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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4672-0.txt b/4672-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc1c9ef --- /dev/null +++ b/4672-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2896 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4672 *** + +The Galleries of the Exposition + + + +A Critical Review of the Paintings, Statuary and the Graphic Arts in The +Palace of Fine Arts at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition + + + +By +Eugen Neuhaus +Assistant Professor of Decorative Design, University of California and +Member of the International Jury of Awards in the Department of Fine +Arts of the Exposition + + +To John E. D. Trask +Director of the Department of Fine Arts of the Panama-Pacific +International Exposition, untiring worker and able executive + + + +Contents + + + +Introduction - An Historical Review. The Function of Art. +Retrospective Art +The Foreign Nations +- France +- Italy +- Portugal +- Argentina +- Uruguay +- Cuba +- Philippine Islands +- The Orient +- Japan +- China +- Sweden +- Holland +- Germany +The United States +- One-Man Rooms +- Whistler +- Twachtman +- Tarbell +- Redfield +- Duveneck +- Chase +- Hassam +- Gari Melchers +- Sargent +- Keith +- Mathews and McComas +- General Collection +The Graphic Arts - Conclusion +Appendix +Bibliography - A list of helpful reference books and periodicals for the + student and lover of art. +Index to Galleries + + + +List of Illustrations + + + +Phyllis --------------------- John W. Alexander +Woman and Child: Rose Scarf - Mary Cassatt +Morning in the Provence ----- Henri Georget +The Promenade --------------- Gustave Pierre +The Procession -------------- Ettore Tito +The Fortune Teller ---------- F. Luis Mora +Water Fall ------------------ Elmer Schofield +The Peacemaker -------------- Ernest L. Blumenschein +The White Vase -------------- Hugh H. Breckenridge +Winter in the Forest -------- Anshelm Schultzberg +Winter at Amsterdam --------- Willem Witsen +In the Rhine Meadows -------- Heinrich Von Zugel +The Mirror ------------------ Dennis Miller Bunker +Coming of the Line Storm ---- Frederick J. Waugh +Lavender and Old Ivory ------ Lilian Westcott Hale +Green and Violet: Portrait of Mrs. E. Milicent Cobden - James McNeill + Whistler +The Dreamer ----------------- Edmund C. Tarbell +Whistling Boy --------------- Frank Duveneck +Self Portrait --------------- William Merritt Chase +Spanish Courtyard ----------- John Singer Sargent +Oaks of the Monte ----------- Francis McComas +Blue Depths ----------------- William Ritschel +Floating Ice: Early Morning - Charles Rosen +The Land of Heart's Desire -- William Wendt +The Housemaid --------------- William McGregor Paxton +My House in Winter ---------- Charles Morris Young +Quarry: Evening ------------- Daniel Garber +Beyond ---------------------- Chester Beach +In the Studio --------------- Ellen Emmet Rand +Eucalypti, Berkeley Hills --- Eugen Neuhaus +Floor Plan, Palace of Fine Arts + + + +Introduction + + + +The artistic appeals of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition +through architecture and the allied decorative arts are so engrossing +that one yields to the call of the independent Fine Arts only with +considerable reluctance. The visitor, however, finds himself cleverly +tempted by numerous stray bits of detached sculpture, effectively placed +amidst shrubbery near the Laguna, and almost without knowing he is drawn +into that enchanting colonnade which leads one to the spacious portals +of the Palace of Fine Arts. + +It was a vast undertaking to gather such numbers of pictures together, +but the reward was great - not only to have gratified one's sense of +beauty, but to have contributed toward a broader civilization, on the +Pacific Coast specifically, and for the world in general besides. It +must be admitted that it was no small task, in the face of many very +unusual adverse circumstances, to bring together here the art of the +world. Mr. John E. D. Trask deserves unstinted praise for the +perseverance with which, under most trying circumstances, unusual enough +to defeat almost any collective undertaking, he brought together this +highly creditable collection of art. Wartime conditions abroad and the +great distance to the Pacific Coast, not to speak of difficulties of +physical transportation, called for a singularly capable executive, such +as John E. D. Trask has proved himself to be, and the world should +gratefully acknowledge a big piece of work well done. I do not believe +the art exhibition needs any apologies. Its general character is such as +fully to satisfy the standards of former international expositions. + +It seems only rational that, with the notorious absence of any important +permanent exhibition of works of art on the Pacific Coast, an effort +should have been made to present within the exhibit the development of +the art of easel painting since its inception, because it seems +impossible to do justice to any phase of art without an opportunity of +comparison, such as the exposition affords. The retrospective aspects of +the exhibition are absorbingly interesting, not so much for the +presentation of any eminently great works of art as for the splendid +chance for first-hand comparison of different periods. Painting is +relatively so new an art that the earliest paintings we know of do not +differ materially in a technical