'The best in this kind arc but shadows,' and conditions even of accuracy and skill become of minor importance, when the work makes no claim upon our wall as an accomplished product, but only marks where its maker paused in his vision and took foot- hold for fresh imaginative flight. Hence, and- hence only, the permanent value of this drawing ; it gives us a new human type, a strongly personal ideal of course, not a universal one, yet touching the uni- versal also in the noble fulness of its union of the flesh and spirit, in its saying as no painter had done since the Madonna vanished, that Love may be in- carnate in Womanhood, yet none the less also divine. See the stately head firm set upon its ivory tower, the grave wise eyes over full luscious lips, the broad and lofty brain covered by its dark dome and sweep of rippled hair. Strange she is, yet akin to us ; for she too has plucked the fruits of life with their mingled sweetness and pain. Yet this is no ordinary daughter of Eve, but a Sybil, and whether we think her fair or no, she will give her message : drawing aside the curtain of fresh possibilities, she still reconciles for us the claims of the Real and the Ideal with either hand. There is no other work of Rossetti's which puts more simply and clearly his masterthought within our reach. Patrick Geddes.
NOTE.
'The Wood Nymph,' by Edward Burne Jones, A.R.A., has been reproduced by the permission of the owner, Mr. William Connal, jun., to whom are due our grateful thanks. ' SILENCE,' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, has been reproduced by permission of the owner, Mr. Thomas Carlile, to whom also we desire to express our sense of obligation. Both pictures are at present in the Glasgow Exhibition. ' Silence ' is a drawing in crayons executed by Rossetti in 1S70. This was the year of his greatest activity, for then he not only published his poems, but painted * Dante's Dream,' and a great number of smaller works. Mr. William Sharp thus briefly describes the * Silence ' drawing : ' With her right hand this figurative Silentia slightly raises the heavy curtain which may be considered significant of sleep, or of those places whereinto no sound ever breaks, and above her hangs up-gathered a muffled bell.' The drawing is No. 202 in Mr. William Sharp's Catalogue, and No. 279 in Mr. J. P. Anderson's Catalogue of Rossetti's Works. Ed.
THE LATE FRANK O'MEARA.
WE regret to note the death of Frank O'Meara, which took place at his father's house, Carlow, Ireland, on the 1 .5th of October. He died of malarial fever, contracted while engaged at his painting in France. He was thirty-five years of age, and had lived mostly in France since his twentieth year. At first he went to Paris to study, and spent some time in the studio of M. Carolus Duran ; but finding that he was not in sym- pathy with the work in the Paris studios, he soon went to live in the country. He was one of the earliest of British students to join the Barbizon School of painters. At Barbizon and at Gretz he studied nature for himself, not uninfluenced by the work of the great Barbizon men; but while adopting their principles, in their application he developed an individual style. He was quick to recognise the capacities for decorative landscape treatment in the plein-air development which has reached such special manifestations in the hands of Puvis de Chavannes and Cazin, and, in another way, in those of Lepage. O'Meara's work shows strong sym- pathy with the art of Cazin and Puvis de Chavannes, yet it is an individual expression quite his own. By the many British students v/ho have since gone to France, O'Meara was recognised as one who had early set out in the ' new movement,' which is now so wide in its influence — the movement towards a treat- ment of landscape with special regard to atmospheric planes, the various tones tlius searched out lending themselves to a strongly realistic, yet beautifully decorative treatment, in harmony with the modern spirit, which demands scientific truth, yet has not lost sight of Nature's loveliness, which is capable of noble pictorial treatment, without the extreme conventional- ism that some schools of painting have regarded as essential.
In the Glasgow International Exhibition there is an excellent example of O'Meara's work — a large picture, hung in the Sculpture room — No. 1(55.5, 'Evening in the Gatinais.' Simple, broad, and true, it happily illustrates the aim of the younger painters of to-day — to combine realistic fidelity with decorative beauty.
Owing to his long residence in France, O'Meara is comparatively little known to the public of this country, and but few of his pictures have been seen here. Yet his work is well known to the many artists who of late years have gone to France to study, and O'Meara has had a considerable influence in kindly encouraging and judiciously directing others in the path in art in which he himself was one of the pioneer men. It is a peculiar and significant testimony to the estimation in which his work is held, that it has nearly all been bought by artists.
O'Meara's untimely death is especially to be deplored in view of the fact that when art conditions are at such
