ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2399, 22 February 1900, Page 57

ART AND ARTISTS.

« — A dramatic scene was recently enacted in the sruclio of the Paris sculptor,' San Moronzo. Among the many well-dressed visitors at a private view lately was v gentleman named Meron, who suddenly drew a revolver and, with a rapid buccep&ion of shots, shattered the bust of a beautiful woman which was on exhibition. He was seized and taken before the Commissary of Police, to whom he explained that the bust was that of his wife, and the sculptor had no business to show it in public. M. Meron added that he regretted having destroyed a work of art, for he really ought to have shot the sculptor instead. — Giovanni Se^antini, the artist, who recently died, \va, known a& "the painter of the Alps" on account of his fondness for depicting- mountain scenery. He was born at Arco, in the Tyrol, on a slope of the Alps overlooking Italy. His parents were very poor, and at hit, mother's death, when he wa° only five years old, his father sent him to li\e with relatives at Milan. He stayed there for two years, and then ran away, intending to tramp from Italy to Paris. One evening some farm people found the boy utterly overcome by fatigue and hunger, and, taking pity on him, gave him food, and then employed him in minding pigs. This not savoury occupation greatly pleased young Seganlini; and he amused himsell by drawing portraits of hit, charges on stones and pieces of slate. Later on he went back to Milan, and there studied art. — The subject of a picture is not what it is commonly thought to be. It is not what strikes the eye as the principal object. It is this object seen in relation to a \ariety or other things or objects : and if it is not beautiful in itself, it will be made beautiful by the painter's treatment of it, because the treatment is such as to represent not only the subject alone, but it and many other things, correlated in some particulaiwwar. Thus Teniers gives a beauty lo hk squalid tavern interiors by painting not only squalid rooms, but the marvels of light and shadow (hat filled them at some given moment. — Saturday Review. — Sir Joseph Noel Paton. her Majesty's limner for Scotland since 1865. completed his seventy-eighth year recently. In 1843 Sir Noel was admitted a student at Iho "Royal Academy, and in 1850 hu became an Academician of the Ttoyal Scottish Academy. Sir Noel Paton ii si poet as well as a painter. Almost 40 yen re ago he issued a volume of ysrse., entitled 'Toeim of a- Painter," and is

IS67 — the year he was knighted — his second \oiuiue of poeiiin ma= issued, under the title "Spindrift."' In his home in George square, E'lii'lun'^h, not far from the building in which >St W alter fccolt lir^l opened his eyes, Sir Noel Poton, who enjoys good health, ha- oi.e ol the finest collections of arms and armour of any privpto owner in the country. —Mr Lawrence Alma-Tadenia, X.A.. of Grove End road, St. John,; Yfood, London, ra-iiy carries oft' the palm for the beauty, magnificence, vi.d luxury of hi^> studio. His dwelling, which staac!^ m the clear air of Si. John's "Wood, if tl'e artist's own dtsig'i from roof to ba&omcit. A<- yor. walk up the cla-sical aicade that wind- through tho garden, by waxing trees, «.hrub;.. t>nd many flowers, a frieze ot parti colouicd tile^ o\erhpad flai-he 5 - upon the ej'e. Tlie door being oppned, a flight of d-xzzling l^razen starting up like a golden ladder, imilcs you

to the studio: but you first walk through a l.tlle winding pathway to tho left, bordered hy palm t'joei. evergreens, and fern-, leacMnq to a little plcivc where afternoon tea i- ■■orvec. The studio if; a wonder of -white and silver, with balconies and galleries overhead on i\, le^el ai itli ihe topmost of the trees th."v wavp Tn ihe large £ja.rdeii. where founlpm-, play a'ia birds ninp. Mr Alma-Tp^em? i« the p:>uitej of suiii-hin-j and blue skies, and 'his incllo L-. "As the sun colours flowers, so an colours life.'' It «a, oi.ly by decrees, that the ivli-,t discovered the value of the daazling 1-ack-groui'd which now vivifies his studio. In the old day at Antwerp he found that black Por-" 1 pencil decorations inado his pictures too bfv-y, <=o lie painted hi-^ ne>l studio red. At Bru-seK he painted his v. alls light trreen. In London he tried blue and green, and so on to the white and silver with v. hich they are at present decorated.