The record-union., 1898-12-04

ing their public statues with their backs
TO the audience The Beecher mOnu-
ment in the City Hall Park, for ex-
ample, is so placed, and special de-
parture from the street surrounding it
must be made in order properly to see
1t. And now Mr.. Macmonnies' group to
surmount the fine triumphal arch at the
noble entrance of Prospect Park is
being placed facing the park and back
TO the city. It would be as reasonable
to turn the statue of Peter Cooper to
face its inadequate shelter in the little
triangle below the Cooper Union.
New York Post: Recently at Christe's
the Chant dArmour'' of the late Sir
Edward Burne-Jones changed hands
for g 200 guineas, and his Mirror OF
Venus" at the same sale was sold for
$3.50 guineas. The only picture he ever
exhibited at the Royal Academy vas
the Depths of the Sea-" 1T was per-
haps his sense of humor," says M. H.
Spielman in the current number of the
Magazine of Art that caused him to
withdraw from the academy, because,
as he privately expressed it to me, he
was visitor who had been hidden to
Burlington House. and then was kept
waiting an unconscionable time upon
the mat" The same writer also says:
HE was conscious of demerits, though,
comparatively late in his career as
student, he had painfully bettered that
lack of technical excellence which had
at first been so conspicuous. i paint
my pictures he said, with his unfailing
humor, and I send them out into the
world on their little lives, like so many
naked little ST. Sebastians, to be pricEed
and pierced with the arrows of the
critic. Ah the critics, my friend! They
should be thoroughly conversant with
the teachings and practice of paint
ing; but in any case, they, like exhlbi-
tions, must be fatal to the artist, and
prevent the good from coming out! Un-
til he is forty no artist can tell what Is
in him, so that criticism can but harm
him, and after he is forty criticism
cannot touch hinl-so you see how dis
turbing an element the critic is! l
would never criticise a bad picture; L
would pass it over in silence, unless the
execution was bad; in that case would
attack the painter Speaking of his
own method of work, Sir Edward said:
81 love to treat my pictures as a gold
smith does his jewels. ] should like
every inch of surface to be SO fine that
if all were burnt or lost, all but a scrap
from one Of them, the man who found
it might say, Whatever this may have
represented it is a work of art, BEAU
tiful in surface and quality and color.
And my greatest reward would be the
knowledge that after ten years posses
sion the owner of any picture of mine,
who had looked at it every day, had
found in it some new beauty"
The "Cantab,'' the Cambridge Uni
versity weekly, recently asked Rud-
yard Kipling to contribute to its coll
umns. In response came the following
reply:
There once was a writer who wrote:
Dear Sir, in reply to your note
OF yesterdays date,
l am sorry to state
It's no good at the prices you quote.
New York Times: What is a Velas-
quez worth-$5 or $1,000? For the last
half century there has been discus
sion over picture purporting to have
been the work of Velasquez and said to
be the portrait of Charles I. When
Charles went to Spain in 1923 wanting
to marry the Infanta, the story goes
that he sat for Velasquez. The mar
riage being off, Charles came home
with his picture and it is believed gave
his likeness to the Duke of Bucking-
ham. The picture hung for over
century in Fife House. In a catalogue
printed in 1893 this was the entry:
.Charles T.. when Prince of Wales.
Do; OF "a 6rid
when his marriage with the Infanta
was proposed Velasquez. This pic
ture belonged to the Duke of Bucking-
ham" Some time within the first ten
years of this century the Earl of Fife's
pictures were stored in London. Did
the storekeeper dispose of this picture?
Anyhow it passed through several
hands, and then became the property of
a schoolmaSter. When the school and
its contents were sold in 1915 Edward
Share bought the picture for to. Then
the executors of the Earl of Fife seized
the so-called Charles l., and declared
that the picture had been stolen or sur
reptiously distracted during or subse-
cuent to the month of February, 1909.
The court threw out the case of the
plaintiffs, and Mr.. Share got his pic
tIres. Then Mr.. Share turned on the
executors with claim of trespass and
obtained a verdict of FL 900. Mr.. Share
since then has written several pamph-
lets about the picture in proof of its
authenticity. Nevertheless the experts
do not seem to agree about the portrait
as having been painted by Velasquez.
w. E. Courtney in the London Daily
Telegraph: What evidently impressed
Europe was the grandiose character Of
Byron's genius, the largeness of his
conceptions, the tremendous energy Of,
his temperament. He belonged to the
same category of mankind as Prone
thus, a great rebel against God. He
had the same wild, ill-regulated energy
as Christopher Marlowe; or, perhaps,
he was an actual nineteenth century
Hamlet, at odds with fortune, and curs-.
ing the day of his birth. In England,
meanwhile, the judgment on him was
increasingly hard throughout the last
half of this century. It was as an artist
that Byron's fame first suffered, be-
cause his countrymen could appreciate