WORKS OF ART.

Evening Star, Issue 3678, 5 December 1874, Page 2

WORKS OF ART.

ft has long been a maxim with political ee nomista that ‘ supply” is certain to equal the demand for a product. We look upon this as likely to_be ultimately true, al'.hough, in many cases, the realisation is necessarily deferred. As an instance, the desire to possess beautiful works of art is coeval with the existence of man. The savage and the civilised man may differ as to the value of them : one may prefer a bauble, while the other is most pleased with productions of genius, but the longing to possess “a thing of beauty ” is in the breast of both. Improvements in printing in colors have been brought to aid in satisfying this desire, and now pictures, in oil and water colors, are produced at prices that place them within reach of every householder. Mr West, at his music warehouse, has now on sale a collection of chromographs and oleographs that includes copies of many exquisite landscape paintings and high art pictures. They are too numerous to be mentioned in detail, and will well repay careful examination by artists and lovers of art. Taking into consideration the process by which these beautiful works are produced, the delicacy and precision of outline and gradation of color are wonderful. Some of the landscape effects are remarkably fine. “On the Ribble,” scenes on “Scotch Lochs” Herberts “Sea Pieces,” “ The Offer,” “The Broken Yase,” “Amy Robsarb,” and others are hardly d stinguishable from oil paintings in truth and delicacy of coloring. The knowledge of to-day has led to a daring dealing with color that will no doubt prove very shocking to those who hold that modern painters cannot equal the early masters. We fear we are guilty of the sin of irreverence when we see in the painters of the past a timid dealing with what ear more instructed artists play. The early painters did not dare to paint up to nature, so that, though always respectable in a quiet way, they do not startle. Conservatives in art would not have us pass this boundary, but it does not satisfy the imagination of men who, with modern lights and modern means of effect, have made art their study. Accordingly iu Mr West’s collection are some pictures in which the effects are as extraordinary as they are beautiful. To four of these we may parti ularly refer, hand colored, not color-printed, by Schriems, The whole collection is elegantly framed and glazed.