C URRENT LITERATURE.
ART BOOKS.
Choranni Segantini. By L. Villari. (T. Fisher Unwin. 21s.) —" Oh the hills and the snow upon the hills!" These words of the Lama in "Kim" fitly describe the passion which inspired the final development of the art of Giovanni Segantini. From his birthplace near the Lake of Garda, the future painter was taken as a child to Milan, where, after a piteous childhood, he learnt the rudiments of his art. From Milan he went to paint in the
country near the mountains of the Lake of Como. In the Brazian he painted the peasants he lived amongst _after the manner Of Millet. But this stage of Segantini's career was but an episode, for his most characteristic work did not begin till he had ascended into the Alps, first to Savegnino and finally to Maloja. On the face of it, it may seem strange that the painter of the Alps should have been an Italian Really there is nothing incon- gruous. The Italian mind has always had a tendency which when it was manifested in Michelangelo was aptly called terribi/ita. It was the awful and austere beauty of the Alps that attracted the Lombard, and which finally absorbed his whole personality and made him write :—" It is but too true, as you say, that these terrible mountains distract me from effects and affections that most men know more intimately ; and often I, too, from the heights of these great rocks feel myself to be but a puny, thing, lost in a cloud of beauty on which I gaze alone." It is impossible to doubt that when young the future artist must hava had his imagination kindled by the sight of Monte Rosa from the, roof of Milan Cathedral. That marvellous wall which shuts in the Lombard plain drew Segantini irresistibly, the crowning work of the artist being the pictures he painted among the snows of the Engadine. The absolute independence of the man made him seek out a new technique for himself. Latterly, his pictures seemed almost to be painted with coloured ropes of paint laid side by side. But apart from this peculiarity, the intensity of his presentment of Nature is astonishing. Unhappily, the great triptych of the Engadine was never finished. Death struck down the painter at his work high up among the mows. The reproductions of this work in the book before us show that this series of pictures was of quite remarkable power. The portion called " Life " is perhaps the most beautiful as a composition; in it we see the high pastures of Soglio, and beyond the Bondasca Glacier and the battlements of the Ca,cciabella. The book is written with great sympathy and insight, and well illustrated. We are grateful to the author for his interesting picture of this remarkable man, who was one of the very few modern Italian artists of power and originality.
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