The Organisation of the School.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 11, 2 September 1907, Page 411

The Organisation of the School.

There are several main departments included in the work of the school, but there is very considerable elasticity in the system, so that students are enabled to take courses for their own particular needs without regard to

whether or not the course is inciuded explicitly among those offered by the School. The Art and Art Craft Department.

This is under the charge of Mr. G. R. Pitkethley, a distinguished student of the Royal College of Art, well versed in the work of the pure and applied art-schools of Britain. He is assisted by a competent and sufficient staff of teachers. The subjects studied range from elementary nature study, model drawing, light and shade, etc., to life painting and modelling, landscape and various branches of applied art, such as design, jewellery, metal- work, enamelling, wood and stone carving, writing and illuminating, etc. Thegeneralaim of the art courses is to develop among the students a love and appreciation of the beauties of nature, some skill in representing nature, and some taste in applying the forms of nature to refine and inspire the handiwork of man. With this end in view, the students are encouraged from the first to go straight to nature, and to study the forms of nature with the greatest care and

diligence. Butterflies, birds, fishes, flowers, shells, beetles — whatever forms breathe the mystery of creation — these are set before the young student and he studies them at first hand with pencil, pen, brush and clay, while at the same time he trains his taste and imagination in arranging simple designs composed from, rather than based on, the forms he has studied, and whatever he designs he carries out in some material and by some method for which the design has been suitably arranged. As his skill and appreciation grow, the student attacks more difficult problems, and passes on to the higher branches of pure and applied art. The object of the courses is not to produce disciples of a particular school of painting or art, but to develop the student in his own natural direction, and guide him to a practical and living understanding of the main principles of art. The Art Department is provided with liferooms, modelling-room, metal- work, jewellery and carving room, elementary art rooms : a large supply of casts and materials, facilities for keeping birds, animals, and plants, etc. All these rooms have been recently renovated

and brought as far as possible up to modern reuuirements