Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/270

332 nected with the Propylffia, and of the god Pan. As yet the site of the Anakaion or temple of Dioscuri has not been excavated. If only it were more generally known how much still remained to be excavated, English people would be more ready to provide the money necessary for the work. Miss Harrison's illustrations by oxy-hydrogen light showed some interesting archaic examples of the Dioscuri twin figures with high-peaked caps. In later times the Dioscuri at Athens were always quoted as foreign gods at peace with the men among whom they dwelt, and specially lo be appealed to on the occasion of signing treaties with foreign lands. In considering the Propylfea, Miss Harrison regretted that she could not speak at length of the splendid building which the Athenians considered their most glorious work. A beautiful frag- ment from a vase painting w'as shown representing Artemis of Branzonia, whose sanctuary will probably be excavated next spring. Also a curious little stone bear, now in the Central Museum at Athens, a votive offering to the goddess by one of the children dedicated to her service under the name of 'bears.' Another illustration showed the plan of the Propylrea, in front of which was the shrine probably dedicated to Hermes as god of the gate. The shrine of the Graces was close by. The lecturer ex- plained that the Greek Charites or Graces were very different from the Grjeco-Latin goddesses with whom we associate the name.

She showed a beautiful slab, now in the Chiaramonte Museum at Rome, representing three lovely draped Graces, and quoted the complaint of Pausanias that in his day men had begun to represent them as nude, when all the old representations, among which he mentions the groups made by Socrates, son of .Sophroniscos, on the Acropolis were draped. The Graces were the givers of increase, much more akin to the Christian idea of grace than to the Roman. They danced to waken the slumbering earth, to bring forth its produce for men, and in this capacity were connected with the worship of Hecate, goddess of the lower world, from whence springs this increase. An illustration of the newly-discovered caves of Pan and Apollo was next shown, mid-way up the north cliff of the Acropolis. The rest of the lecture was taken up by a vivid and delightful description of Pan, ' most Greek and most human of gods.' Miss Harrison quoted from ancient and modern authors to show how strongly and yet differently Pan had seized on the imagination of all ; the simple, happy, goat-legged god ; as their player on the double reed, one of pleasure and one of pain. The place he held in the fancy of the world was expressed in the weird legend of the middle ages, that on the night when ' Christ was born came a wild voice that told the world that Pan was dead.' An interesling selection of objects from the recent Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society was opened at the Liverpool Art Club during the sittings of the Congress in the first week of December. Etchixg— Landsc.ape-

We are indebted to Messrs. T. & A. Constable for permission to reproduce the Etching of ' Moon- light,'' by James Maris, from their Catalogue of the French and Dutch Loan Collection at Edinburgh Exhibition, 1886, which was recently reviewed in otir columns. The ' Field Worker's Head,' by George Clausen, has been reproduced, by permission, from the picture in the possession of James Dunnachie, Esq.

{{di}J}}AMES MARIS is the eldest of the three brothers, James, Matthew, and William, who, differing in important particulars, form a unique family group in the history of art. Their father was a printer at the Hague, and there, fifty-one years ago, James Maris was born. He studied first at the Hague, then at the Academy in Antwerp, and subsequently in Paris, where he was a student at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts. He began to exhibit at the Salon in his thirtieth year. He continued to exhibit at the Salon for some years, and has recently sent some of his best pictures to the Goupil Gallery. In the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1886 he was strongly represented — twenty-one of his pictures forming one of the most striking features of the collection of French and Dutch pictures, for which the Edinburgh Exhibition will remain memorable. Seventeen of these pictures were lent from Scotch private collections. The landscape ' Moonlight ' — of which an etching is produced with this issue of the Scottish Art Review — was lent to the Edinburgh collection by Mr. Justice Day.

The general characteristics of the work of the elder two of the three brothers differ considerably. The works of Matthew Maris are dreamily poetic. They are pervaded with a singularly solemn emotion, which impresses one as does the still seriousness of Diirer; but they differ from Diirer, and from every other master, in the weird grace of their figures, whose forms — half-revealed and half-concealed — haunt one like the dreams of the Mystics. James Maris, on the contrary, is not of the other world, but of this one. He has a Thoreau-like loving-kindness for aspects of nature which most painters miss. In the landscape before us, the ' cloud rack, fluctuant and erratic,' as it drives over flatland laden with moisture — a sky such as one may see only in northern countries — the row of windmills on a dyke, unmistakably throwing their gaunt arms into the sky and moving them slowly down again in a majestic sweep, give us, as perhaps no one else has given us, the veritable impression of night over a Dutch landscape, featureless save for the grotesque forms in the sky and the picturesque mills on the ground. The intellectual kinship between Constable and James Maris has been justly noted by Mr. Henley, and there is perhaps no artist of whom it might more truly be said that the mantle of the great master of landscape painting had fallen upon him.

M.