EXHIBITIONS OF ART.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19460, 27 December 1934, Page 10

EXHIBITIONS OF ART.

FAMOUS FRENCH PAINTER

FLOWERS AND FRUIT.

PORTRAYED WITH LOVING CARE

'Fantin-Latour (1830-1904) is best known as a painter of flowers and fruit, the brilliant colours and delicate hues of which lie portrays with loving care, composing his chromatic themes .with sublie deliberation and perfect taste. Some first-rate examples of FantinLatour’s achievements in Ibis direction were seen recently at the exhibition of the artist’s work at tlie Lefevre Galleries, London. Among tlie most noteworthy were the elegant, soft-toned “Roses epanouies”; “’La Nappe blanche,” in which the greens, reds, ’and yellows of the fruit effectively set off, in hold contrast, the sumptuous purple of the flowers; the two companion Piecen, “Fleurs varies et fruits sur une nappe blanche” and “Asters et fruits sur unc table,” and the smaller beautifully painted “Dahlia's et Chrysanthemes,” “Le Bouquet mele," and “Fleurs diverses dans un gobelet en verre." Water-Colour Humour. But the main significance of the exhibition lay in the fact that it showed Fantin-Latour not merely as a master of still-life painting hut an artist of a far wider scope, who could cleat with portraits, Interiors, seascapes, and imaginary figure compositions with equal ease and efficiency. At tlie same gallery. Douglas Percy Bliss exhibited a series of thirty humorous water-colours, in which ho spiritedly and ingeniously satirised artists of all periods, from Botticelli to Renoir.

“LUDICROUS ART.” CONFUSION AT BIG EXHIBITION. IMITATIVE AND INCONGRUOUS. The general impression received from the London Group exhibition at the New Burlington Ga'leries, Burlington Gardens, is one of confusion, writes Michael Sevier in the London Daily Mail. There are, besides the sculpture*, 283 pictures in oil and water-colour, large and small, varied in conception, method, and tendency, which arc so closely massed together that it becomes a hard task to visualise the exhibits individually ■ and try and appreciate their intrinsic qualities. But confusion does not only reign at the show taken as a whole, it appears in inrny cases also to exkt, in (lie minds of the artists who have seen too much of and learned too little from the works of modern French painters such as Matisse, Picasso or Brogue, whose manner and especially whose tricks they plagiarise rather poinllessly and but to little avail. The most ludicrous productions of this kind arc to be found among the various imitative and generally quite incongruous attempts at abstraction. Stylistic Freakishness. 'Fortunately, the show also contains works by painters who need not and do not resort to stylistic freakishness, whose emotivity is as genuine and profound as their mode of expression is sincere and natural.

Among the most successful of such productions are the very consistent, richly coloured “Relaxation" ny Keith Bayes, the finely harmonised, sombre “Still Life” by Victor Pasmore, the fresh and colourful, though somewhat hard landscapes •by Adrian Allinson. “Snow in London” and "Near Martlesham,” two very sensitive landscapes by F. Porter. “Potion, Lavender, and Quinces” by Vanessa Bell, “The Beech Wood” by Ethelberf White, “Melon Caprice” by Caret Weight, and "Ton-Mawr” by Paul Godfrey.

Six paintings by the Jato Ro ,*er Fry are included in the exhibition as a posthumous homage of the '“London Group” to one of its most distinguished original members.

PORTRAITS IK CLAY. FRAU SPAETII-BEGAS. TO HOLD LONDON SHOW. Frau Astrid Spaeth-Begas whose sculpture will be on view at I lie Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London, shortly, Is in artist whose latent lias met with widespread iceognilioii in Germany and in Sweden. The art of modelling is in her blood, for she is Hie grind-niece of the famous German sculptor llomhohl Begas. whose best-known works are the Kaiser Wilhelm 1. mouumeut in

front of the Schloss and the 'Bismarck monument in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Frau Spaelh-Begas has recently executed portraits of Princess Sybilla, wife of the Swedish Crown Prince’s eldest son, and of Prince SigvaM of Sweden, whose marriage to Miss Patzek took place in London last March.

Besides portraiture, Frau SpaethBegas delights in modelling small figure-statuettes, which are conspicuous by the subtle treatment of graceful human bodies in movement. After her London show she is going to Berlin to execute a bust of Fritz Krcislcr.