Two Books on Art Mn. CHARLES CRESTON'S finely written and
beautifully produced memorial volume to his wife is so modest and so restrained an achievement that the fullest admiration is compelled. I only hope that some day it will be possible to produce a cheaper edition without, alas ! the magnificence of the reproductions, but still one that would be accessible to a larger public than the present volume is ever likely to reach. The book is a fitting pendant to the recent memorial exhibition of Evelyn Cheston's paintings and drawings at the Gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colour. Throughout the pages of this brilliant little biography of an artist who never received due recognition during her lifetime, the reader will fail to find one false note, one passage that insists too much on the inessential. It is the portrait of a remarkable and rarely fine character. From the days when she shared the painting prize of the Slade School with Mr. Augustus John until her final, almost complete, blindness, she scarcely, knew a -day free from illness and yet she let nothing mar her enthusiasm for her work or shadow the clear calmness of her nature. Her fellow members of the New English Art Club—Tonks, Russell, Wilson Steer and others—recognized the quality of her work and yet she sold a picture only at rare intervals and remained unknown except to a small circle of the informed. Her husband could scarcely have desired a nobler monument than this super- latively fine book.
Fine Art—the spring number of the Studio—should prove to be an invaluable asset to the student and collector if it becomes, as is indicated, a yearly publication. It is, certainly in this country, the first serious attempt to produce an international record and reference file of contemporary and past painting, drawing and sculpture, as well as of sales and special exhibitions. Besides special articles the editor, Mr. Geoffrey Holme, has provided for a long-felt want by the introduction of outline catalogues of the works of contem- porary artists which are at present uncatalogued systematic- ally. In the present issue there are articles on Persian Painting, British Sporting Artists, the Van Gogh Exhibition at Amsterdam, Modern British Painting and the Modern French School, as well as an excellent summary of the events of the year in the world of art.
DAVID FINCHAM.
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