sense from our present-day work. +Archaeology has disinterred various badly preserved and unpresentable +relics of old arts such as sculpture and architecture. It is little so +with pictures. Painting is really the most recent of all the fine arts. +It must seem almost unbelievable that the greatest periods of +architecture and sculpture had become classic when painting made its +début as an independent art. It is true enough that the Assyrians and +Egyptians used colour, but not in the sense of the modern easel painter. +We are also informed, rather less than more reliably, that a gentleman +by the name of Apelles, in the days of Phidias, painted still-lifes so +naturally that birds were tempted to peck at them, and we know much more +accurately of the many delightful bits of wall-painting the rich man of +Pompeii and Herculaneum used to have put on his walls, but the easel +painting is a creation of modern times. + +The sole reason for this can hardly be explained better than by pointing +out the long-standing lack of a suitable medium which would permit the +making of finer paintings, other than wall and decorative paintings. The +old tempera medium was hardly suited to finer work, since it was a +makeshift of very inadequate working qualities. Briefly, the method +consisted of mixing any pigment or paint in powder form with any +suitable sticky substance which would make it adhere to a surface. +Sticky substances frequently used were the tree gums collected from +certain fruit-trees, including the fig and the cherry. This crude method +is known by the word "tempera," which comes from the Latin "temperare," +to modify or mix, and denotes merely any alteration of the original +pigment. Tempera painting, as the only technique known, was really a +great blessing to the world, since it prevented the wholesale production +in a short time of such vast quantities of pictures as the world +nowadays is asked to enjoy. I am not so sure that the two brothers, the +Flemish painters Hubert and Jan van Eyck, who are said to have given us +the modern oil method, are really so much deserving of praise, since +their improved method of painting with oils caused a production of +paintings half of which might much better have remained unpainted. The +one thing that can be said of all paintings made before their day is +that they were painted for a practical purpose. They had to fit into +certain physical conditions, architectural or other. Most modern +paintings are simply painted on a gambler's chance of finding suitable +surroundings afterwards. Nowadays a picture is produced with the one +idea of separating it from the rest of the world by a more or less +hideous gold frame, the design of which in many cases is out of all +relation to the picture as well as to the wall. In fact, most frames +impress one as nothing but attempts to make them as costly as possible. + +I imagine that practically all true painters would rather do their +pictures under and for a given physical condition, to support and be +supported by architecture; but with the unfortunate present-day +elimination of paintings from most architectural problems, most artists +have to paint their pictures for an imaginary condition. The present +production of paintings has become absolutely unmindful of the true, +function of a painting, which is to decorate in collaboration with the +other arts - architecture and sculpture. + +It is necessary to bear these facts in mind in trying to do justice to a +large aggregate of canvases in an international exhibition, or any +exhibition. Thousands of pictures, created by a host of different +artists, are temporarily thrown together. The result, of course, can +never be entirely satisfying. Many devices are employed to overcome this +very disturbing condition and with varying success. The hanging of +pictures against neutral backgrounds, the grouping of works of one man, +the selection of works of similar tonality, colour schemes, technique, +subject, style, etc. - these are all well known methods of trying to +overcome the essential artificiality of the methods of exhibition of +modern paintings. I doubt whether so long as we insist upon art +exhibitions of the conventionally accepted type, we shall ever be able +to present pictures with due regard to their meaning. We must not make +the mistake of blaming a director of an exhibition for a difficulty +which he cannot possibly overcome. So long as painters turn out +thousands of pictures, we can expect only the results which are much in +evidence in all modern exhibitions. The fault is entirely with the +artist, who is forever painting easel pictures, and neglecting the great +field of decorative painting. On investigation of our exhibition we +shall find that the good picture - that is, the picture of a certain +respectful attitude toward its function, which is largely decorative - +is far less injured by unavoidable neighbors than the loud-mouthed +canvas of the "Look! Here I am!" variety, which is afraid of being +overlooked. Art exhibitions of the generally adopted modern type are +logically intolerable, and the only solution of the problem of the +correct presentation of pictures is to display fewer of them, within +certain individual rooms, designed by artists, where a few pictures will +take their place with their surroundings in a unity of artistic +expression. + +It is certainly no small task to enjoy a large exhibit like ours and to +preserve one's peace of mind. The purpose of these pages is to assist in +guiding the uninitiated, in his visit and in retrospect, without +depriving him of the pleasure of personal observation and investigation. +It is not to be expected that all pictures exhibited should be of a +superior kind. If so, we should never be able to learn to recognize the +good among the bad. So many pictures are only experiments. Only by +having the opportunity for comparison can we learn to discriminate. The +predominant characteristic of our art exhibition is its instructive +value in teaching the development of painting by successive periods, +sometimes represented and some times only indicated. The person who +never had the opportunity to visit the larger historical collections of +paintings abroad, could here obtain an idea of the many changes in +subjects, as well as in technique, which have taken place in the +relatively short existence of the art of painting. It is unfortunately +true that the majority of people are not at all interested in the +technical procedure of the making of the picture, but wholly in the +subject matter. If this be pleasing, the picture is apt to be declared a +success. The artist, on the other hand, and to my mind very justly, +looks primarily for what he calls good painting, and a simple statement +of these two points of view explains a great deal of very deplorable +friction between the artist and the willing and enthusiastic layman, who +is constantly discouraged by finding that his artist friend greets his +pet canvas with a cynical smile. + +The subject of the appreciation of pictures from a theoretical point of +view is not exactly the purpose of this book. So enormous is it that it +could be dealt with adequately only in a separate volume the writing of +which I look forward to with joyful anticipation. What I should like to +do - and I should be very glad if I could succeed - is to bring the +public a little closer to the artist's point of view through the +discussion of the merit of certain notable works of art. It is my +conviction that it is the manifestations of an artists artistic +conscience which make exhibitions good, and not the question whether the +public likes certain pictures or not. Only by constant study, a serious +attitude, and a willingness to follow the artist into his realm can the +public hope fully to enjoy the meaning of the artist's endeavors. + + + +The Galleries of the Exposition + + + +Retrospective Art + + + +It would seem only logical to begin our investigation with the pictures +chronologically oldest, at the same time recognizing that European art +has the right to first consideration. We are the hosts to the art of the +world. Our own art is the newest, and yet occupies a large number of +galleries most conspicuously, but it will not lose by waiting for +attention till the end. + +Gallery 63. + +Some of the very earliest paintings in the exhibition are found in one +of the large center rooms on the left, where a very stately Tiepolo +controls the artistic atmosphere of a large gallery. This picture has +all the qualities of an old Italian master of the best kind. Its +composition is big and dignified and in the interest and richness of its +color scheme it has here few equals. The chief characteristic of this +splendid canvas is bigness of style. In its treatment it is a typical +old master, in the best meaning of the term. + +On the left of this Tiepolo, a rather sombre canvas by Ribera claims +attention by the peculiar lighting scheme, so typical of this Italian +master. While there is what we might call a quality of flood lighting in +the Tiepolo, giving an envelope of warm, mellow light to the whole +picture, Ribera concentrates his light somewhat theatrically upon his +subjects, as in the St. Jerome. The picture is freely painted, with the +very convincing anatomical skill that is manifest in most of Ribera's +work. His shadows are sometimes black and impenetrable, a quality which +his pictures may not have had at the time of their production, and which +may be partly the result of age. The Goya on the same wall is +uninteresting - one of those poor Goyas which have caused delay in the +just placing of this great Spaniard in the history of art. + +The Turner below the Goya has all the imaginative qualities of that +great Englishman's best work. Venice may never look the way Turner +painted it, but his interpretation of a gorgeous sunset over a canal is +surely fascinating enough in its suggestion of wealth of form and color. +Sir William Beechey's large canvas of a group of children and a dog +probably presented no easy task to the painter. The attempt at a +skillful and agreeable arrangement of children in pictures is often +artificial, and so it is to my mind in this canvas. Nevertheless the +colouring, together with the spontaneous technique, put it high above +many canvases of similar type. The Spanish painting on the right of the +Beechey could well afford to have attached to it the name of one of the +best artists of any school. The unknown painter of this Spanish +gentleman knew how to disclose the psychology of his sitter in a +straightforward way that would have done honor to Velasquez, or to Frans +Hals, of whom this picture is even more suggestive. + +Below this very fine portrait Sir Godfrey Kneller is represented by a +canvas very typical of the eighteenth century English portrait painters. +The canvas has