4 DECEMBER 1909, Page 12

Hogarth, The Great English Masters, and Fritz Boehle form three

separate paper-bound numbers of " The International Art Series " (T. Fisher 17nwin, 5s. net each). The quarto size of the work enables the reproductions to be on a satisfactorily large scale, though the strange English of the second and third of these parts by Gorman writers is somewhat bewildering. Take, for instance, the following description of a rather heavy and common- place "Europa" by Herr Boehle

" In the Europa and the Bull' we have a model of grandiose impetuosity. It is the full realisation of the dream of antic grandeur. Similar to the almighty flight of the rhythm of the Ninth Symphony, we see the outlines of the divine couple, and particularly those of the Bull, rising between sky and earth, as though no other being existed under the vault of heaven, as though the perennial murmur of the waves was nothing but the echo of their beating heart. And all that, we find it condensed in the eye of the Bull, which altogether God and Animal, seems to contemplate us from the bottom of that sublime immensity where Eternity is Time and Time Eternity."

Indeed, Lord Burleigh's nod is nothing to this bull's eye. We like Herr Boehle best when he is not illustrating the classics or reviving Venetian idylls, but drawing the peasants of his own land. These are full of sympathy and directness of power, though the Teutonic tendency to think of the part rather than the whole in constructing a figure is evident.