ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2761, 13 February 1907, Page 88

ART AND ARTISTS.

— The Duehe«s of Rutland i« one of the most accomplished women of her time, and has beauty, grace, and charm. From girlhood she has been devoted to drawing and sketching, and bad circumstanoes placed her in a different position in life, she would have made fame and fortune as a portrait-painter. The Duchess is also a good sculptor, and has executed 1 several family busts, among these being one o? her eldest son, who died in childhood.

— Sir li. Alma Tadema is engaged on an important canvas for tho Royal Academy. It represents a scene in the Colosseum in the time .of Cavacalla, but is not of a horrible nature. Tho difficulty hae been to work in all the necessary figures, the number of which was so la^ge that it has been found necessary to reduce it. Sir Lawrence is, of course, famous for the perfection of his classical details. A striking example of this will be found in his treatment of the velarium, or awning, which was used to shade the vast audience. This is of purple, with figures in gold, and is suspended from bronze posts on thesurrounding wall of the Colosseum rt its top. Altogether this will be the most striking Alma Tadema since the "Ro&es of Heliogabalus," which is now the property of Sir John Aird. — A curious criticism of artists by a man o e science is quoted by Mrs Russell Barrington in the sumptuous volumes on Lord Leighton recently published. The man of science is Sir William ThiseltonDyer, the director of the Royal liotanic Gardens at Kew, and what ho gays r< .'ors to the average artist's want of botanical knowledge, as revealed in the treatment of flowers and vegetation generally n 1-h pictures. Sir William scoffa at thf> i>lant» of Burne-Jones, and suggests that tho urtiM, made them up out of his head. Nor was the botany of Ruekin much better : he was. "with all his talk, unobservant ai<d careless.'' The artists who arc absolutely satisfying to the botanist are Sir I/. Alma -Tadema, Mr Holman Hunt, nnd Albert Durer, and possibly Millais, v)<o, although he had no botanical training, got his plants right by sheer force of insight — All the profits of Mrs Russell Barrington's "Life of Leighton" are to be devoted to the fund that is being raised for the endowment of Leighton House — that house at Kensington in the design and construction of which Lord Leighton took such pride. The house was left by Leighton to hie sisters, Mrs Sutherland Orr and Mrs Matthews, and by these two ladies it was generously made over by deed to three trustees, in order that it might be preserved for the public benefit. The gift was a noble one, for the house and the treasures it contains are estimated to be worth about £25,000. Over a thousand sketches and studies by Leighton, illustrating r\cry part of his career, are bhown upon its walls.

*— At all periods artists, when orcrTjnrdened with work, have not been above accepting the aid of skilled assistants. Rubens employed Jordaens to help him with the great ceiling pictures at Whitehall that are now being restored, and in our own day Mr Abbey was relieved by au assistant (a clever young member of the R.W.8.) of the tiresome task of painting the furniture and other unimportant accessories in his big picture of the Corona- ,