a little of the character of everybody, without being +sufficiently individual. Reynolds' "Lady Ballington" has a wonderful +quality of repose and serenity, one of the chief merits of the work of +all those great English portrait painters of the eighteenth century. No +matter whose work it is, whether of Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner, or any of +that classic period of the painters of distinguished people, they always +impress by the dignity of their composition and colour. We do not know +in all cases how distinguished their sitters really were, but like +Reynolds' "Lady Ballington," they must often have been of a sort +superior physically as well as intellectually. + +Above the Reynolds a small Gainsborough landscape blends well with the +predominant brown of these old canvases. From the point of view of the +modern landscape painter, who believes in the superiority of his outlook +and attitude toward nature, we can only be glad that Gainsborough's fame +does not depend upon his representation of out-of-doors. This small +canvas, like the very big one on the opposite wall, is interesting in +design. But neither gives one the feeling of outdoors that our modern +landscape painters so successfully impart. Historically they are very +interesting, and even though they carry the name of such a master of +portraits as Gainsborough undoubtedly was, they are devoid of all the +refreshing qualities that modern art has given to the world. + +Sir Peter Lely and Sir Henry Raeburn claim particular attention on the +north wall - the first by a deftly painted portrait of a lady, and the +other by a broadly executed likeness of John Wauchope. As portraits go, +the first picture is one of the finest in the gallery. Very conspicuous +by their size, the two big Romney portraits on the east wall are not in +the same class with either the Lawrence or the Reynolds on the same +wall. The great Lawrence portrait, the lady with the black hat, is +one of the most superb portraits in the world. There is a peculiar charm +about this canvas quite independent of the very attractive Lady Margaret +represented in the picture. The luscious blacks and pale reds and the +neutral cream silk cape make for a colour harmony seldom achieved. +Reynolds' portrait of John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, is equally rich +and full of fine colour contrasts. The shrewd-looking gentleman is +psychologically well given, although one's attention is detracted from +the head by the gorgeous raiment of a dignitary of the church. + +I think Hogarth's portrait on the small wall to the right does not +disclose this master at his best, nor does Hoppner rise to the level of +his best work in the large portrait alongside of it. The Marchioness of +Wellesley is better and more sympathetically rendered than her two +children, who barely manage to stay in the picture. + +On the whole an atmosphere of dignity permeates this gallery of older +masters. One may deplore the lack of many characteristics of modern art +in many of the old pictures. They are very often lifeless and stiff, but +the worst of them are far more agreeable than most of those of our own +time. The serene beauty of the Tiepolo, the Lawrence, and the +Gainsborough portrait has hardly been surpassed since their day. Our age +is, of course, the age of the landscape painter, the outdoor painter, as +opposed to the indoor portraits of these great masters. It would not be +right to judge a Gainsborough by his landscapes any more than it would +be to judge a modern landscape painter by his portraits. But no matter +how uninteresting these old landscapes are, their brown tonality insures +them a certain dignity of inoffensiveness which a mediocre modern work +of art never possesses, I would rather any time have a bad old picture +than a bad one of the very recent schools. Modesty is not one of the +chief attributes of modern art, and the silent protest of a gallery such +as the one we are now in, the artist can well afford to heed. + +The sculpture in this gallery has no relation to the historical +character of the room, but fits well into the atmosphere. Adolph A. +Weinman's admirable "Descending Night" is so familiar to all Exposition +visitors, in its adaptation in a fine fountain in the Court of the +Universe, that no more reference need be made to it. Here in bronze on a +small scale, it is even more refined. Mrs. Saint Gaudens' charming +family group, in burnt clay, is not so well in harmony with this gallery +of older work, but infinitely more appealing than J. Q. A. Ward's +"Hunter" or Cyrus Dallin's "Indian". Both of these groups lack +suggestive quality. They are carried too far. Edward Kemeys' "Buffaloes" +lacks a sense of balance. The defeated buffalo, pushed over the cliff, +takes the interest of the observer outside of the center of the +composition, and a lack of balance is noticeable in this otherwise well +modelled group. + +Gallery 91. + +In this room one is carried farther back into the earlier phases of +painting by a Luini of pronounced decorative quality. The picture is +probably a part of a larger scheme, but it is well composed into the +frame which holds it. Besides, it is of interest as the only piece of +old mural painting included in the exhibition. The ground on which the +angel is painted is a piece of the plaster surface of the original wall +of which this fragment was a part. The method of producing