ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2471, 24 July 1901, Page 69

ART AND ARTISTS.

— The King of Por^n^al is an exceedingly clever artist, and has betn awarded medal* at exhibitions tor his pictures. As a luie he works in pastel, and much of his leisure time is occupied with sketching at favourite spots along the coa^t. — The Roj-al Academy wns founded, as most people will recollect, by George 111, in 1769, and had Sir .lo?hua Reynolds for its first P.R.A. Little time was lost in holding the first exhibition of picluics, which was opened on Apiil 2b, and closed on May 27, 1769. The new acadeinj was not magnificently lodged. Its eailiest qi.artero were in Dalton's piint warehouse in Pali Mall, Dalton being the King's librarian and printkeeper. It was not until 1771 that the King granted to the academy the use of apartuvuts in old Somerset Palace for its lectuies and books, and it wan not until 1780 11 at the exhibition was hold there instead of Pall Moll. TJie catalogue of the first exhibit-on bore the motto, "No\a rerunna=citur ordo,"' and it is interesting to learn that while the number of works exhibited w:ib 136, the recei]/t-> at the door totalled £699. Thus the venture was successful from the starr. PICTURE THEFTS. Picture thefts are not common, but there are some notable oases which may appropriately be mentioned anent the recovery of Gainsborough's "Duche^F." About 1850 a number of picture's were stolen from the gallery of the Earl of Suffolk, but the thieves evidently experienced a difficulty in meeting with a "fence," for the pictures were all discovered tied up in a piece of sacking and thrust under one of t're arches of Blackfriars Bridge. Another theft was that of Mr Sidney Cooper's "Monarch of the Meadows," representing a young bull standing in a meadow, with a cow and calf lying at his feet. This was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1873, and became the property of Mr J. D. Allcroft. While the owner's house v.as under repair, the picture, being too big to remove elsewhere — it measures 9ft by 7ft — was placed in p separate room. Early one morning the workmen found this room in flames, and nothing left of the picture but a part of the lining and the burnt frame. 'I he marks of a j knife on the edges of the canvas and candle grease on the frame led, however, to the conclusion that the picture had been cut away and the room set on fire to prevent discovery of the theft. In this case the picture has not yet been recovered. In 1874 Munllo's great picture in the Cathedral of Seville was mutilated, the figure of St. Anthony being cut out. The thief got away to New York, where he remounted part of the picture he had stolen, and offered it for sale. He was traced by the Spanish police, and was convicted and punished. Perhaps, however, the most remarkable instance of the kind is that of one of Murillo's many pictures of the Virgin, which was in the gallery of Marshal Soult. The figures of the Virgin and Child were cut out of ihia picture, and the thief was never discovered. Marshal Soult had two figures painted in. At the sale of his pictures this one was bought by a gentleman who hed actually purchased the two stolen figures some years before, and they were then restored to their proper place. THE ART OF ERNEST NORMAND. Mr Ernest Normand is the subject of an illustrated biographical notice, by Mr Frank Riuder, in the Art Journal. Id will be remembered that a panel by this artist, entitled " King John Granting Magna Oharta," was recently unveiled at the Royal Exchange. Mr Binder tays : "That parents concerned for the future welfare of son or daughter should be apprehenpive at the mention of the word ' art ' is not surprising. Fathers and mothers have an almost instinctive distrust of art, from the moneyearning point of view, and hence it ie that many well-known painters were originally destined for other careers. In the long list that might be compiled of living painters trained to some other calling, Mr Ernest Normand is one. Born in London, he left England in 1870, to be educated in Germany. When young Normand returned to this country in 187b, he at once entered commercial life. The work of the day finished, however, he regularly sought the St. Martin's School of Art. Moreover, anxious to prove that for him one path only was nower-s*t, he sacrificed, if sacrifice it be to seek the greater of two pleasures, his half -holidays and days of leisure to draw from the antique at the British Museum. So earnestly had he studied, that the drawings executed during the 18 months or two years spent in Mb father's office served to gain for him a seven years' studentship at the Royal Academy Schools. This initial success held promise of future well-being, and commerce was finally abandoned. Ernest Normand, by thi« time 23 years old, began in 1880 to devote all his energies to pictorial art. Prior to quitting the Academy Schools in 1883, Ernest Normand had established himself in Fitzroy Square. His first picture, ' A Palace, yet a Prison,' was hung at the Royal Academy in 1884; within four years, be it remarked, of his entrance to the schools. Naturally it bears evidence of immaturity, for with all the careful study of detail — much of it found at the Crystal Palace— the young painter was unable to unify his scheme. That the canvas found a purchaser at several hundred guineas, however, induced the artist at once to paint a similar work for the following year, entitled ' The Bitter Draught of Slavery.' The most human, intellectually, and maybe aesthetically, the most satisfying of Mr Normand's pictures is the ' David and Saul ' of 1891. It has its source in Browning's dramatic lyric, which tells how, for a moment, the sweet harp music lifted agony and darkness from the soul of the monarch. He felt this thing profoundly before he set out to paint it. With trust in himself, in his own ways of looking at and interpreting s theme, we may hope for more examples in the manner of 'Da\id and Saul,' and in yet untried fields."