ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 69

ART AND ARTISTS.

—Mr Harrison Weir, tho well-known animal painter and draughtsman, was 78 on May 11. Born at Lewes, in Sussex, he was educated at Albany Academy, Camberwell, and wa-j for many years a resident, having Eliza Cook as a ueijjhlxjur for some years, in that popular metropolitan borough. Examples of Harrison Woir's work will be found in all the older illustrated papers. He is the only survivor of the original staff of the Illustrated London Neva.

i — Mr Benjamin W. Leader, R.A., tli© . landscape painter, is among the few men > of note who have discarded their patronymics > in favour of another surname. As a Worr center schoolboy and a Royal Academy stu- • dent ho answered to the name of "Williams," i like his elder brother, now known to fame - as Sir E. Leader Williams, the brilliant engineer; but since he embarked on his art ■ career he lias preferred to be known, as : "Williams Leader." Mr Leader is a whitel moustached, somewhat military-looking man , of 70, "who lives in a charming home near , Guildford, and is the proud father of four t lovely daughters and two athletic sons. He , 13 a great smoker, and when he can tear s himself away from his canvases, which are his • chief and really only recreation, he loves nothing better than to smoke his pipe on I the lawn while his daughters play tennis. \ —M. Auguste Rodin, the French sculptor. ■ who is at present in London, has received a ■ cordial recognition from the leading English artists. He is 62 years of age. His bestkinown works are his monuments to "Victor Hugo and Balzac, and his busts of Rochefort and Mirabeau. During his visit to England M. Rodin will stay with Mr John, ' Tweed, the official sculptor, as he has been 1 called, to the late Mr Cecil Rliodee. A remarkable work of Rodin is the bronze group executed for Calais— it is called "The Burghers of Calais," and is placed in a public square in^that city. A replica of this work, with one of his John the Baptist, which is about to b& bought for the South Kfensington collection, was shown in last year's Glasgow Exhibition Fine Art Gallery. It is ininteresting to remember (says a London art writer) that Mr W. E. Henley was the first to speak in high terms of Rodin in this country, and that English art critics and English artists first acknowledged that his "Balzac"' was a great masterpiece, and defended it loyally against the too conservative French critics and artists. — Troyon's drawing is loose and inexact, and he composes, not as an inheritor of Claude, but as a contemporary of Rousseau. But he had the true pictorial sense, and if his lines be often insignificant, his masse* are perfectly proportioned, his values arc-ad-mirably graded, his tonality is faultless, his effect is absolute. His method is the large, serene, and liberal expression of great craftsmanship ; and to the interest and jzrace of art his colour unites the charm of individuality, the richness and the potency of a/ kind of natural force. . . . His wc»k is not to take the portraits of trees or animals or sites, but, as in echoes of Virgilian mupic. to suggest and typify the country: with its tranquil meadows, its luminous skies, its quiet waters, and that abundance of floeka and herds at once the symbol and Ui© source* of its prosperity. — W. E. TTenlcy, in "Views and Reviews." THE LATE M. BENJAMIN CONSTANT. M. Benjamin Constant, the eminent French, artist who die/1 in' "May, nas almost as much at home in London as in Pniis. For many yuars he had exhibited at Uuriington lldu.se, and. as every reader will recollect, his remarkable portrait of Queen Victoria was the most prominent picture in last year's Academy. The pon;vwt, which had been, exhibited at the- Pans Exhibition the previous yoar, was the subject of heated controversy, but it was generally regarded as a serious attempt to paint in her public and Royal aspect the venerated ruler of a groat Empire rather than as a portrait in the ordinary sonse. M. Constant meant it distinctively to bo a picture of a Queen — of the visible seafc of authority, as well as of the woman — and r\c-rybody recognised the effectiveness o£ the- artibt's treatment. His portrait of Queen Alexandra — a head merely — was not so grenfc a success, and is not so well known. M. Benjaaiiu Constant would have been 56 in June — on the 10th. Ho was a pupil of M. Ca banal, pis first p cture aceepttd at the Salon was hung in 1869. It representxrl ;i scene from "Hamlet." arid for many weeks 1 he continued to paint subject picture-., with occasional portraits. He chose principally Oriental scenes, with somo \ igorous melo dramatic action introduced into them. This gave him opportunity to indulge in his fondness for strong, vivid colour and aho for painting the nude figure. Gradually, howo\er, as the taste of the time changed, M. Constant gave up subjects almost entirely, and devoted himself more and more to portraits He rapidly became a portrait-painter who was much sought after by the fashionable world, both cf Paris and London. With the English Royal Family his work was higli in favour, and his long and brilliant career really culminated in the portrait of Queen Victoria already referred to. M. Constant could paint a full-length with a sense of scenic magnificence such as few living men possess, and sometimes he would show a more penetrating gift. His work had nearly always decorative value, and he finished hia pictures, as a rule, with a scrupulous regard for detail whioh excited the scorn o£ a younger school in art. French art has indeed lost a master, and his death will b« deeply regretted wherever artistic merit ia lecognised.