these fresco +paintings (al fresco calco) necessitated the employment of a practical +plasterer besides the painter. The painting was first drawn carefully on +paper and then transferred in its outlines upon freshly prepared +plaster, just put upon the wall. Having no other means of making the +paint adhere to the surface, the painter had to rely upon the chemical +reaction of the plaster, which would eventually unify the paint with +itself. It was a very tedious process, which nowadays has been +superseded by the method of painting on canvas, which after completion +in the studio is fastened to the wall. Above the Luini hangs a very +Byzantine looking Timoteo Viti "Madonna" of interesting colour and good +design, but with a Christ child of very doubtful anatomy, and also two +old sixteenth century Dutch pictures - a Jan Steen and a Teniers. I have +my doubts as to the authenticity of the last two pictures. They are both +interesting as disclosing the fondness of the Dutch painters of the +sixteenth century for over-naturalistic subjects. + +On wall B two pictures, without author or title, appeal to one's +imagination. They are both well painted and rich in colour. A certain +big decorative quality puts them far above their neighbor - a Dutch +canvas of bad composition with no redeeming features other than +historical interest. Jacopo da Ponte's big "Lazarus" has a certain noble +dignity. Though it is rather black in shadows, it is not devoid of +colour feeling. On either side are two old Spanish portraits of children +of royalty. They impress by their very fine decorative note, charmingly +enhanced by the wonderful frames. Another Ribera, as forceful as the one +mentioned before, easily stands out among the many pictures in this +gallery, most of which are only of historical interest. The whole aspect +of this little gallery is one of extreme remoteness from modern thought +and idea, but as an object lesson of certain older periods it is +invaluable. + +Gallery 92. + +Chronologically a typical old Charles Le Brun presides over a very +interesting lot of pictures, mostly French. This academic canvas, of +Darius' family at the feet of Alexander, has not the simplicity and +decorative quality of the Italian pictures of that period, and it is +entirely too complex to be enjoyable. The beautiful Courbet on the left, +while suggestive of Ribera in its severe disposal of light and shadow, +has also a quality of its own, a wonderful mellowness which gives it a +unity of expression lacking in its turbulent neighbor on the right. + +Among the other bigger pictures in this small gallery, a very poetic +Cazin, "The Repentance of Simon Peter," commands attention by a certain +outdoor quality which faintly suggests the Barbizon school. One does not +know what to admire most in this fine canvas. As a figural picture it is +intensely beautiful, and merely as a landscape it is of convincing +charm. It is to my mind one of the finest paintings in the exhibition, +and a constant source of great pleasure. + +The big Tissot offers few excuses for having been painted at all. It is +nothing but a big illustration - all it tells could have been said on a +very small canvas. There is no real painting in it, nor composition - +nothing else, for that matter. The two Monticellis on the same wall make +up for the Tissot. Rich in colour and design, the one to the left is +particularly fine. The Van Marcke on the same wall is typical of this +painter's methods, but does not disclose his talent for very interesting +pictorial compositions, for which he was known. + +On the opposite wall an older Israels gives lone a good idea of the +earlier period of this great Dutch painter, justly counted as one of the +great figures of the second half of the last century. While of recent +date, his art belongs to the older school - without attaching any odium +to that classification. The Barbizon school, the most important of the +last century, is very fitly represented by two charming and most +delicate Corots on either side of the Israels. The one to the right is +particularly tender and poetic. While by no means an attempt at a +naturalistic impressionistic interpretation of nature, like a modern +Metcalf, for instance, their suggestive power is so great as to overcome +a certain lack of colour by the convincingness of the mood represented. +Daubigny and Rousseau, of that great company of the school of 1825, are +merely suggested in two small and very conscientious studies. + +Gallery 62. + +This will always be remembered as the gallery of the "Green Madonna". +Whatever caused this "Green Madonna" to be honored by a Grand Prix at +Paris will always remain one of those mysteries with which the world is +laden. Of all disagreeable colour schemes, it is certainly one of the +least appealing ever put upon a canvas. It is hardly a scheme at all, +since I do not believe the juxtaposition of so many different slimy +greens, nowhere properly relieved nor accentuated by a complementary +red, can ever be called a scheme. Technically speaking, the canvas is +well painted, but it is hardly worthy of the attention its size and +subject win. Dagnan-Bouveret has rendered good service as a teacher and +also as a painter of animal life, but in this canvas he surely is not up +to his best. + +The Barbizon men continue to hold one's attention by a splendid Troyon. +It is one of the best of his canvases I have ever seen. The little Diaz +alongside of it is also typical of this very luminous painter, who often +attains a lusciousness of colour in his work not reached by any other of +the Barbizon men. + +Fortuny, in an Algiers picture, shows the same brilliant technical +quality which is so much in evidence in a small watercolor in the +preceding gallery. Jules Bastien-LePage's studio nude seems very +unhappily placed in a naturalistic background into which it does not +fit, and Cazin's big canvas, while very dignified, hardly comes up to +the level of his repenting "Simon Peter", in the other gallery. +Pelouse's landscape, of singularly beautiful composition and colour, +should not be overlooked. It is alongside the Cazin. + +While almost all the pictures referred to so far are of the French +school, there are three pictures of the older German school - two +Lenbachs, one a very accurately drawn portrait of the German philosopher +Mommsen, and the other a portrait of himself. They show this powerful +artist in two different aspects. While the Mommsen is one of his later, +broader pictures, the portrait of himself is of an earlier date, showing +the artist as the serious student he has always been. Adolph Schreyer, +another German, with his Bedouin pictures, was the pet of the art lovers +in his day, and pictures like this can be found in almost every +collection in the world. + +The miscellaneous sculpture in this gallery is full of interest and +gives one a good suggestion of the great mass of small modern sculpture +found throughout the galleries. Mora's Indian figures are particularly +interesting from their originality of theme. Mora tries hard to be +unconventional, without going into the bizarre, and succeeds very well. + +Gallery 61. + +The difference of appearance in the four older galleries discussed and +the one now visited is so marked as to lead one to believe that our +investigations have not been conducted in the proper chronological +order. All the art of the world, up to and including the Barbizon +school, is characterized by a predominant brown colour which, on account +of its warmth, is never disagreeable, although sometimes monotonous. The +daring of the Englishman Constable in painting a landscape outdoors led +to the development of a new point of view, which the older artists did +not welcome. Constable and the men of the Barbizon school realized for +the first time that outdoor conditions were totally different from the +studio atmosphere, and while the work of such men as Corot, Millet, +Daubigny, Rousseau, and Diaz is only slightly removed from the somber +brown of the studio type, it recognizes a new aspect of things which was +to be much farther developed than they ever dreamed. Just as Constable +shocked his contemporaries by his - for that time - vivid outdoor blues +and greens, so the men of the school of 1870, or the impressionists, +surprised and outraged their fellowmen with a type of picture which we +see in control of this delightfully refreshing gallery. We can testify +by this time that Constable, although much opposed in his day, seems +very tame to us today, and caution seems well advised before a final +judgment of impressionism is passed. The slogan of this gallery seems to +be, "More light and plenty of it!" The Monet wall gives a very good idea +of the impressionistic school, in seven different canvases ranging from +earlier more conventional examples to some of his latest efforts. One +more fully understands the goal that these men, like Monet, Renoir, +Sisley, Pissarro, and others in this gallery were striving for when, in +an apparently radical way, they discarded the attitude of their +predecessors, in their search for light. It is true they encountered +technical difficulties which forced them into an opacity of painting +which is absolutely opposed to the smooth, sometimes licked appearance +of the old masters. Many of these men must be viewed as great +experimenters, who opened up new avenues without being entirely able to +realize themselves. They are collectively known generally as +impressionists, though the word "plein-airist" - luminist - has been +chosen sometimes by them and by their admirers. The neo-impressionists +in pictorial principle do not differ from the impressionist. Their +technical procedure is different, and based on an optical law which +proves that pure primary colours, put alongside of each other in +alternating small quantities, will give, at a certain distance, a +freshness and sparkle of atmosphere not attained by the earlier +technical methods of the impressionistic school, which does not in the +putting on of the paint differ from the old school. Besides, this use of +pure paint enabled them to have the mixing of the paint, so to speak, +done on the canvas, as the various primary colours juxtaposed would +produce any desired number of secondary and tertiary colours without +loss of freshness. In other words a green would be produced, not by +mixing yellow and blue on the palette, but by putting a yellow dot and a +blue dot alongside of each other, and so ad infinitum. According to the +form of their colour dots they were called pointillistes, poiristes, and +other more or less self-explanatory names. The service of these men to +art can never be estimated too highly. The modern school of landscape +painting particularly, and other art involving indoor subjects, are +based entirely on the principles Monet discovered to the profession. + +Pissarro, on