ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1936, 2 April 1891, Page 38

ART AND ARTISTS.

L In a little room at Messrs Dowdeswell's,'London, there are at present four pictures valued at somewhere about £20,000. There is a small Millet worth £8000; a singlefigured Millet, price £6000 ; a strong and splendid Troyon ; and another Millet, aD education in colour.

The late Andrew George Kurtz, a chemical manufacturer near Liverpool, has by his will directed his executors to offer for sale to the trustees of the National Gallery his collection of pictures at the original prices he paid for them, and has also bequeathed his collection of autographs to the British Museum " for the benefit of the nation."

Coloured people are more successfully photographed, as a rule, than white people are, says an experienced photographer, the medium mulatto making the finest photograph in the world. Light complexioned are hardest to take. It is impossible to photograph a diamond, as it looks like a pebble or a fish-scale. In taking pictures of animals the instantaneous process is the best. Cats are the best sitter 3.

Lord Eandolph Churchill makes a collection of cartoons in which he figures, and those which please him best are the ones which make him appear the most ridiculous. The cutting most prized by the noble lord represents him as a wasp, which, having found its way into the House of Commons, is most impartially stinging friend and foe alike. His Lordship is said to hare many thousands of cuttings relating to himself, irostly abusive. Boehm, the sculptor, found models for some of his fine equestrian statues in horses owned by himself, one of which he trained to rear up on demand. It is said that he had a thoroughbred mare which became so used to the studio that she picked her way among the statues like a cat among a watchmakers stock-in-trade. Never did she break or knock over anything, or ever give the studio such a fright as a young bull, which, probably fancying himself in the longdesired china shop, broke loose one day and nearly made short work of numerous works of art.

MEISSONIEK.

Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, the great military painter of France, whose death is announced, was born at Lyons, February 21, 1815. His early youth was passed in a wretched struggle with poverty. At the age of 19 he went to Paris to study painting. He executed any kind of artistic work that came in his way, in order to earn his bread. He painted copies of the pictures of the Louvre at the rate of Idol a square yard. He decorated the tops of bon bon boxes, he painted fans, he executed marvellous drawings in Indian ink for tbe wood engravois. Finally this work attracted the notioe of some gentlemen and opened to him the studio of M. Leon Cogniet. In four years his name came before the public in the oatalogue of tbe Salon, where he presented two characteristic pieces. The diminutive but wonderful painting, entitled «• Le Petit Messenger," established the artist in a place from which no controversy, no faction, no revolution in art has essayed to dislodge him. Probably no painter of this century has pursued bis vocation with such absolute independence of all contemporary action and alteration in tbe art world. After receiving several medals, third, second, and first class, in the inverse order, from 1840 to 1848, he won the grand medal of honour in 1855, and was decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. In 1856 he was appointed an officer of the Legion of Honour, and in 1867 became a commander of the same. Tbe institute elected him to a vacant fauteuil in 1861 For over half a century his works adorned the walls of the Salon annually. The celebratod work " Cuiraßsiers, 1805," for which 400,000rr were paid after it had been admired by half the world at the exhibition of 1878, was burned in New York in 1881.