There is also one artist at least of the old Dutch school to whom Israels may claim some remote kinship in feeling and manner also. It is of Rembrandt, rather than any other "old master," that we are most frequently reminded by the works of Israels. Without attempting to measure the one against the other, it may be safely said that they are both poets of humanity and leaders amongst their contemporaries. — Saturday Review.

"When a man tells his acquaintances that he is sorry he ever got married, it is safe to Bisume that bin "ife is sorry, toQ.