artists a distance equal to that from the Gulf of Mexico to the Adriatic? In 1909 Mexico sent no fewer than three young painters to Madrid; one to Barcelona and one to Paris, to which city were sent, at the same time, a student of engraving, Emilliano Valadez, and a student of sculpture, Eduardo Solares. According to the constitution of La Escuela Nacional, the winners of its travelling scholarships are expected, during a period of four years after returning home, to give their services by preference to the Government; but such services are, of course, remunerated, they are not often called for, and the rule is not rigorously imposed.
Like most bodies of kindred nature, and as one of its titles shows, the Mexican Académia Nacional is itself an art gallery. Its principal rooms, however, are inadequately lit, so that proper justice is not done to the exhibits there, and this is much to be regretted, for the pictures include many fine old works, numerous good ones, too, by artists still living or deceased within the present decade. Salient among these contemporaneous paintings is Manuel Ocaranza's "Travesuras del Amor"[1] (Love's Wiles), a fine little study of a cupid, seemingly occupied in the appropriate act of preparing a love philtre, the subject treated in a fashion which would have delighted François Boucher himself. Ocaranza's notable gifts are further represented by a picture called "La Flor Marchita" (The Faded Flower), a curious contrast to which is formed by the many neighbouring works on Biblical themes, notably "Abraham é Isaac" by Salomé Pina, "Dejad á los Ninos que Vengan a Mí" (Suffer little children to come unto Me) by Juan Urruchi, and "El Bueno Samaritano" by Juan Manchola. Events in the lives of the early Christian martyrs and saints also figure prominently in this gallery, remarkable items in this field being Uarráran's "El Sueño del Mártir Cristiano" (The Christian Martyr's Dream) and "La Carida en los Primeros Tiempos de la Iglesia" (Charity during the
- ↑ A small, but tolerably good, reproduction of this painting appeared in the issue for November, 1913, of The International Studio.
