George Wishart : Art Notes

AN ART STUDENT IN PARIS. SOME FURTHER IMPR SSIONS. By " WATTLE." Well, it is May 1, and anything more unlike summer cannot he imagined. 'rho raiu is vowing down in sheets, and the air is eold, cold --such a change from a week ago, when the sun shone, and one fele too hot walking even a short distance, without uu unibrella, On Easter Monday we went down to Sureenes by boat, taking about an hour and aehall ta reach our destina- tion. We wandered about in the lovely woods listening to the birds sing- ing, and ate our lunch eating A on el.e grass, and wished that there were no such things aa cities, end that life could be sylvan always. But even ' Surtsnes craned to be sylvan after 12 o clock, for motors in dozeus and of every shape and forni began arrive. and, of course. people, too, who overran the whole place. It seemed there was a nieecuurse in close proximity, where th Creed Prix had been ruu the day before, and usraces were still going on the (load was not to be wondered at. We nutneged o get quiet spot, however, on the aide of the neer, where we sat and sketched and !sealed in the sunshine. There is ouch a beeathleea air ofex- peetution about everything and everybody to -day, and one wonder.; what will 'ewe hatipeiwel before night closes in. For some time trouble has been brewing in Sconce, mid strikes have be n the order of the day. Only a few weeks ago the postmen *truck, and our letters while the strike 'lasted were brought r nd by eat. diens, while all she post others were guarded by gendarmes. It happily lasted only a abort time. But now the trouble seems to have talam a more s rious form. for no fewer than 50,000 troope are in 1 is, ready to quell any ;Beta eban. ee that may arise. This morning Parr really seemed well Wed, a city of thedeed, miaticely a soul in the streets th mei- %tees w re mostly empty. and the ramps (which, as in rule, breve many of their wares on the pavement) shut with the exception of one door. About midday the troops began to march through the streets In teetaelitnents. sonic on foot and some on horseback. A certain nullifier taking up their station permanently at particlu let centre', standing at their horeee' beads. rwdy at any moment to go where duty calls. During the afternoon the reoule'm fears seemed to have bated, and tee streete'evere quite crowded vain. We mounted a 'bus, and went off to the Place tip la Concorde, hoping for some excite - meet, but saw nothing more unuanul then two detdellinents of mounted infantry Cu:- tioned at opposite ends of the Place. People wer going about SA usual ; but strange to say one saw no motor., and scarcely n single carriage. I did see a small private motor near the Boulevard. Mont- Menage', te ring along at a great pace, but it boasted a lied CrOPII flag, nd woo evidently that of a doctor going off on his rounds. But what people tear moot are the bombs, with which the Anarchists amid work such havoc, knowing that t the ,nresent time it would beasy to shift the blame on to the strikers. Altogether we s em to be in the midst of uncertainty, which, no doubt, will last until u ter the elections n May 0. Every year on the first of 'May there are signs of trouble and of outbreaks. An authority told us that never since th conunune has there been at, mueh Muse for anxiety as now. Let it; hope the cloud will soon burst, and that before many da s re over Paris will be again her own bright cheerful s lf. It seems too incongruous for her to be anything but gay, especially in this glorious springtime. -..... Till. - . Now I must tell you about fine "Societ Nationale des BMX Arts" which opens the other day. It is a splendid exhibitio of pictures, though the statuary is not ti strong as is usual in Parit. Still then were some very line specimens. Eapeciall a man's head inbronze, by "Rodin, powerful and strong as his work always it We welt very interested in a small at tu of white marble, the work f a very devil German student. The subject is "Th Thirst fo Gold," and depicts a girl :e Niue kneeling on the ground delving with boll hands in thearth, her xpression beim anything but pleasing to look upon. The' there were three things by a Georgia' sculptor. Two ere very small, but per feet little geala in theinselves-one a gir with a pitcher, in plaetevergles dainties little figure, full ofmovement and grace 'The other- a very different subject it bronze, called "Sans Travail" --a mat with a slouched hat over his face, sittini ou a bench, breathing dejection and hope. leesnevie and telling its Own story even to the uninitiated. The statuary was al