ART AND ARTISTS,

Otago Witness, Issue 2356, 20 April 1899, Page 58

ART AND ARTISTS,

— No writer of the age in which we live had (says the Morning Post) exercised a wider influence on the taste of the educated public than John Kuskin, and even those whs may least agree with the leading principles of his criticism recognise the purity of his motives and the sincerity of his love for art. — Painting on spiders' webs is certainly novel, but the- secret is jealously guarded. The webs are detached from plants early in the morning so tenderly that every strand is preserved. Two or three webs are placed over each other, then arranged smoothly, and on this material -the artist lays the colours with the perfection of deftness and of patience.

—An original ceremony took place at the Paris crematorium the other day, when the corpse of Madame Parquet, aunt of the wellknown artist, was cremated to slow music. A band of 15 musicians* placed in a room adjoining the furnace, executed classical musio of a religious character until the remains were entirely consumed, which display, appealing to the sentiment of the mourners, appeared to comfort them in no small degree.

—Mr Watts, R.A., in a recent interview, pronounced against marble statues on the ground that they Eoon decay and become discoloured, and, while admitting improvement in domestic architecture in fashion, still /ound " a tremendous amount of ugliness." "We can do little or nothing," he -added, < c with railway stations. You see. you cannot mako any building of glass and iron a beautiful thing. [Does not every conservatory bear witness to this?] . . . "You never get any real dignity \yithout shade — your projections won't have their due effect. But this is not a noble age, and it is very lucky that anything at all good is done." Mr Watts naturally forgets himself. The splendid example and achievements of one who lias laboured all his life " to assimilate art with that which is noblest and best in the human mind and thought " would alone suffice to ennoble the artistic annala of the last half century. — Spectator.

— The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., when on his death-bed, requested his sisters, to whom he bequeathed the whole of his property, to give out of it the sum of £10,000 to the Royal Academy. Mrs Orr and Mrs Matthews have pcrupuloiisly carried out their brother's generous wish. No conditions having been attached to the gift, it became necessary for the academy to determine ou tho mode of its employment. With the approval of her Majesty, tho money has been constituted a trust fund undei $ie title of " The Leighton Bequest," and the interest derived' from it ia to be devoted to the adornment and decoration of public places and buildings — an object in which the donor always took great interest. The administration of the income of the fund will bo in the hands of the President and Council of the Royal Academy. — Verestohagin, the RuEsian artist, is a painter of battle scenes, but his pictures show us the horrors rather than the glories of war, and are much more powerful advocates of peace than any mere written manifesto can be. They are not at all the sort of battle pieces a military monarch would care to hang upon the walls of his palace. The old-fashioned battle-piece used to discreetly shroud in clouds of dense smoke all that could shock the sensibilities of the most sentimentnl spectator. All we- were permitted to see on these misleading canvases was the commander-in-chief of the victorious army gallantly seated on hi<» curveting charger in front of an effectively piled heap of unlimbered cannon, disorganised tumbrils, and dilapitated drums, whilst his staff, in spick and span uniforms, gaily caracoled around in the immediate vicinity. If a few of the wounded enemy wero introduced they wero always decorously devoid of anything like bloodstains, and were usually pose^l in attitudes suggestive of rapt amazement at the strategical skill and irresistible prowess of the conquering generalissimo. But it is not thus that Verestehagin paints a battle. There is no smoke on his canvases to hide the grim and gruesome horror that haunts 'the modern " stricken field " like a spectre. He shows us the shattered limbs, the bloodstained bandages, the contorted corpses in all their revolting reality. — Truth.

— How frankly the girl of sixteen admits that she is an old maid! — Scene : St. Andrews Golf Links.— Visitor ,(to caddie): "Do you get much carrying in winter?" Caddie: "Na! There's nae muckle carryin' in winter. If it's no' snaw it's frost, if it's no' frost it's snaw, if it's neither frost nor snaw it's rain, an' if it's a fine day it's shair tae be tho Sawbath."