Rose and Pink, the Mother's Siesta, which I believe has never been mentioned as being in the possession of the National Gallery of Canada. The coloured reproduction of it conveys its charm admirably. The drawing is signed with the butterfly and on the back is a small piece of white paper bearing the title and similarly signed.

As I write the news comes of a still more drastic curtailment of the resources of the National Gallery owing to the exigencies of war, and at present it seems unlikely that there will be many purchases of importance to record during the present year. ERIC BROWN.

up a strong collection of prints and drawings, and during the lean years of war it has been possible to pursue this with less curtailment than other departments. Particularly to be mentioned among the year's acquisitions, which include drawings by Charles Shannon, Augustus John, W. Rothenstein, Ernest Cole, and Joel Levitt (a young Russian recently come to New York), are some drawings by Arnesby Brown, R.A., which I believe are the first finished drawings the artist has produced, and which have not been exhibited elsewhere than in Canada. The drawings, seven in number, are executed in lithographic chalk with or without the addition of water-colour. Arnesby Brown's art has not achieved its distinction by means of any special versatility or unexpectedness of method or subject, but rather by a masterly grasp and logical development of simple themes upon which close observation and incessant study enable him to compose an infinite variety of utterances. As with his pictures so with these drawings; they do not astonish by their mannerism but they convince by their truth. Each has its special appeal and each is carried out with the minimum of means and a perfect understanding of the effect to be produced.

While not a recent purchase, there comes to mind a small water-colour by Whistler called

ORONTO.-The two book-plates here reproduced are the work of Mr. F. Stanley Harrod, who after following a seafaring occupation, and later the profession of engineering, has turned to art and made his mark as a draughtsman of talent. He uses various mediums with facility, such as etching, pen and ink, and wash, but his special forte is lettering, and his services in this connexion have been largely drawn upon by Government departments, the Press, and, latterly, by the Central Technical School of Toronto, where he has had charge of a class of students in this branch of graphic art.

Presented by

REVIEWS.

Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Woodcuts in the British Museum. By LAURENCE BINYON. (London: British Museum.) 20s. net. Collectors of Japanese colour-prints will especially welcome this volume with its critical and wellconsidered Introduction. The description of each plate has been systematically and carefully carried out, and should enable the collector to trace the origin and meaning of many of his treasures. To this end the appended facsimile reproductions of artists' signatures are of distinct value. With the exception of the frontispiece, which has been excellently reproduced in the original colours, the illustrations in half-tone cannot be considered to be satisfactory. This is chiefly due to the fact that they have been printed upon a quality of Japanese paper quite unsuitable to the purpose.

Model Drawing, Geometrical and Perspective, with Architectural Examples. By C. OCTAVIUS WRIGHT and W. ARTHUR RUDD, M.A. (Cambridge University Press.) 6s. net. This thoroughly practical manual deserves the attention of all teachers of drawing, many of whom have no doubt arrived at the same conclusion as the authors, that the use of the ordinary apparatus of model-drawing-the cube, the sphere, etc.-" fails in most cases to arouse the interest of the student or to inspire him with the imagination which is essential to the development of artistic talent." The method pursued in this textbook-which, though it makes use of architectural forms, is not a textbook of architectural draughtsmanship-is to be commended as entirely rational, beginning as it does with the simplest of all linear constructions, the straight line, and successively treating of the various figures composed of straight lines, after which the circle, the sphere, and other curved-line figures are dealt with. The second part is occupied with perspective drawing, and the subject is treated in a way which will command the sympathy of the student instead of that aversion which it usually excites. The diagrams, numbering more than three hundred, are throughout admirably clear.

The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein. Enlarged facsimiles of the original wood-engravings by Hans Lützelberger in the first complete edition: Lyons, 1547. (London: privately printed). The enlargements in this edition of

Holbein's famous series of engravings have been made by photographic means, the average size being about 3 by 4 inches, and comprise all the cuts designed by Holbein with two or three unimportant exceptions. They include also two designs from the Lyons edition of 1562— The Bride and The Bridegroom-which, according to Dr. Lippmann, were probably not drawn by Holbein himself on the wood. The cuts are accompanied by the Scripture texts and old French verses which appeared in the 1562 edition, together with English renderings of the latter, some from Quaritch's reprint of 1868, and others made by Mr. A. K. Sabin, the printer of the present edition, the general get-up of which is admirable. The number of copies is limited to two hundred, and the reprint is edited by Mr. F. H. Evans, of 32 Rosemont Road, Acton, from whom copies are obtainable.