downstairs. We bad tomount ter th. pictures, which adorn moiled.; rooms, alio are also hung along the corridors. Savery bad three splendid portraits. or, rather four, fur one picture contained the per. trait* of two girls. Both wore hats and the colour scheme was blue in saying shades, a pale -blue parasol across their knees making the thief contrast. The hue* were so cleverly treated and full oh character. Ilia tether Iwo p rtraits, one of a man, the other of a girl, were dune in the atone broad w y, nd made on wish very keenly that one could worhi likewieb. There w re two cases Of minim lures, some very good indeed. They ere icing treated so much more broadly now, and are being taken tip seriously as a pro- fesaion us in the oldays of tamper and Cosway. Though inFrance one rarely hears of a man being a miniature painter, I believe in London there are s veral, va- les...hilly Mr. Alwyn Williams, of whose work Ss a miniaturist most peoplh have heard. tiers .1eladurne Bibillemontetutedon and Madame Suforge are in the foretront as miniature painters, and also as teatbers of the art, The former alas a studio at liver own house, where she holds classes two morniug* a week. and alweys has numberless pupils, Iler work Is dainty and treali, and her technique quite wonderful. Madame Leforge works in a much broader way, and perhap* more artistically. bile ben had many honours conferred upon her. and has a medal fur her miniature. which is in the scion this year. The subject no of a mother and child turning over the leaves of a picture-bouk, the patient calm- ness of the woman's fate making such a conttnet to the dimpling roundness of the ;bed's. I should not wonder if the State bought it for the 'Luxembourg ; it is cer- tainly worthy of a place anywhere. Madame Laforge teaches at the Academie Julian, and always has her studio full of pupils. In the Sidon des Beaux ArtS there is it huge portrait of the German Emperor, WIliell Wag MUM, interesting, and very well painted, though I forget thus name of the artist. The way the man Is pissed in the picture was What took our fancy. The whole thing was so typical of his Imperial Majesty. Ile 113 standing on the edge of a very high cliff, apparently higher then the mountains, and seemingly above the clouds-ecrtainly amongst them --and looking. as only lie know.. how t look, " Monarch f all be surveys" I think a wag of u Frentlinian must Love Leen r eponeible for the idea. and it ear. wilily appears a splendid portrait. Then there is II mostpathetic picture In ono ofthe rooms ;holing with the neverto-', lie.forgotten woe of Alsace and Lorraine. Two beautiful female figures are lying on the ground, j st :beside a signpost, on the reverse side ofwhich "France" la written, holding out bands of entrenty towards the laud they love so well. The artist has without doubt hit on a subject to touch even the unsympathetic heart of a foreigner, and how much more the im- pressionable French ! Though some of them seem to think the grief a little old - ft -Aliened, for 1 road an article the other day written In- a Frenchman, inwhich he speake of great mourning shade of Alsace-Lorraine, trailing her already old-fashioned weeds over the dead ieaves of the past." AUSTRALIAN SCENERY. -o- Moat visitors to -Australis find them, selves in an unfamiliar environment, and there le therefore nothing strange inMabel, Donaldson's confession that. to his Englieh oyes our county is nor beautiful. "I see nothing," he said, " picturesque like the Thames Valley, nothing grand like the Alps, nothing soft and reposeful like the Italian' lakes ; and yet It has a character which Is all its own." A little better acquaintance with the Infinite variety of Australian scenery will considerably modify that description, though it is only right to add that English eyes rarely perceive the witchery of Aug- tralirin eurroundin;,s to the same ex. tent as natives, whose affections aro deep-rooled In the land of their birth. For that matter, Australians who visit I England for the first time would pro- bably fail toappreciate the pictur- esqueness of the Thames Valley, with its trim gardens and meadows, and would long for their own vast land- scapes bathed in u splendour of light unknown beneath northeeutskies, and etherealised in the remote distance by colour tones which would have de- lighted tie painter Turner. There is, however, an essential distinction to be made between the scenery of any new land awl that of a country which to rich lu historical raditions, the difference being in the mind of the observer rather than in any abspaea sense of beauty on