Art Exhibition In Paris
By Iris Conlay NEXT month an important ex hibition of contemporary religious art by British artists, sponsored by THE CATHOLIC HERALD, will be shown in Paris. This is ao innovation for the Parisians who, although they are familiar enough with our secular art, have not, recently at least, been confronted with any sign of our interest in religious interpretation. In fact, I doubt if the Frenchman, interested in international art, has ever considered thai this country produces any modern religious art at all. So that the reaction will be a fresh, spontaneous expression to something unexpected.
The painters who are showing their work in France include G. Houghton Brown, Eric Hemingway. Roy de Maistre, Joan Morris, Lindsay Clark ; the sculptors, Alan Durst, Anthony Foster and Mrs. Foord-Kelsey ; a goldsmith, Dunstan Pruden. The exhibition, organised by the International Society of Sacred Art, is being shown at L'ecole des Beaux Arts in cornicelion with a show of international art arranged by U.N.E.S.C.O. It will be opened on November 7 by the wellknown French Dominican art critic and historian, Pere Regarnez, and it will remain open until November 30. London will have an opportunity of seeing the same exhibition, with French exhibits added. at the French Institute in London in February next year. After that the International Society of Sacred Art plans to take the show to America.
ROUND THE GALLERIES Eric Hemingway, one of the exhibitors mentioned above, is showing at the Church Artists' Agency in London. His work is vivid, rich, strong, and in the Rotrault tradition. Sometimes a crude influence is noticeable in Hemingway's work, but here is promise which encouragement could develop. Josef Herman (at Roland, Browse and Delbanco) is another painter whose passionat6 inten sily. glowing colour and fascination with pathetic humanity is in accord with Rouault's boundless sympathy with oppressed man. Herman lives and paints in a Welsh mining village, " where men lead a dreary, monotonous life away from the sun, and where even Nature is permeated with the sweat of their labour—many of the hills being old coal-tips turned into green slopes "—and, to continue irt the words of the catalogue. "What fascinated (the artist) is the solidness of the people one only finds where there is a tradition of labour and where man makes his living from the soil." Herman's ekmental men loom out of the darkness of his canvases desperate, yet tender, their faces lined with toil, but strong and proud and—yes, great. Herman is no propagandist for a trades union but a testifier to the truth of work, giving dignity. even dirty, hard, unpleasant work. Exhibitions in London to be seen: Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth sculptures studied in conjunction make an interesting contrast, To see them both one most go from the Leicester Galleries to the Lcfevre. Also at the Leicester Galleries are a mixed collection of contemporary Irish painters.
Garden
PROPAGATION To anyone making an exhaustive study of gardening, propagation is a fascinating and intricate study. At home each one of us can now ensure the survival of our best stocks by raising as many young plants as we can. Some plants, like strawberries, have provided us with plenty of material; the runners should be carefully set out in rows two feet apart and with about 15 or 18 inches between the plants. At this very moment the brambles and other canes are " tipping " themselves into the soil. Safeguard these (or enough of them, anyway) and do not rely too long on old plants which have used•up nearly all the good in the soil.