JOHN FLAXMAN, 1755-1826. By W. G. Constable. (University of London
Press. 10s. 6d.)—Flaxman as a sculptor is out of fashion. His neo-elassieal themes are seldom interesting because they are excessively sentimental. Yet he had great talent, a real gift for portraiture, and a true decorative sense, so that his less ambitious work, and especially the small reliefs and figures that he modelled for Wedgwood, is, often very charming. The best collection of his sketches and reliefs is at University College, London, and a centenary
lecture delivered on Flaxman there has grown into this interest- ing book. Mr. Constable has added new details about Flax- man's long collaboration with Wedgwood and gives thirty- one reproductions of drawings and reliefs, and of the sepulchral monuments of which Flaxman had to produce too many for our liking. The suggestion that Flaxman owed a good deal to Clodion's graceful statuary is interesting ; the difference between the solid Englishman and the gay Frenchman is a difference of race.
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