either end of the wall opposite the Monet, appeals more in +the new method of the neo-impressionists than Monet, by reason of much +more interesting subjects. The one Pissarro on the right is of the first +order from every point of view, demonstrating the superiority of the +neo-impressionistic style applied to a very original and interesting +subject. "The River Seine," by Sisley, is also wonderfully typical of +this new style, while of the two Renoirs, only the still-life can really +be called successful. There is an unfortunate fuzziness in his landscape +which defeats all effect of difference of texture in the various objects +of which this picture is composed. + +There are a number of canvases in this gallery which have nothing to do +with the predominating impressionistic character of the gallery. The +Puvis de Chavannes gives one a very fine idea of the idealistic outlook +of this greatest of all modern decorators. His art is so genuinely +decorative that to see one of his pictures in a frame seems almost +pathetic, when we think how infinitely more beautiful it would look as +part of a wall. Eugène Carrière is very well represented by a stately +portrait of a lady with a small dog. Carrière's mellow richness is +entirely his own and rarely met with in any other artist's work. + +On the west wall opposite the Puvis four very different canvases deserve +to be mentioned. In the center a young Russian, Nicholas Fechin, +displays a very unusual virtuosity in a picture of a somewhat +sensual-looking young creature. Aside from the fascination of this young +human animal, the handling of paint in this canvas is most +extraordinary, possessing a technical quality few other canvases in the +entire exhibition have. There is life, such as very few painters ever +attain, and seen only in the work of a master. This work is not entirely +a Nell Brinkley in oil, either. I confess I have a strange fondness for +this weird canvas. + +The international character of this gallery is most pronounced. Directly +above the Fechin, Frits Thaulow, the Norwegian, justifies his reputation +as the painter of flowing water in a picture of great beauty. Gaston La +Touche faintly discloses in a large canvas his imaginative style, +carried so much farther in his later work. Joseph Bail, the Frenchman, +got into this gallery probably only on the basis of size, to balance the +La Touche on the other side. To all appearances Bail has very little in +common with the general modern character of this gallery. Nevertheless +his canvas has merit in many ways. + + + +Foreign Nations + + + +France + +A discussion of the impressionistic school makes it almost imperative to +continue our investigation by way of the French Section. France is +easily to modern art what Italy was to the art of the Renaissance or +Greece to antiquity. Almost all countries, with the exception of those +of northern Europe, have gone to school at Paris. It becomes quite +evident at first glance that a certain very desirable spaciousness in +the hanging of the pictures contributes much toward the generally +favorable impression of this section of the exhibition, though it is +hard to understand why this fine effect should have been spoiled by the +pattern used on the wall-covering. It seems unbelievable that a people +like the French should so violate a fundamental principle, which a +first-semester art student would scarcely do. The otherwise delightful +impression of the French section, so excellently arranged, is +considerably impaired by this faux pas. There is no chronological +succession in evidence in the hanging of pictures in the six galleries +of this section, and old and new, conservative and radical, are hung +together with no other consideration than harmonious ensemble. + +Gallery 18. + +In the western end of the section presided over by a decorative painting +of some aras among orange trees (over the west door), a beautiful, +almost classic canvas by Henri Georget commands immediate attention. The +poetic idealism of this decorative landscape, together with a fine +joyousness, give it unusual character. Alongside of it a very +intelligently painted little canvas by Albert Guillaume shows the +interior of an art dealer's shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts +to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very +"advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever +psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid +helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized +by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much +neglected field, it is one of the finest things of recent years. On the +extreme left of this wall a very fine bit of painting of an Arabian +fairy tale by E. Dinet deserves to be mentioned. + +Almost opposite this small canvas Lucien Simon has a large picture +painted with the bravura for which he is famous. The atmosphere of this +fine interior is simply and spontaneously achieved, and the three +figures of mother, nurse and balky baby are excellently drawn. The +still-life by Moride, to the left of this picture, shows all the +earmarks of the modern school without sacrificing a certain delicacy of +handling which is often considered by many modern painters a confession +of weakness. A fine Dutch canvas on the extreme left of this wall, by +Guillaume-Roger, attracts by a fine decorative note seldom found in +pictures of French easel