30 MAY 1914, Page 15

ART.

SOME MINOR LONDON SHOWS.

BOND STREET and the other purlieus of art are now brimming with exhibitions to fit every taste or lack of taste. Among the new ones the most notable is the exhibition of drawings, etchings, and lithographs by M. Steinlen, who is now almost a classic. It is his first exhibition in London, but he has been the inspiration of many of our best posters, and his lithographs in the Parisian Press have long been collected in England. Nowadays the revival of draughtsmanship, chiefly through the influence of that great academic teacher, Alphonse Legron has accustomed the English public to scholarly, brilliant, and nervous drawing, and a Steinlen Exhibition does not cause the sense of surprise which it once would have created in London. Mr. John, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Sicked, Mr. Rothensteiu, and others belong to the same class as M. Steinlen. His drawings remind us too sharply of Millet, Gavarni, and Daumier, but his art at its best has an insight and life of its own, and the exhibition at the Leicester Galleries should certainly not be missed. At the Colnaghi and Obach Gallery in Bond Street there is the best exhibition of the works of Alphonse Legros in etchings and lithographs that has yet been seen. The prints are mainly from the T. G. Arthur Collection. The Twenty-one Gallery in York Building, Adelphi, shows a very interesting selection of etchings by Mr. Edgar Wilson, whose rare and delightful talent has been too long neglected by the ordinary collector. It is curious, at a time when etchings are, as the phrase goes, "all over the market," that this gifted artist is still only known to a few discriminating collectors. At the Baillie Gallery there is a series of unusual war paintings by Mr. Charles W. Simpson. Pictures of war are rarely of art interest, but these compositions and studies of incidents in the Balkan conflict show remarkable breadth of handling and a very definite imaginative conception of modern war. The chief picture, a view of soldiers advancing to an attack through a snowy pass, reveals an understanding of the movements of tired men, as well as an interesting conception of design, that are quite