A POTTER OF ATHENS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13899, 10 May 1909, Page 3

A POTTER OF ATHENS.

(By C. Lewis Hind.)

Who was Douris ? Sylvia we know, hut who was Uouris:-' And why shoula a book be- called Douris ? For the same reason, lancitul Out sensioie, that a .book on poetry might be culled— Sheiky ; one on wisuuiu—Uoctnc; one uii the golden visions of painting —Xuruer; one on cruelty —Aero; or one on vanity—Alartin X upper. We know liotlnug about the life of Douris except that he flourished in the Gfch century U.'J., and that he was one of the craftsmen who made the pottery of Athens famous for all time. .No classical writer mentions this unknown with a pretty name., "The spiritual, the true and fruitful part" of the life ul' Douris of Athens is all that remains. J Lou - satisfactory if that could .happen t" us. The best of Douris remains because certain very learned gentlemen throughout the western world, who have made intimate and exhaustive studies of Greek vases have discovered and preserved twenty-eight examples signed by him, consisting of twentysia drinKing cups, one kantharos, 'and one vase for cooling wine. Very previous are these twenty-eight signed Douris things, scattered through museums and private collections, but 1 have nut tnu slightest desire to persuade anybody that they are astonishingly lively. flic admiratiou of Greek vases is for the few; tliey arc precious and interesting for many reasons. .-'J-'o begin with they record episodes of the lite lived in the days wiien they were ■ ashioncd and painted. As everybody Knows the Greek painting extolled by ancient writers iias disappeared. a" smudge 011 a weathered ..loiic, which 1 nave seen on the heights • it iA-lphi, is ail that remains of the two frescoes by I'olyguotus of the \ isit to Hades'' and "The Capture. These paintings may have been finer than anything in the Diploma Gallery or i{oyal Exchange; they may have been less line. Their merits are " wrop in obscurity." Wc know the kind of work that tho painters of the time of Augustus and Titus frescoed on the walls of Pompeii and Herculanenin. Some repose in the Gem llooni of the British Museum, and others in the corridor leading, to it. Only an archaeologist could call them wonderful, and only a Heller-intoxicated student could describe the paintings on Greek vases as beautiful; but these black 011 red figures, or red 011 black —the lamous black glaze—the angular precise figures often so fine in line, tho vases sometimes so gracious in form, are all that we liavo " to discover dimly the nature of pictorial art in the best times of classic. Greece." Strange how determined the archaeologists are to idolise, to canonise Greek painting. 1 Here is Julius Lange protesting that ' " to judge Greek painting irom the vases is like judging the light of the sun by the reflection we receive from the moon." Jf Greek painting approached even near to the sweet excellence of those masters of the dawn of fifteenth century painting, the Van Eycks, and lioger of the Pasture, then indeed the world has lost treasures. Greek vases arc not popular; but it anything would make this busy world enjoy them it would be this charming "moiiograi>h by M. Edmond Pottier, member of the Institute. He loves them; he knows them; 110 has specialised in the venerable craft; he wears bis learning as lightly as the tiring of the hair of Aphrodite, horn© upon lier swan in a Douris vase, and he writes with the simplicity of a fable by iEsop. Every heavy-handed atrabilious and scornful scholar who thinks that a weighty subject must be discussed ponderously and with interminable circumlocutions, should read this childlike story of Douris as a pattern; hut perhaps it is only a Frenchman who can write on a recondite subject as if he were gathering flowers in an old g ar ~ I den. I think M. Anatole France would

smile approval of M. Edmond Pottier s method. , . , He-- has made the making and meaning 'of Grek vases vivid -to me, and introduced- interest- to the four Greek vase rooms at the British Museum, where so many children have been unhappy. How often have I watched them there—patient mother and impatient brood— holiday-making; tired, scuffling feet of the children, thenround eyes gazing wearily at the Greek vases, and mutely saying, "Is this a holiday? In this pleasure? It M. Pottier could have chaperoned them, 11 he could have told them of the kylix_ at the Berlin Museum by Douris on which he painted the interior of. a school, giving "an instantaneous impression"' of. the way the youths of Athens were educated. That, children, is the chief reason why the Greek vases are valuable! Ihey record fragments in the lives of .that long, long gone great people. On a Greek vase you may see the workshop at Douris: a schoolmaster reprimanding a pupil; a youth, strange sight! nursing not a cat but a hare; an Athenian just about to buy a vase; and best of all, in the Louvre Museum, a.Pieta, the same grief-fnl subject that Michael Ancek) carved in stone, and that many Christian artists have achieved. \es, Douris painted a Mater Dolorosa , but as he lived in the fifth century, and was what my friend the .rural dean calls.a Pagan, the mother is Eos, goddess of the morning, Eos with the shining who have dropped to earth to bo sorrowful for her son Memnon, killed by Achilles. Half astonished, half agonised she gazes Lus time on the beloved face. A j Pagan Pieta! "What miracle in. ait, cues M Pottier, "what unexpected chance unites Pagan and Christian, art to express the same' thought, m the same form 9 " I wish it had been' Douns Pieta, and not his frolic ''Silem playmg and dancing" that rewarded my rearch for a signed Douris m the tlnrd room of the British Museum. But je Pieta is illustrated in, M. Pottie book red on black, the radiant wings of the morning—bending Eos, and the dark hair, of the dead man—bmp non: merely a mother and a child crown up and gone. One day 1 '. u lmnt the Louvre for this vase by Douns of fifth-century B.C. Athens, who < JjTsom" the teentl.ioh century remember their tears and prayers.