Lettering. By THOMAS WOOD STEVENS. (London: George G. Harrap and Co.) 7s. 6d. net. "To present good standards in styles applicable to many fields of work, together with brief instructions regarding the drawing. of letters," is the aim of this excellent manual. Besides containing a great variety of alphabets and specimen pages, gathered from numerous sources, it provides the student with many useful hints as to the formation of letters, laying out, and so forth. The book itself is an example of good typography.

The Art of the Illustrator. By PERCY V. BRADSHAW. (London: Press Art School, Forest Hill.) The object of this publication, which consists of a series of portfolios each containing half a dozen reproductions of a drawing by a well-known artist in various stages of progress, is to set before the student of drawing-and especially the student whose ambition it is to draw for the Press-examples of the methods pursued by some of the leading illustrators and cartoonists of the day. Mr. F. H. Townsend, Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. Frank Reynolds, Mr. Harry Rountree, Mr. Lawson Wood, Mr. Claude Shepperson, Mr. Heath Robinson, and other workers of prominence in the field of the in the field of the graphic arts have executed special drawings for the series, and as the construction of the drawing is presented in its successive stages the student is enabled to follow the methods of these practitioners without difficulty. The idea has much to commend it as an aid to the practical study of composition.

Well, something that will make war look like what it really is," replied the Man with the Red Tie. "Something that one could believe in as a representation of fact."

"War as it really is! Good Lord!" cried the Young Painter. "Do you want to see that in a picture? Pray Heaven that no one will ever attempt it."

"I always thought that you believed in realism," sighed the Man with the Red Tie; " and now I find you objecting to a plain statement of fact. You have changed, my friend."

"Not a bit," declared the Young Painter. "I still believe in stating facts as plainly as possible and with as much truth as possible; but there are some things that an artist ought not to be expected to state, and among them I certainly include the facts of war."

"I cannot see why the facts of war should not be as permissible to the artist as any other facts," objected the Man with the Red Tie.

"Can you not?" returned the Young Painter. "I can, because I have been there and seen them. I should be ashamed to paint war as it is."

"You mean by that, I imagine, that to paint realistically the filth, the squalor, and the ugliness of war would be a degradation of art," broke in the Art Critic.

"Yes, and the grim, naked horror of it as well," agreed the Young Painter. "The sights that are put before you in war are not fit for pictorial treatment, and the man who tried to represent them would degrade himself and the people to whom he showed his work."

painter's attention, and there are subjects suggested which afford material for the finest type of picture. But in painting these there is no need to obtrude realities which are better forgotten."

"Better forgotten, indeed," exclaimed the Young Painter. "I do not want to remind myself of them by trying to reproduce them on canvas, and I do not want to have them forced upon me by any one else. But I agree with you that there are war motives which offer material for great pictures, and that in the sentiment of war there are many inspiring suggestions for the painter."

But you would not, I presume, accept the modern battle picture as an inspired production," laughed the Man with the Red Tie.

"Most certainly I would not," answered the Young Painter. "The modern battle picture is as far from reality as the sentimental subjects are from the true sentiment of war. The one evades the facts which the artist knows he dare not represent; the others miss entirely the tragic dignity which would be the only justification for their existence."

4

"And neither, I take it, point the direction in which we can look for the great war pictures of the future," commented the Critic. "If a painting of a battle cannot be realistic, and that admittedly is impossible, the attempt to paint battle scenes should be given up because what results from it is false and misleading. If the noble sentiment of war is perverted into washy sentimentality the artist fails in his mission and makes his achievement worse than valueless. How then is war to be painted?"

The facts, I think, will have to be limited to minor incidents, to the smaller episodes in the military life, I mean," suggested the Young Painter; "and the fancies will have to be put in a symbolical form which will give some scope for imagination. The suffering, the self-sacrifice, the horror, and the tragedy of war cannot be made intelligible by trivial paintings of domestic scenes or semi-religious pictures of the popular type. We want something greater than that.'

It seems to me that we shall want the artists as well as the art," said the Man with the Red Tie.

Well, let us hope that out of the strife of war will come the masters who can paint it as it should be painted," replied the Critic. "The world is ready for them and their welcome is assured." THE LAY Figure.