tion of his Majesty. Of :ourse there are artists who object to help of any kind, and Leighton was one of these. "I cannot endure," he 6aid once, "that a .trange hand should touch my works. I am never satisfied unless I have personally applied every stroke of the brush to the picture." Reynolds and 'Gainsborough were both assisted 1 largely by other artists in the painting of the draperies and other parts of their pictures. The man who did most for them was himself a Royal Academician, Peter 'Toms, whose life was a little tragedy. Toms had ambitions of his own that did not fit in with painting backgrounds and draperies in the pictures of other men, and after some years of this work he threw it up and went to Ireland, with the idea of painting portraits on his own account. He had the support of the Lord-Lieutenant ; but, nevertheless, his attempt to work on his own acoount proved' an utter failure, and he was compelled to come back to London to take up the old drudgery again. But that, too, failed him, and in the end Peter Tom 6, whose work survives in the canvases of Reynolds and Gainsborough, finished his career by committing suicide. MORE ABOUT WHISTLER. Now that Whistler is really and thoroughly dead America begins to appreciate him. December Century has some beautiful etchings by Otto Bacher of Whistler's haunts in Venice, with an ' anecdotal commentary. It may be added to the proof of Whistler's taste that he hailed Poe as the greatest poet of America. His favourite themes were the old Venetian painters. "Canaletto," he said, "could paint a white building against a white oloud. That was enough to make any man great." When Whistler finished his mother's picture Bacher noticed that it was painted on the back of a canvas on the face o f | which was the portrait of a child. The j remark, "Why have you painted your mother on the back of a canvas?" received simply the reply, "Isn't that a good surface?" And Bacher sums up : "Whistler was a master-spirit in 'the science of the beautiful,' as he defined art. It was the one subject upon which he would allow no jesting. Whatever medium he selected, whether a creation on canvas from memory, a painting from Nature in oils, a water-colour — pure or a gouache — it was fascinating to the full limits of "his medium. In pastels, composition and colour surprises dominated, remaining in the memory as the down of many-coloured butterflies. Lithography was a commercially debased art before Whistler forced the greasocrayon into a higher standard of beauty than it had ever attained before. If mural painting was his task, his tints glowed as if his brush had been dipped in rainbow hues. In his etching-., he spun woblike lines of exquisite beauty. If an exhibition hall was to be transformed with drapery, ho made it like the brilliancy of the sunshine. Apart from his art, if ho laid aside his brush to take up the pon, ho was no loss competent. lli-> influence on tho ErehS was always effective. In courts of tw he established a prestige and dignity for Ih(> artist and art that cannot be undervalued." ARTISTS AND THEIR PICTURES. —Three Stories.— Many are the trials of arhifs when making sketches. It is often a. harassing oxixiionco to ' «it before an easel in a \illage street; for rustic youths, who have a wit all their own, arc not always respectful to feensitive feelings. "So you arc a painter?" i<? marked a yokel once to a well known painter of \ illage street scenes. "Yes — haven't you got eyes':'' was the painter's crushing retort. , But the rustic, nothing daunted by the sarcasm, had another question ready. ''And do 'cc gild, too?" he inquired, in the softest manner in the world. In view of Mr Dendy Sadler's wellknown place in the world of arl. this, too, is a pleasant story:— To hw studio one day came a parliamentary canvasser, bent on securing his vote. The canvasser talked and talked, while Mr Sadler tried not to look bored ; until at la»t, satisfied that he must ha\e secured the painter's vote, the canvasser dropped the subject, and began to look round the beautiful studio a. sixfoot canvas on an easel caught his attention. "Ah. Mr Sadler," he said, ''I ?-ee you do a little painting!"

He did not get the vote. It is quite a common idea — at leasr, in the country — that painting does not spoil work. Air George Wctherbcc, who has painted many charming pictures of country life, tolls how, when he haunted rural Hertfordshire in search of subjects, the

local peasantry were firmly convinced that he never did such a thing as a stroke of work. One day he surprised his neighbours by taking a. hand in the harvesting of a cornfield.

"Why, there's the artist working," cried the children, as though it were the most phenomenal event in the world.

The subject of Mr Briton Riviere's "Temptation" is dog-stealing. A seedylooking individual is seen trying to win the confidence of a King Charles spaniel with a seductive bit of liver. The dogthief was partly studied from a dealer from whom, for many years Mr Riviere obtained his dog-models — a man rejoicing in no less a name than "Ravenscroft."

Said Ravenscroft one day to a client :

"They do tell me, sir, ac W Mr River get 9as much as two 'underd pounds for paintin' one dawg; is that true?"

Ravenscroft was assured that it was not improbable. Well," eai£ he, after a thoughtful pause, "I don't blame 'im. If people are such fools, I don't see w'y a sharp feller shouldn't take advantage of 'em." — Royal Magazine for January.