Among the sculpture (I fear a first visit allowed no time for the water colours and drawings) Epstein's head of Einstein (purchased for the nation by the Chantrey bequest) is the deserved sensation of the year. Whatever one may think of Epstein's imaginative works. as a portraitist in bronze he is incomparable. But 1 also very much liked Sir Alfred Gilbert's head of Paderewski, another bronze, smoother than the Einstein, but very striking.
A lovely group, by MeMillan, na. is the Mother and Child, the express sion on the mother's face such as tone rarely sees in stone. "The Man Who Found Himself," by Charlotte Gibson, has a curious parallel close by in "The Awakening" by Arthur Ayres. The titles of both will tell you what they are like, and the ideas are well realized. A figure of a young boy "memorial to the Late Earl of Chesterfield" by Gilbert Bayes is most arresting, and, one of the most exquisite pieces in the gallery, a Slatuette in bronze by Richard Carbe, about 18 in. high, of a girl with a macaw on her shoulder. Once more. one asks, who started the libel that Englishmen cannot be sculptors? Perhaps it was due to the passion of our 19th century. statesmen (subsequently immortalized about London) for top hats and frock coats. Which shows after all, that clothes do make the man and mar the artist. When the latter gets back to the human form divine, the result is this beautiful roomful of gleaming images at Burington House.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.