More Books of the Week
(Continued from page 19.)
A DELIGHTFUL and unusual book is Goya : An Impression of Spain, by Lord Derwent [G. H. Johnstone] (Methuen. 10s. 64.). No visitor to the Prado but has recognized that here and not in a Nqlasquez or a Murillo is the national genius personified, whatever they may think who only know Spanish art from our National Gallery. And what a prodigious figure was Goya ! Born before the middle of the eighteenth century, painting still at the age of eighty-two, before he died lie had set his hand to the lithographic process. And his life was that of a realist Liberal who introduced " a faint roll of tumbrils into the insouciant, decaying atmosphere of the lute eighteenth century in Spain," yet who but a short while after was Court painter under Godoy—and even, for a time, under Ferdinand. And withal he remained above the meter. The author rightly shows Goya, above all, as father of the cult of the grotesque by the side of the beautiful, a cult illustrated by Victor Hugo, and later perverted. He writes in a charming personal style which breathes the very atmosphere of the country that, in one visit, lie has learnt to love so well—and no less to understand, in the way that the right kind of Englishman can understand better than any Continental. As for the contrasts of South and North, he well says : " It has never been any use arguing about the South. The sun has its reasons which the sunless countries are not meant to appreciate." A treasure of a book, and finely produced. with nineteen illustrations. NVe like especially the dedication "to the New Spain."
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