ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 45

ART AND ARTISTS.

F. Edwin Elwell, an American sculptor, has been chosen to design a monument to Dickens, to be placed in the London Horticultural Gardens.

Twelve thousand pictures were sent to the Royal Academy, London, for exhibition this year. Ten or twelve years ago the numbers were 4000 to 5000 only.

The Empress Frederiok has caused one of her water colour paintings — a beautifnl flower piece— to be presented, through German consul in Tokio, to the Empress of Japan, whose exceptionally developed artistic taste places hor at the head of Asiatic culture,

Whatever women have doce in painting has been done in Franoe. England produces countless thousands of lady artists ; 20 Englishwomen paint for one Frenchwoman, but we have not yet succeeded in producing two that compare with Madame Lebruu and Madame Bsithe Morisot. — George Moore.

It is no secret that some of the Dudley pictures, which realised upwards of LIOO.OOO at Christie's, were bought in by the present earl, and will therefore continue to adorn the galleries of Dadley House. " The Crucifixion " (Raphael) fetched nearly L9OOO more than the late Lord Dadley paid for it in 1845, and "The Interior of a Kitchen" (A. Oatade) LISOO less than the price given for it 31 years ago.

Leonardo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto acceptedthe legend of the Holy Family as an admirable excuse for a happy assembling of lines; they were pure pagans, and not a trace of religious feeling is discernible in their works. All that they saw or cared for in the Christian story of immaculate motherhood was the tender graces of down-gazing eyes, and die beaufcifal movement of a band pressing upon the breast. The demand for altar pieces afforded them an opportunity of expressing their ideal of feminine beauty, and, with the exception of Fra Angelico, the Virgin inspired the Italian painters only as Venus did the Greek scul ptors. — Speaker. It would seem that tbe art of line engraving on steel must now be looked upon as lost. For the last artist who devoted himself to this beaut ii r ul method o! pictorial illustration, Mr Lumb Stocks, baa recently gone to his rest. Another artist who made a name in this work is reported to have said that ho was of opinion that this particular branch of art; would soon become obsolete. He believed that photogravure was beating it out of the field. There are effects, he said, produced by that process which the line engraver can never possibly approach.- The photogravure is no doubt a most beautiful process in 'affording a faithful reproduction of every touch of the oil painter's brush, but at the same time all lovers of art must regret the decline of a method in which British artists have always shown such pre-eminence. The avera je quality of EDglish landscape* painting is certainly rising. To tbe visitor pressed for time, or unfamiliar with the largo galleries, this Bteady improvement may not be readily apparent. Yet there are landscapes on the walls of the present Academy which Borne years ago would have been exceptionally good enough to provoke geseral abuse, but which to-day are accepted or passed over as the commonplace of landscape. Such work abounds, and is' plentiful even on the line. Twelve years ago no scheme of real atmospheric colour was hung, or at least never anywhere but high up. Landscape to secure a place on the line had to be rainbowhued, spotty, niggled, and conceived in _a panoramic spirit of composition. Compositon by mass was looked for in vain from men who lived only for outline, and who seemed careless of how even its grace, suavity, ox breadth might be impaired by haphazard spottiness of colour, exaggerated modelling of interior detail,, and the tbou-sand-and-one caprices of definition that result from interest in tho part" and neglect of the whole. — Saturday Review.

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