PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 2, 11 January 1908, Page 26

PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

• From Our Special Correspondent.) \ LONDON, November 29. Mr. Harry Linley Richardson has been selected for the position of assistant art instructor at the Wellington Technical School, and he will sail for New Zealand by the “Corinthic” on December 13th. Mr. Richardson is 28 years of age, and unmarired. He has had considerable experience and success as an illustrator, exhibitor, and teacher, and in 1905 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. He was trained at the Goldsmith College School of Art, the. Westminster Technical Institute, and the Academic Julian in Paris, where he studied figure painting under Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. From 1903 to 1906 Mr. .Richardson conducted private studio classes in figure subjects. He has also painted portraits (commissioned) and figure subjects for exhibitions and has done a good deal of black and white work for magazines, posters for commercial firms, and bookillustrating for leading publishers, including Cassell and Co., Warne’s. Dent and Co. and Ibister’s. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Cambrian Academy, the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool,- the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham, and at Bradford, Bath, Hull and other towns. As regards teaching, Mr. Richardson says: “My method is to teach the student to look for the big things in drawing and painting, and my commercial experience qualifies me to help him to draw and paint successfully for publishers, printers and other commercial firms in addition.” Mr. J. W. Swift, of Christchurch, has been doing a good deal of travelling and sight-seeing during the past few months, both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent. Accompanied by Miss A. Swift, his daughter, he visited the Dublin Exhibition, which in his opinion was not up to the standard of the New Zealand Exhibition, except in the matters of working exhibits and the lighting of the grounds. After a visit to Kiilarney they crossed over to Paris and spent a month there. Leaving his daughter in Paris with the Misses Colbeck, of Auckland. Mr. Swift made an extensive tour, visiting Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin. Frankfort, Heidelberg and the Swiss an the Italian Lakes. Germany interested him immensely. He describes it as the finest agricultural country he has seen. He travelled about 2,000 miles by train in Germany, and everywhere he went he found first-class agricultural land. It was harvest time and the whole country was under harvest. To his astonishment Mr. Swift noticed that all the corn was cut by hand; he saw no machinery. The land was closely subdivided, and corn, oats, barley, etc., were sown in separate little patches of from one to four acres. As each patch ripened the farmer and his wife and family gathered in the harvest by hand. The cities of Germany Mr. Swift describes as magnificent, and much ahead of London in architecture and the instinct for good art. In travelling through Switzerland to Italy he had some strenuous railway journeys, passing through no fewer than 100 tunnels in 24 hours. One of these tunnels was seven miles long and another twelve. Mr. Swift returned recently to London, but next week he leaves again for Paris,

where he will leave his daughter to study the French language for a few months. Mr. Swift himself intends taking a tour, through Italy and the South of France in company with Mr. T. H. Harker, of Christchurch, visiting Venice, Rome, amt other famous cities, and returning ta Paris via Mentone and Monte Carlo <£<s><&■ The Hon. W. Hall-Jones returned to town last Friday with Mrs. and Miss Hall Jones and Mr. Schmidt, and the party took up their old quarters at the West Central Hotel. They have decided to return to New Zealand by the Shaw Savill steamer “Corinthic,” which leaves London on December 13th. By the same boat will travel Mr. Bensted, the principal of the new Government Home for Defective Boys; and Mr. Linley Richardson, the new assistant art instructor for the WeHington Technical School. The passenger list of the Corinthic is a largei one, totalling some five hundred names. Fully half of the passengers are British emigrants, who have availed thenrselvea of the New Zealand Government's! scheme of assisted passages. s>-s><?> Recent callers at the High Commissioner’s office:—Mr. John Allen, Mr. Robert Warner (Wellington), Miss Helen K. Scholefield (Wellington), Miss Annie Clucas, Mr. James Clueas (Ashburton), Miss Jane Lambie (Ashburton), Mr. and Mrs. J. Stuart-White and' Master StuartWhite (Dunedin), Mr. E. A. C. Bennet® (Christchurch), Mr. and Mrs. E. R. Chudleigh (Chatham Islands). <S> <S> $> Mr. P. A. Vaile’s forthcoming scheme for the encouragement of rifle-shooting) in England, a scheme in which the subtarget invention is to play a prominent part, received “bold advertisement” this week in “Black and White” and the “Sketch.” Both of these weeklies publish photographs showing the sub-target in use, with an explanatory note referring to the New Zealand author’s scheme. In one of the. photographs Miss Paget, daughter of the late General Paget; ia seen practising rifle-shooting with the sub-target. The main feature of this remarkable invention is that it renders rifle-ranges and bullets unnecessary in practising rifle-shooting. The marksman aims and pulls the trigger, and the subtarget registers on its surface the spot where a bullet would have hit an actual target at the far end of a rifle-range. Decidedly there should be a future foS the sub-target.