ART AND ARTIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2394, 18 January 1900, Page 69

ART AND ARTIST.

It was in 1863 IV.Kt Mills is wrote R.A. aff t his name. The mr.ra catalogue of his woi\-: done after this date would exhaust columns. He became the splendidly remunerated painter of prime ministers ~ x < pretty children. Ha built himself a finer i.ou&e in Kensington, and his rifle rang out on Braemar and Dunrobin. He was granted the gokl "Medaille d'Honncur." He was made a baronet. 'He leceived commissions from Royalty ; hia "Cherry Ripe" was hung in every cottage, and was hailed wi'h rapture by Australian.' miners and South African trekkers. Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Gladstone, Cardinal Newman, Tennyson, and John Bright sat to and with him, and wrote him familiar epistles. But success elbowed art out of his studio. And the worst of it was, that he seems to have had no regrets. THE VAN DYCK CELEBRATIONS. In an article on the recent celebrations in Antwerp of the third Century of Van Dyck, J'J. Octave Maus gives, in the Magazine of Art, a vivid description of the gorgeous proceesion. lie say.; : Antwerp, where these traditions are held in peculiar honour, has many times distinguished itself by the magnificence of its proee=sions. It was only natural that it should commemorate with all possible splendour the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest painters of its school ; and the commercial capital threw itself heart and soul into this ortistio demonstration. It achieved it in the most triumphant way by adopting, on the suggestion qf M. Augusre Posseniiers, the scheme of a procession of which the subject was to be Art through all ages up to the time of Van Dyck. To realise it effectively, £he municipality appealed to those societies which, since 1885, had shown a special skill in representing by living figures every kind o'i episode of histoi'y, manners, and artistic inventions. From among these it selected — as it had done in 1802 for the "Landjurseel,"" and in 1894for the torchlight procession of the Great Exhibitor. — 10 societies who were to comvjose the different groups, while a special committee of artists and members of the municipality decided on the general design. The societiei which had the honour of being chosen were those of the Vriendenschaar, the Leopold, the Verbroedering, the, Hoop en Liefde, the Morgenstav, the Jounge Viamingen, the Albert Grisar's Kring, the Klauwaarts, the' Jouge Fontoinisten, and the Vondels. A sum of 100,000fr to be distributed in prizes and lewards to those associations which should practically distinguish themselves was voted by the Town Council. The. Committee of Consultation and Superintendence was further strengthened by the addition of the most distinguished musicians at Antwerp, that thej might agree with the members of the procession as to the measures to be taken to give the musical part of the performance an artistic and archaeological value. Thus organised, the arrangement of the procession, under the collaboration of the most distinguished architects, painters, and sculptors- of the city, could not fail to be both splendid and artistic, thoroughly correct , in its details, and magnificent as a spectacle. The several marches round, all favoured with beautiful weather, roused the throng, collected from all parts, to indescribable enthusiasm. _ In fact, it was a great delight for men of the best taste to see these various groups of figures, dressed in stuffs of every hue, making their way under the glorious sunshine along the streets of..Antwerp, and the cars, decorated eaoh in the style of the period to -which it belonged, with its banners, its orchestra, and its out-riders, What added to the excitement was that this unwonted magnificence was displayed for the glorification of Art, and the artistic purpose of each group found a sympathetic response in hearts that beat in unison. MESDAG:' THE MODERN DUTCH MARINE PAINTER. Mesdag stands out as the marine painter of the modern Dutch school. His history is the almost stereotyped one of the desk clerk who felt the artistic in him, and struggled for it, till at last he broke away from commerce, and at the age of 35 began to try aud be a painter. He applied to Alma Tadema for -advice. When we remember the peculiar styles of both, the choice seems strange, but the advice to take Roelofs as the master was good, and the advice of another painter, Bilders, was better. Take Nature for your model, said Bilders ; don't be a little Roelofs, but be yourself. An individual painter Mesdag certainly is, and it only needs to look thrbugh the varied illustrations of this % olume to see what a hold Nature has on him. He began his art life painting street scenes in Brussels, but a holiday visit to Norderney ir 1868 first gave him the sea' as a subject, and showed him' hia true inspiration in art. He left Brussels, settled at the Hague, and, like so many of his compatriot artists, painted" the sea at Scheveningen, the huge "pinks" tossing about on the waves, toys of the deep, as he called them, and all the nature an<i character and quaintness of the sear-faring folk. It was a picture of that wild sea shore at Scheveningen that first made his name famous. Re sent it to the Salon of 1870 — "Brisants de la Mer dv Nord," Breakers in the North Sea — where it hung close to Courbal's "Wave," and challenged comparison with that masterpiece. From this date he worked steadily, and sold freely ; his career was prosperous ; in France especially his genius was recognised. Ziem Chaplin and Millet were profuse in their congratulations — their kindlyconceived letters, framed, hang now in his studio. The French Government bought two of his pictures for the Luxemburg, and from 1869 till 1890 he was always in the Salon catalogue. Mesdag is pre-eminently the painter not of the sea shore, but of the sea itself, and he paints it with fidelity and great strength of impression. The heavy Dutch-built pinks are tossed about on the waves, or running before the wind, seem to scud across his -canvas. His skies are full of subject, but always in direct reference to Nature. — Daily News.