xfDLA095-0054  Transcription

The Studio, vol. 88, October 1924, p. 234 and 237

ARGENTINA — On the initiative of the art-loving wife of H.E. the President of the Republic, Doña Regina Pacini de Alvear, there has been opened, for charitable purposes, an exhibition of portraiture by contemporary masters which has many interesting features. Argentine families do not, as a rule, lend their pictures for public show, but the social success of the innovation has only been equalled by the artistic curiosity to see how men like László, Shannon, Dagnan-Bouveret, and Renoir, interpreted the Argentine grande dame. There were half-a-dozen László’s on the walls of the new Franz von Riel Salon, a private gallery admirably planned for light and space, and opened by H.E. with the exhibition under consideration. Perhaps the most interesting was a portrait of Sra. Lisa Quintana de Hirsch, where the artist has happily caught that subtle something which lends so distinctive a charm to the head, bent a little forward, the well-modelled shoulders, and the graceful fall of the drapery. The late Sir J. J. Shannon’s presentment of Sra. Isabel Hope de Duggan shows excellent work in this artist’s best manner. Noticeable, too, was a careful and most loving child-portrait by the Irish-Peruvian artist, Albert Lynch, very pleasing in the faultless drawing of the small head with its wealth of dark brown hair, the depth of expression in the eyes, and the nacarine flesh tints of a striking brunette type of Argentine beauty. Space forbids more than the merest mention of such works as Anders Zorn’s picture of the children of Sra. Errazuriz Alvear, the Hungarian painter Sigall in an effective, if fantastic treatment of the portrait of Sra. Becu de Ayerza, the two Zuloaga pictures, and the many other intimate things of men like Flameng, Chaplin, Helleu, Ortiz Echague, and others whose names, familiar enough in the galleries of London and Paris, are seldom read at the foot of a picture in Buenos Aires. Love for paintings is, however, growing in this new and somewhat material milieu, and one may hope that this exhibition will later be followed up by a loan collection of the many notable works of divers genres that are known to be in the possession of private owners in this city.                

H. H. H.

MD

11/11/2007