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SCULPTURE DEMONSTRATIONS BY M. LANTERI AT GLASGOW.

EDUCATION in all branches of knowledge consists briefly in the systematisation of facts, and their application to the needs of students. Art teaching in its first principles consists of handicraft and a knowledge of requirements ; and though any means or methods taken to realise are as nothing compared with the ultimate realisation, _yet he alone should be able to impart instruction who, possessing both observation and power, can give reasons for the means taken to produce a specific effect. Hence it follows that all art teaching, to be of any value, should be strictly practical ; and the truth of the adage that an ounce of practice is wortii a pound of precept is truer in instruction in art than in, perhaps, any other branch of education. No stronger proof of this could be afforded than that given by the series of demon- strations in modelling which, under the auspices of the Haldane Trustees, were given during the first week in March at the Glasgow .School of Art and Haldane Academj-. It was a wise action on the part of the trustees, and one for which the thanks of all art students are due, when, in place of the ordinarj' art lecturer, they decided to seek the services of some successful teacher who should, by means of a set of lessons, practically illustrate a method of in- struction in some branch of art education. It was arranged that a series of four demonstrations in model- ling should be given by M. Edouard Lanteri, the modelling master at the National Art Training Schools, South Kensington, and it may safely be said that these practical lessons not only gave instruction and pleasui-e to a body of spectators, consisting alike of artists and laymen, but also a real impulse to the study of the art of modelling in Glasgow. The subjects chosen were a bust from the life ; a study of drapery ; an applied design; and a study from the nude ; and the accompanying illustrations give the results attained from a fight against Time, lasting in no single case more than an hour and a half. Each demonstration was accompanied by diagrams showing the method adopted, and gixiiig reasons for its adoption ; and, start- ing with the premiss that no method could be con- sidered the best that was not at once a time-saving and a labour-saving process, the demonstrator left his work as result to speak for itself. The differ- ence in treatment between modelling and either wood-carving or sculpture in marble was made a distinct and special feature, for the reason that whereas in these latter form is attained by the re- moval of material, in the former the object is to reach the form sought after by the addition of material, — the work being accom])lished in the one case by working, so to speak, from a point outwards, and in the others to a point inwards. This was particularly exemplified in the demonstra tion from the nude life, where, upon a construction of lead-pijiing, techni- cally known as an ' armature,' and re- presenting the chief bones of the skele- ton, each muscle was laid on by means of a sepa- rate piece of clay ; and so external con- tour would have been ultimately reached, had time permitted, through and by means of a thorough anatomical knowledge of the human body itself.