Books on the Arts

I 306 TH'E UNIVERSITY· OF TORONTO QUARTERLY . . A· quite contrasted impression is conveyed by a pleasant little auto- , biographical work, of the "roughing-it-in-the wilds" genre, The Owl ·Pen by Kenneth McNeill w·ells. It is the record of a·man and his wife escaping . from the industrial scene into the wilderness, hewing out a new. home with a deliberately revived frontier· spirit: "This is what we had workedfor , the peace and quiet of lonely concession life, the nearness of things eternal, and time to' savour them.'·' It is a typical manifestation of Canadian roman-ticism, which is always aware of the open spaces north of the fringe of cities, and in its way it is a tribute to the enterprise of the author. The book is capably illustrated with wood-engravings by the author's wife, and one notices that intellectual pursuits have been added to the frontier theme. The author has supplied each section with a quotation from a favourite author with a sublime disregard for dates. Pope's Ode to·. Solitude, for instance, is quoted, and dated as 1688. Pope by his own account was precocious but would have hesitated to ascribe even this juvenile performance to the year of his birtl~.· Last among the autobiographies, in merit, is Gordon Sinclai1~)s Signposts _to Adventure. Having a newspaperman's opportunity to live a kind of·Richard Halliburton existence, the author has thrown down thousands of snippets of experience from a career that led him to the four corners of the earth. He enjoyed it, evidently, but his fragmentary collect-ion of dis-jointed events builds up t'o no perceptible theme. 2. BOOKS ON THE ARTS D. \V. BucHANAN Most important among the books published during.1947 in the field of th~ visual arts is The Old Architecture of ftuebec by Ramsay Traquair. It enibodies the findings of many years of architectural research, of the measuring and photographing not only of 'old churches and convents but 1 also of farm-houses and city dwellings. The book is copiously illustrated,. plans are also given of some of the more important churches, and. the text provides a detailed summary of the history q[ all types of building and also of wood-carving in Quebec. \Vhile many of the references are largely of technical interest, the general reader, however, will find many interesting facts about those early wood-carvers who did such-elaborate masterpieces of d~c~ration in many of the parish churches, and who often, besides being maUres sculpteurs, were also architects and contractors. 'Then, too, the peculiarly Canadian characteristics of ·much of the .early building are explained, so that one is ~·eadily able to grasp how environment and function determined the development of French-Canadian architecture.· An.other work~ embodying research notes and some historical mater-ial of value, is Chinese Court Costumes by Helen E. Fernald. It is, however, a slighter volume and limited to this one rather recondite aspect of Chinese art, but it do.es serve to remind ·one that, on this continent, some of th~ best facilities a-vailable for the study -of Chinese art and archaeology exist , at, the Royal Ontario Museum, whic'h is a treasure-house of Chinese LETTERS IN CANADA: 1947 3.07 antiqmt1es. The author is on the staff of the Musepm, and she has been fortunate in havTng been able. to illustrate the book with many plates, including four in colour. ' \ Two books, the interest of which centres on the photographs they contain, are Faces of Destiny and The -New North .. in Pictures. The first was .published by that well-known Ottawa photographer, Yousuf .Karsh, -an Armenian by birth but Canadian by adoption. He sprang into interna ~ional prominence when he made his famous portrait of Winston Churchill ' during his visit to th~ Canadian House of Commons. The immediate success.he.achieved with.this picture resulted in commissions being given him to do photographs of. war-time leaders in Great Britain, and later of qutstanding men in Washington and of diplomats, presidents, and foreign ministers .at the United ·Nations conference in San Francisco. .From a technical ·poirit of view his photographs are superb. Yet...