portraiture were to be found in the exhibits of other Frenchmen like Roty, the sympathetic portrait of whose wife is here reproduced, and of Henri Nocq, and of the Belgian Devreese, who reIceived the award of the exhibition and whose forceful portrait of Alphonse de Witte accompanies this article, and of the Austrians Marschall and Kautsch, whose vigorous medal of the painter Lenbach is also reproduced, and of the English engraver Spicer-Simson, and of our own Victor Brenner, not to mention a dozen others. Many visitors who had not followed recent developments in the medallic field in Europe must have been surprised at the range of subjects which engravers are now endeavoring to portray upon these small disks and plaques of metal. In the present exhibition the subjects ranged from bucolic landscapes (Vernon), glimpses of rocks and MEDAL FOR ATHLETIC SPORTS, BY FREDERIC VERNON tion, and of which three striking examples, those of Madame Claude, the Duc D'Aumale, and Charles Garnier, are here reproduced, present portraits instinct with life, character, and individuality. Numerous other examples of subtle modeling and good FUNERAL OF PRESIDENT CARNOT, BY L. O. ROTY (Roty is the most famous of all modern medalists, and this is one of his best liked works. It is struck at the French Mint in Paris, and may be bought there by visitors at little more than the cost of the metal. Roty is now an old man and his working days are substantially over) sea (Lenoir), and studies of clouds (Such- The variety of technique displayed among arda) to purely decorative and unrepresenta- the different exhibitors was equally worthy tional designs. They included also many of note. Some of the medals were worked genre pictures, and at least one remark- out in relief so low and with outlines so able group of studies of domestic and obliterated that they resembled shaded drawwild animals in varying attitudes of ac- ings or paintings rather than modeled work, tivity and repose (Victor Peter). Many as in the Millet-like medals of peasants at of the best French medals of this class work by Ovide Yencesse; while others, as in are executed at the French Mint, although the dramatic bronze plaques of Roche and designed by various engravers, and they are Castiglione, were in such bold relief that they sold there to the general public at the nom- were hardly to be told from sculptures. inal cost of their manufacture. Notable among these is Roty's beautiful elegiac medallion in memory of President Carnot which, with its group of draped mourners approaching the Pantheon in solemn and rhythmic tread, suggests mystery and grief and destiny with something of the same appeal as the famous Adams monument by SaintGaudens in Washington. "HARVEST TIME," BY GEORG ROEMER FOLEDBACE PORTRAIT OF F. VON LENBACH, BY HENRI KAUTSCH Among the practitioners of this minuscule art were representatives of most of the varied and contrasting types familiar in modern painting and sculpture. Here was a devotee of facts and scrupulous portrayer of details, there an impressionist who dislikes and elim inates them; here was the illustrator primarily anxious to depict his story, there the designer contemptuous of representation and interested only in line, color, and rhythm; here was a poet, there a symbolist, yonder a realist; in this alcove an imitator of the primitive, on the next wall an emulator of the classical antique, in another partition a follower of the renascent Italian. It is difficult, in fact, to think of any phase of modern art which was not represented among the upwards of 150 medalists who contributed to the New York exhibition. It is fortunate that at last America is awakening to the possibilities of medallic art, and it is particularly fortunate that at this moment an intelligent, catholic and generous organization such as the American Numismatic Society is at hand to assist in the development of appreciation and to en courage technical skill in this important field. It is perhaps not too much to hope that out of this awakening interest will grow a demand that the medals struck to commemorate events and achievements in our history shall be better conceived and better executed than they have been in the past, and that our coins, of which so many millions of copies are made which are handled and regarded by so many millions of people, and of which so many examples will survive centuries after we are gone, shall more worthily express our artistic development and better typify our national ideals. A LEADER IN THE NEW A. Radclyffe Dugmore, and the Revolution of the Last Twenty Years in BY HENRY WYSHAM LANIER ONE day, about twelve years ago, a New York publisher was working in his office when the boy brought in word that there was a gentleman outside who wished to show him some pictures. Having no understudy, the busy publisher resigned himself with a groan to a few minutes of boredom, which he resolved to make very brief indeed. The fresh-faced young Englishman who walked in opened a portfolio and laid before him, not the hopeless drawings he feared, but a batch of photographs which made him sit up with an exclamation. For here were glimpses of nature in her most intimate moods, her most delightful privacies, -stiff skunk cabbages and fuzzy-stemmed hepaticas unfolding in the spring warmth; wonder-eyed brown mother-thrushes on the rest, protecting the precious eggs in the face of the intruding camera; spotted-breasted little fledgling blue-birds in their inimitable poses; earnest warblers and sparrows actually thrusting grasshoppers into the clamorous beaks of their greedy youngsters,-all taken with an artist's sense of composition and lighting, a born nature lover's patient faculty of discovery, and a technical skill in the difficult photographic problems involved which set an entirely new standard for such work. By a lucky chance this publishing house was just beginning the issue of an elaborate American natural history; so the man and the opportunity came together at once. The first results were a series of over a hundred photographs of wild flowers, many of them. skillfully colored by hand, which at one stroke made the signature of "A. Radclyffe Dugmore" mean a new kind of realism in nature pictures to many thousands of readers; and there followed in succeeding years similar unparalleled presentments of the common wild animals, of live fish photographed in the water (it took many months at Key West and elsewhere with a specially designed aquarium and infinite ingenuity to accomplish these), and of trees, with marvelously detailed identifying views of leaf, flower, bud, and fruit. In addition, Mr. Dugmore wrote and illustrated one volume of the set, "Bird Homes," and published, in 1902, a manual of the new art which he had done so much to create, "Nature and the Camera," which is still a little classic of this now widely popular art. Naturally enough, when this same firm started an outdoor magazine in 1901, Mr. Dugmore became connected with it as chief photographer, and for over seven years he produced a volume and quality of work. |