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Etching Class of the Royal College of Art under Sir Frank Short, who by his example and influ- ence undoubtedly helped to establish Richards in his vocation as an etcher. This is not the place to discuss his work in detail, but it may be indi- cated that in drawing and in etching-and each drawing is a potential etching-Richards never lost what Whistler called "the eye of the picture." With unerring instinct and knowledge he selected the essential points and masses, while he suggested, without rejecting, the subsidiary details. He had extraordinary skill in extracting the essence and spirit of a place. While one admires the buildings in his drawings or prints, his use of nervous searching line in vivid present- ment of the static, one wonders perhaps more at the power with which he indicates, so lightly and so subtly-in subordination always to his main theme--the little incidents of life and move- ment. His etchings, with their consummate skill in the use of needle and acid, show his fine draughtsmanship and his artistry in perfect com- bination. Unsparing in his efforts to help others, ready always to embark on some new task or adven- ture for the betterment of Art, Richards was a THE NATION AND ART-III by Fred A. Farrell IN the seventh century Chinese art and Buddhism found a Constantine in the Japanese Prince Shotoku. And the Chinese tradition, moribund at home, was to find new life in Japan, where the aitists, not content merely to copy the great Chinese masters, sought the inherent principle in their brush strokes. So with the earnestness of prayer they returned to the shrine of the ancestor, invoking the spirit teach them what the living was that had made the dying so glorious. The Zen priest and artist Sesshu, the veritable Rembrandt of Japan, was sent to China almost as an ambassador. On his return about the middle of the sixteenth century, he brought a magnificent collection, and about all, too, that the world was to see, of the Chinese masterpieces from which Japan was to extract the essentials for recasting in the mould of her own genius. Other days, other ways! Let us note that little apt to scatter his energies. But after his return from his five years' sojourn in the East, with a wealth of sketches from the desert and from ancient cities in Egypt, Palestine and Persia (he described it all to me as "very like pages torn out of the Old Testament"), he looked for- ward to resisting the interruption of new ideas, to restraining his generosity, and to concentrat- ing on his own creative work. Once the "Per- sian Journey" was published, as it was last autumn, he intended to complete a book on "Lon- don from the Kerb Stone" for which he had been gathering notes and drawings before he went to the East, and to etch a whole series of prints in addition to those which he had already made in Egypt and in Persia. He looked forward to happy years of solid uninterrupted work. "But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life." Hi's works shall follow him. I think that a Memorial Exhibition will secure him an estab- lished reputation as a maker of drawings and prints instinct with refinement and beauty of design. What a mistake it is to think that draw- ing means accuracy! Drawing means the will to create a form: the more powerful and reasoned the will the more beautiful the drawing. And that's all there is to it!"— MAX JACOB. Sesshu's homecoming was the occasion for an official and public reception later, when he died, even poor people begged for a redic of his brush! Then let us reflect upon Richard Wilson, the failure of his generation: "old red nosed Wilson," the Welsh genius whom we now honour as the "Father of English Landscape." There is some- thing wrong with a system which could teach us to appraise the French Claude when we could not value a home product at least as good. Are we so poor souled that we cannot see Beauty at our own hearth? The fundamental of Chinese and Japanese drawing was a state of soul. The benignant worldly wisdom of Confucius touched the mind of Japan; her spirit was Buddhist, calm trust in fate, the inevitable received with dignity, com- posure and even stoicism in danger: death was man's friend. Energising all was the Zen Buddhist Tao, the Way that through quiet medi-