ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2375, 7 September 1899, Page 56

ART AND ARTISTS.

— Lady Butler (then Miss Elizabeth Thompson) had twice before failed to get a picture accepted by the Royal Academy when her world-famous painting, " The Roll Oallj" waa hung. — The youngest exhibitor at .the Paris Salon is 13 years of age, his contribution being a water-colour, which will no doubt attract considerable attention, if only on ac- | count of the painter's tender years. — Sir Alma Tadema, It. A. — on whom the Queen recently conferred a knighthood — like so many who have achieved fame in one calling, is not free from lurking regrets that he did not adopt another. His early training and tastes were \in the direction of a musical career, and many who doubted his ! success in art were confident in advising him ,to follow music. He has also a passion for anything connected with the stage, and is never happier than when helping one of his : friends among London managers in mounting a play. — Among the more important pictures that have been sold lately at Christie's are to be noted Ro'mney's " Viscountess Melville " for 900gs, and a head of Lady Hamilton for I 910gs; "A Dutch Fishing Boat Ashore," by 1 James Maris for 1350g5 ; and Mr W. Q. Orchardson's " Hamlet and Ophelia " for 600gs. These were from the Pattison collection. In the sale of Baron de Reuter's pictures a portrait of a young lady by Reynolds brought 2800gs, and his portrait of Horace Walpole | 950gs ; Watteau's "La Musette " 1380gs ; a, ! landscape by Troyon 1300gs ; and " The Persian Sibyl " by J. Russell 1130gs. i — Mrs Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, the wellknown artist, was born in Canada, and she received her first lessons in drawing in the Dominion. Later on she went to New York, and became a member of the Art Students' League. Then she came to Europe and studied for a time at Munich, afterwards pointing in Brittany, and at Newlyn, in Cornwall. At Newlyn she was destined to make a very long stay indeed, for there she met Mr Stanhope Forbes, to whom she was married in 1889, and at the picturesque little Cornish village the two artists have since resided. She was one of the very few women artists in the English section to whom medals were awarded at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Mrs Stanhope Forbes has lately received a further honour in her election as an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours. | — A great deal of unnecessary fuss is being ■ made over the so-called discovery _ of wall \ paintings behind the paperhangings in Queen I Anne's drawing room at Hampton Court Palace. That these particular decorations existed was well known, and that -they, were the '' work of Verrio, an indifferent decorative artist, who died in 1707, was by no means a seoret. Whether it is worth while taking the trouble to restore them and to show them to the public as great artistic achievements is certainly open to question. They belong to a period when art was at a very low ebb, and taste was practically non-existent. If by any unlucky chance they should set a fashion, and lead to a revival of the appalling pedantries in which Verrio and his fellows delighted, we should have ample reason to regret that the Palace officials should ever have troubled to look behind the wall paper with which Queen Caroline effaced the traces of her predecessor.