ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 70

ART AND ARTISTS.

There are few eminent artists who have -Won such brilliant and rapid success by hard work as Mr E. J. Gregory, the Royal Academician The grandsom of a ship's engineer who accompanied Sir John Franklin, on his Polar Expedition, at 15 he was learning to draw plans at Southampton. Five years later his restless ambition brought him *o London to study and to work his way on to the staff of an illustrated paper.^ Ho ,was only 26 when his picture, "Dawn, in.troduced him to fame; and since then •his progress to the highest places m art has fceen singularly rapid. Mr Gregory^ is a tall, fair, bearded man of athletic build, a lover i>f fresh air and exercise, and a keen cyclist, rolf-player, and boating-man. — Four of the 38 Turner water-colour drawings fcft to the Scottish nation, and on view lately in the Scottish National Uallcv belono- to the Scottish series that were sketched in 1830-31, at the instigation

of Robert Cadell, for Sir "Walter Scott's works. The few Scottish subjects done with this design are Melrose, a gem of its kind ; Chiefsword, near Abbotsford, for a time the residence of Scott's son-in-law Lockhart ; the Rhymer's Glen, clo=e by ; and Loch Curuisk, in Skye, done for a scene in the Lord of the Isles. Turner accused Scott of inaccuracy in saying that neither tree, shrub, nor flower grew there, as in placing himself in position to sketch the loch 1 he stumbled, and would have broken hi 3 neck had he not laid hold of a few tufts of grass !

GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS. LEIGHTON AND MILLAII.

The concluding address of the Professor of Painting, delivered at the Royal Aca.e'emy, London, on January 24, was largely devoted to the consideration of the aiti-tic methods and the personalities of Leighton and Miilai".

Mr "Val Prinsep aaid U had been, his c;ootl foitune to know per^c nally all the eminent painters of the British ecliool from, Muiready

'to Millais. Especially well had ho known the last two presidents, and he must needs speak with caution of Leighton, lest his affection for his personality might bias his estimate of his art. Leighton, a highly cultivated man, who could express himself in many languages, studied painting in three countries, and all that could be learnt in art he knew. His art was perfect in itself, and he never spared InmselT in its execution. He loved all kinds of, art, but took no pleasure in sport, and had a loathing for slang. He was a man of iron will, and will was the quality he valued above all. What Leighton willed he did. The first picture he showed in England, the ''Triumph of Cimabue," was a triumph for him too; but his masterpiece, in Mr Prinsep's opinion, was the "Daphnephoria." His favourite word in criticism was "inexorable," and the original idea in his picture was always inexorably carried out He never valued the accidental effects so dear to most painters ; there was method in all he did, and he could always tell to a day how long it would take to finish any particular picture. Only once did the lecturer know him to come to grief, and that was over the "Summer Moon." Then he locked himself up for three days in his riudio and repainted the whole picture, which was, perhaps, the most spontaneous of all his works'. Loighton was not only a great painter but a great president — -perhaps the greatest president we should ever see. No letter to him ever remained unanswered, no duty was ever neglected. Gainsborough was the artist who appealed to Leighton most, but he took a singularly keen and wide interest in all "schools of painting. Millais was a singular contrast to his predecessor. He worked v/ith fury and with little method or design, the picture developing itself as he went along. Always boyish and exuberant, revelling in paintinef. he wsb yet capable of great depression. "I have been to my wife and had a good cry," he said once after one of these despairing periods. Millais was a supreme painter, and few have equalled him. He had natural genius of Jthe highest kind, but knowledge, except in execution, he never attained. And in spite of all his life and energy ne had a kind of intellectual apathy which prevented him from undertaking important pictures— the fire burnt itself out < before the work^ was completed. His -portraits were most admirable, not so good in arrangement as these of Reynolds, but with more character. It was curious that in criticising work he always went for the drawing alone, and though Millais himself was a fine colourist. Mr Prinsep had never heard him criticise the colour of a picture. Mr Prinsep then turned to Rossetti, a gifted and brilliant geniiis, with a fascinating personality unlike that of any other man a man more of the fourteenth century Italian than the modern type. But Rossetti neglected study, and in this was unlike another great artist, Burne-Jones, who, though he commenced late, took care to equip himself by unremitting diligence. A lovable, charming man, who, though uninfluenced by his time and working for his own ideal, yet achieved popularity. There was none to take his place. The lecturer told the story of Mason, who was left penniless in Italy owing to misfortune. He came Back to 'England, and Leighton helped him But his privations in Rome had undermined his constitution, and success came too late. All those pictures now at the Royal Academy were the efforts of a man trembling on the brink of the grave.