grandeur. This is Illustrated by Jelin Ruskin in his " Seven Lamps of Architecture." After describing a scene In the Jura, with that musical eloquence of Which he IS so.. great a master, he goes n to inquire as to the r ason of the in': pression made on the mind of the observer. "It would," ho said, " be difficult to conceive a scene less del pendent upon any other interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but the writer well remota. hers the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured to imagine It for a moment a aceuo in some aboriginal forest of the new continent. The flowers in ant instant lost their light, the river its music ; the hills became oppressively desolate ; it heaviness In, the boughs of thedarkened forest showed how much oftheir former power had been dependent upon a life which was not theirs : how much of the glory of the imperishable, or con mealy renewed, creation Is reflected from things more p cious In their monioriee than It In its renewing. Those evempringIng flowers and those ever -flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of human endur- ance, valour and virtue ; the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening slit, received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the Iron wall of Jowl: and the four-square keep of Granson." Australian scenes for the most part lack this human interest of historic aseoclation. Her fo.o ta, weird In their dreamlike beauty, recall no thrilling memories of past races who dwelt In their shadow. The broad plains of the interior are silent and desolate as the expanse of mid- fabliau; no heroic struggle has Coupe - !crated them for the nation as the plain of Marathon has been conga crated to Greece. To the tar north and south the mountains f the Divi:i- ite; Range rise sheer and abrupt, their seaward slopes Me ced by rocky gorgea and wild ravines, wh re palm, fern, shrub, and tree of loveliest form and tint yield perpetual shade ; clear mountain streams wend theits'avay by "fairy fall and cliff and Mimic strand" to t he Pacific ; but these en- chanting scenes lack the human in- terests which would therwise endear them to the memory or enshrine them in the poetic imagination. The ex-' terns! beauty is there, but ths mind ofmost ob ervers Isstored with. Old World Memories, so that for the time being it is difficult to realise that a, Vowing national life, a new form of art and literature breathing of the genlua of the eon, ;may yet make the Ilawkesbury and 'Brisbane Rivera as famous as the Thames and Tweed. Take away the poetry ofScott and Burns front the Scottish highlands and borders, dissociate old romance, ballad, and legend from the glens and streams, and a land is left more naked than aboriginal Australia. When the, great novelist took Washington Irving to view "the delectable mountains f the Scottish border" the Anferican could only observe a mere succession, of bare, gray, waving hills, and yet he confessed that the magic web of 1.0etrY and romance, thrown over the whole gave the view a greater charm than the richest sc nery he beheld in Eng land, "It may be pertinacity," seta Scott, " butt to my eye th se gray hills and all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves.' I like the very nakedness of the land. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery of Edinburgh I begin to wish myself buck again mong my honest gray hills, and if 1 did not see the 'neither at least once a year I think I should die." A fooling of the same kind is experienced by Australians who have been reared in the hush, and who find it, difficult to adapt their ideas and habits to the environment of the notate' towns. Even oolonista fE glish birth find much of the enchantment of the old land gone when they revisit the scenes of their youth. They b long to a now earth over - rched by a now heaven, Why should it beeetherwiso I" There is the personal romance of with trees tat of elms and oaks, and the affections may gather round Australian flower* as around the cowslips and primroses of English fields and river bank. The softie of beauty belongs t the heart rather than to the outward eye, and the "vision splendid" is the peculiar pro- perty, of no land or clime: With the exception of two lines, Word-sworth'd noble sonnet, "Earth bath not anything to show more fair," might have been wrliten as appropriately on Victoria Bridge across the Brisbane River ea on Westminster Bridge on the Thames, Give the valley of the Brisbane the story of a thousand years, and compel!. son with similar scones in European lands would be irrelenunt. ...;