ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2058, 3 August 1893, Page 42

ART AND ARTISTS.

Qaeen Victoria has commissioned Miss . Amy Richardson to paint for her " II Crocifisso," by Beato Angelico, in the cloister of San Marco at Florence. The picture is to be hung at Osborne. The Berlin, Museum has secured five paintings by Albrechtl Darer within the last 12 years, but, at prices that seem enormous. One, a portrait of an ancestor of an, eld Nuremberg family, was purchased for £17,000, and the others at correspondingly high figures. , ' Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, never works -continuously " and exclusively upon one painting, but has half a dozen or more canvases going. He devotes himself awhile to one and then works on another, and by degrees goes tho rounds.

The story of the discovery of a portrait oE Columbus by Titian, through the scraping off of another painting, which has gone the round of the paper*, has brought up another. A Titian " of undoubted' authenticity " was sent to be cleaned, and in the process the facb was revealed that there was another picture underneath. In the hope of fincing a still more precious old master the Titian was scraped oft, and a Sir Joshua Reynolds stood revealed. The story is told in a provincial paper , with the greatest" gravity, and with no allusion to the trifling fact that Sir . Joshua flourished three centuries later than the old master.' ,. ': ■

Artißts, and especially portrait painters, are troublesome' sitters under the lens. This is the testimony! of one who has photographed most of the Royal Academicians. Millais just sat J- himself down and said, " You must photograph me like this." There was nothing else to be done. He was tremendously impatient, though gentlemanly and genial in his manner. The most troublesome sitter was, 5 Sir, Frederic Leighton. This was partly fjrom hurry, and partly from exceptional nervousness, But his legs were not long enough,', He wanted to appear tall, and go the portrait had to be made a threequarter length../- , , pipxuEE-gEIiIiING. AT CHRISTIE'S. When piotujes aje selling at Christie's, ia London, we haiye, rows of seats disposed before the roatium.as in a lecture-room, while the pictures- are 6tacked against fehe walls in arcades of green baize. „ The light shioe^frcm above on the golden frames of the'pjptures, on the auctioneer and his assistant?, pa the assemblage of hats of every shape and form, with ,here or there , somß stray feminine headgear. The faces about are mostly bearded and well lined with wrinkles ; the whole assemblage is a serious one, yet net without enthusiasm on the .part of the non -buyers. Often some jweli-known picture elioits cheers, further .approbation at the first thousand, more encouragement at the second, and quite an ovation as the hammer falls. , The great dealers are all there, you may be sure ; . the representatives of the national collections, home and foreign, a duke pr two, perhaps, and a f^w enthusiasts in the .way of millionaires, although such .people geperally buy through accredited dealers.— All the Year Round. - .

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