ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2318, 4 August 1898, Page 47

ART AND ARTISTS.

— - It is Queen Victoria's wish that all the childien in whom she is interested should be taught drawing and painting. Sha said once to a famous artist: " You are to be envied, for you have an exquisite art, and time to study it ! " The Queen was always fond of using the pencil and paint brush, and would take extreme, pains over her drawings.

— MW boys are tond, at some time or other in their early career, of marbles, and Mr G. F. Watts, R.A., was no exception to this rule. But the marbles he studied were the Elgin Marbles, a famous collection of statues and bas-reliefs in the British Museum, and he said that it was from these he got his first, ideas of art. He started to draw and paint at a very early age, and exhibited his first picture when he was only 17 years old. In the same year he painted a. portrait of himself.

- Mr W. Q Orchardson, Li. A., has been commissioned to paint, in one group, four generations of the Royal Family — the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and Prince lid ward of York. This is the first time that an English artist of first rank 'has had an opportunity to paint a royal group of the kind ; and Mr Orohardson is quite aware that he will have to challenge comparison with the Stuart family group by Vandyke. The Queen, when it has been hinted to her to sic to certain eminent English portrait/ painters, has hitherto replied in effect " Non Angli, ?ed Angeli"; and Baron yon Angcli has in fact been the favoured painter.

— Antiquaries will be interested to learn that in the erection of the new buildings on the site of No. 47, Leicester square — so long the residence of Sir Joshua Reynolds — all the old fire-places, antique carvings, and other historic features of the house will be incorporated wherever possibles It was from the windows of this house that Sir Joshua witnessed the funeral of Hogarth — who lived on the opposite side of the square— and the destruction of Savile House by the " No-Popery " rioters. The principal studio of tho great painter, in which he used to receive tho distinguished people who figured in his canvasses, has for years past been closely identified with the auctioneer's rostrum

— Mr Oambier Bolton, the famous animal photographer, says that one of his best studies was of a tiger at the London Zoo which nearly put an end to his life. Mr Bolton was inside the barrier which prevents the public from going 100 close to the cages, and was taking a photograph of another tiger, when one he iiad not noticed camo strolling round from behind some rocks and made a spring at him. A. child called out, and Mr Bolton darted back just in time. His head was underneath the focussing cloth when the tiger made the attempt, and, as the camera was utterly ruined, it is pretty well certain that the photographer's head would have been smashed to pieces. However, Mr Bolton paid the animal out, for he egged it on f o make a second charge, and took a photograph of it in the act.

ABOUT MAD ARTISTS.

" I have often wondered that no magazine has collected together a number of paintings and drawings achieved by artists who were undoubtedly mad, for the field is really a wide one," sajd an Associate of the Royal Academy, with whom a contributor was talking the other day.

" One of the greatest animaJ painters oi any age, the great artist who died only a few years ago, was notoriously insane for j'ears before his death, suid painted one or two of his greatest ao.ulemy successes whilst demented. Then, agjiin, to only mention ona name — I could give a do"en were it not for living relations of tho uißti-~Neu'ton, 11. A., did some oi hi? finest work, on I be maddest subjects, though, whiUt he vns mi «v asyluifi,

" Only within the last few yyu- 1 there ws an Associate who w,-i-«. :'-«ir.« :u.<i yet did splendid work, save as rev- r ds tbc subjects, which plainly reveal? J his st.'ts of mind. He told everybody (pile gwoly that Cromwcii, Charles 1., siA otiij: kj-lorical characters sat to him, in their spiritual forms but bodily likenesj.'.;?, as his only mode's."