ART .AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 77

ART .AND ARTISTS.

—Mr Alfred Praga, who is the latest artist to receive sittings from King Edward, is best known as the President of the Society of Miniaturists. In fact, he was the . founder of the society, and is regarded ' as one of the ablest living exponents of the delicate art. Dr Lumsden Propert, peri haps the greatest authority on miniatures I and ouiniature painting, has been unstinting in praise 1 of Mr Praga and his work. The new commission for a portrait of the I King comes from Sir William Treloar, who' ! intends presenting the pioture to the Say- ! age Club in commemoration of his term of offio-? as Lord Mayor of London. It will be painted on vellum and 1 will be executed in water-colours. Mr Praga was I born at Liverpool, a city responsible for |so many exponent* of art and letters. He was, however 1 , not intended as a knight of I the palette, but as a follower of pius. But medicine failed to appeal to him \and he drifted gently away from it. In clue course he appeared, first at South Kensington, and next at Heatherley's famous art achcol. Then came the traditional period in, Paris and Antwerp. And then Mr Praga developed' into a full-fledged exhibitor at the Academy and Royal Institute. His miniatures soon became a vogue, ', and the restoration to popularity of this choice method of portraiture #is greatly due to him. But he is not limited to this . microscopio vehicle of artistic expression. He 'is particularly happy when, away on" his holidays, he can afford to shelve clamourj ing commissions and indulge to the full his ' bent for landscape painting on a fairly j large scale. — Lucky is the artist wno, at the age 'of ' 89, fincif an interviewer among the members of his own household. It was in a garden in St. John's Wood, when he was peaceI fully smoking his . pipe in September sun- } shine, that Mr Frith, sen., was approached Iby Mr Frith, jun. Goethe said 1 of a cerj tain famous lady that she wrote with one eye on her manuscript and the othe* on' the nearest man; and at St. John's Wood . tie interviewer had, of course, one eye very properly on the nearest man, and the other on the readers of the Cornhill, who will thank him for keeping them in view. He has a ljttle budget of small talk, from ' which we learn that the painter of the "Derby Day" got tipsy only one© in his life, and that was when at a corporation, dinner at Weymouth on a. blazing day, and cannot even now, after half a century of thought about it, be accounted for; that the old grandfather in the "Merry Making" picture was borrowed from the Padj dington; Workhouse; as also was the old nobleman with hands tfedf behind his back in "Claude Duval" ; that Mrs King, the {-family washerwoman, is commemorated in i "Ramsgate Sands" ; and that' Dickens > speaking of Herbert, R.A., wittily said he ' had fallen down at Bpulogne ana broken his English. Mr Frith has lately painted a ! portrait of himself which may fro to the next exhibition at the Royal Academy.

VENETIAN ART. ! — Its Golden Age. — The Golden Age of Venice, the sixteenth century, was the chief period of Venetian

art., The architecture of Sansovino; th<f pictures of Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Carpaccio, Titian, and Tintoretto"; the his« tories of Sanudo; the scientific achievements of Padkf Sarpi ; and the printing of Aldus, are no bad record for the great age of a people. r '

Richness and 1 mellowness of colour, and an air of 6upreme ease and joy in production, are the characteristics of the bestwork of the Venetian school.

From Giorgione - downwards, too. tho artists were in touch with the life of the city. Paolo Veronese crowds his sacred pictures with real portraits in the costumes of x the time/ which makes him almost as good a guide to the habits of the age as Gentile Bellini himself.

There was a certain communism aboufc Venetiar art. It expresses the political idea to which the Republic owed her greatness and independence — the principle that the individual must be merged in the State.

We do not find, as m Florence, great, lonely, dominant figures, who rule their age without sharing in* it. Venetian art is Republican; it is a 'school, a branch •of the public service, "splendidly recognised by tha State, but- also ■supervised. A result of thia attitude is seen in its application io industries.

Lace-making, glass : blowing, and a score of other fine; trades i*drew inspiration from the same sources as the painters. The artisan wa& the companion of the artist in the production of works of art, even if he did not 6_hare in the glpt^.awi the artist, after training th^ .artisan, 'received in turn most invaluable assistance. v

Never since Athens~in the. age of Pericles has> the world- seen -art sS intimately coi\« neoted with civic life.r-Spectator.