ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2809, 15 January 1908, Page 77

ART AND ARTISTS.

Modern painters are expected TC achieve a complete realisation of the world --to render with the utmost exactitude oi imitation the manner in which light affects different objects, and to show how the appeawnce of modelling on these object js affected by their own colour and textur-s and substance. In the "work of 99 out ol 100 these difficulties are approached perhaps conscientiously, perhaps ingeniously ; but the thing remains a- complex- task of imitation, not *a means of self-expression. To the hundredth, -however, "the complexity of tone-ialues as modified by texture becomes a simple thing. You' may see a drawing by Charles Keene of a group of workmen, perhaps, therein the var.'ed degrees in which the blacking has rubbed iff the men's shoes, the little- shininess of their coats at the eibow, the weathering on tho exposed portions of the face are all hit oft with a nicety that mocks your most painctaking realist, yet hit off by values not literally true at all — nay, the arbist does not so much express these things afe *orce the beholder to fancy them._ And all tho greatest modern painters" have something of. this magic in their handling of that dullest thing in the hands of the dullard, the treatment of textures. — A.thenasum.

— William Edward West's lost portrait of Byron, now found to be in the possession of Colonel Menefee Huston, of Daytona, U.S.A., was considered by Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Medwin, and the Countess Guiccio i as the best portrait of Byron in existence. Colonel Huston gives an account in the Literary Digest of the romantic escape of this picture and West's portrait of Thorwaldsen, which were in his father's pos>eession at the time of the Civil War. Colonel Huston writes: — "All the papers, West's letters to his brothers, and their affidavit?, were in my father's desk wlten Gen. Sidney Johnston evacuated Nashville after the fall of Fort Donaldson. T had been brought to the city quite ill; and it was decided to carry \ne south as the army fell back. A friend, knowing the value of these paintings, took them and the family portraits from the frames, carried them to her house."" took up the carpets in her bedroom, had a carpenter raise the flooring and cut niches in the joists, and here the carefullywrapped pictures we,re placed, the floor relaid, the carpet tacked down, and hers they stayed till the close of the war. A Federal officer occupied our house as his headquarters, and during his absence somecue, supposing that the locked desk hed valuables, burst it .open ; and the papers therein were scattered and Jost— -ithe* certified statement. West's letters, and all. But mv sister and I both -remember them." These two original portraits have been in Colonel Huston's fa~v!j for nearly 60 years

SARGENT, R.A.

—His. False Starts. —

"Ho* can I tell?" replied Sir Joshua Reynolds, when he was asked how ( somo part of his "Infant Hercules" had beon painted. " There are ■ a dozen picture? under this." Mr Sargent's method of painring a portrait is as thorough^although quite different from that of Sir Joshua. Ho ne\™)r "paints out," but puts another cart,■vas. an- his easel and starts afresh when anything ir his work displeases him. The number of " false starts" he thus make? is sometimes disconcerting to a sitter who can see no tangible result of two or three sittings, pnd. prob&bly never guessea tha* it is the difjculty of catching some passing, yet very characteristic, expression of a woman's face which is the cause of the apparent failure. v Once a beginning has' really been made,however, the painter's rapid use of hia brush soon makes up for what the lady would probably describe as "lost time." The pearls, for example, in "'"'The Three Sisters" were" each the result of only a single touch — and the critics declared that never had pearls been so well painted. Mr Sargent, indeed, paints at> such high pressure that in the course of a two or three hours' sitting several breaks of a few minutes sre needed — even more needed by Ihe artist than by the sitter, fcirod by the effort to maintain one posture. He usually spends these brief intervals at the pianoforte, music having for the painter in tha midst of work ihe value of both i sedative and a tonic. . -

"The Three Sisters." it may be N added, was commissioned by the ladies' father, the Hon. Percy Wvndham, in whose house, Clouds, near> Salisbury, it now hangs. Clouds is freauently the scene of week-end parties of distinguished politicians and others, and ofHte art treasures none-pre-sents to them a more attractive interest — From tho Strand Magazine.