painters. + +The east wall of this gallery is distinguished by a number of fine +landscapes by different men. Beginning on the left side of the door +Jules-Emile Zingg presents two tonally skillful winter landscapes of +great fidelity, while on the right is Henry Grosjean's delicate +atmospheric study of a broad valley floor. A decorative watercolour of +the Versailles Gardens, by Mlle. Carpentier, commands admiration by +reason of its fine composition as well as by the economical but +effective technique of putting transparent paint over a charcoal +drawing. The sculpture in this gallery is of no great moment. Like much +of the modern French sculpture it is very well done in a technical sense +without disclosing great concentration of mind. + +Gallery 17. + +A variety of subjects continues to impress one in this gallery. +Portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects, with here and there a +genre note, make the general character of the French exhibit, showing at +every turn the great technical dexterity for which French art has long +been celebrated. There is no picture of outstanding merit in this +gallery, unless one would single out a very sympathetic, simple +landscape by Paul Buffet and the Lucien Griveau landscape called "The +Silver Thread," diagonally opposite, a canvas of rich tonality and +distinctive composition. + +Gallery 16. + +An adjoining gallery toward the east has a great number of excellent +pictures to hold the attention of the visitor. To begin with the figure +painters, the Desch portrait of a little girl in empire costume appeals +by its genuinely original design. The carefully considered pattern +effect of this canvas is most agreeable and well assisted by a very +refined colour scheme. Although a trifle dry, the quality of painting in +this canvas is the same as that which makes Whistler's work so +interesting. This painting is one of the great assets of the French +section, and to my mind one of the great pictures of the entire +exhibition. Balancing the Desch canvas, one finds another figural canvas +of great beauty of design, by Georges Devoux. "Farewell," while of a +sentimental character, is strong in drawing and composition. It is very +consistent throughout. Everything in the picture has been carefully +considered to support the poetic, sentimental character of the painting, +which is admirably delicate and convincing without being disagreeably +weak. + +Jacques-Emile Blanche is represented in this gallery by his well-known +portrait of the dancer Nijinski. A certain Oriental splendor of colour +is the keynote of this canvas, which is much more carelessly painted +than most of Blanche's very clever older portraits. On the opposite wall +Caro-Delvaille shows his dexterity in the portrait of a lady. The lady +is a rather unimportant adjunct to the painting and seems merely to have +been used to support a magnificently painted gown. There is a peculiar +contrast in the very naturalistically painted gown and the severe +interpretation of the face of the sitter. Ernest Laurent's portrait of +Mlle. X is typically French in its loose and suggestive style of +painting, and easily one of the many good portraits in the gallery. + +Among the landscapes Andrè Dauchez' "Concarneau," Charles Milcendeau's +"Washerwomen," on the opposite wall, and last but not least, Renè +Mènard's "Opal Sea" - a small picture of great beauty - deserve +recognition. Pierre Roche has a statuette of Loïe Fuller in this gallery +which is conspicuous by its daring composition and simple treatment. + +Gallery 15. + +Entering this gallery, the first canvas to attract one's attention, by +reason of its boldness of composition and colour, is a large Lucien +Simon called "The Gondola." The versatility of this artist is well +brought out by another picture of a baby, about to be bathed, previously +referred to, and by a third canvas, of "The Communicants," near "The +Gondola." Simon seems to have no difficulty in using several mediums and +styles of expression equally well, as a comparison between "The Gondola" +and "The Communicants" will easily prove. This former picture is the +more original of the two technically, in colour as well as in +composition. It is in danger of losing one's sympathy by a badly +selected frame. Near it hangs a trifolium of virgins, of very anaemic +colour. The drawing, however, is so very sensitive in this canvas that +it makes good for the unconvincing anaemic colour scheme. + +The gem of this gallery is a small landscape of Amédée-Julien +Marcel-Clément, of extraordinarily fine composition. A fine decorative +quality is its chief asset, and its sympathetic technical handling adds +much to the enjoyment of this picture. Bartholemé's kneeling figure in +the center of the room is of wonderful nobility of expression and +entirely free from a certain extreme physical naturalism so often found +in modern French sculpture. + +Gallery 14. + +Passing into the next gallery, where figural pictures predominate, a +very swingy composition of a Brittany festival, by Charles-René +Darrieux, is most conspicuous, for the forceful handling and the fine +quality of movement which characterize the procession of figures +rhythmically moving through the picture. Of the two large nudes on the +same wall, one, a Besnard, is vulgarly physical, although well painted, +and the other too insipid to make one feel that the French penchant for +nudes is sufficiently justified. Le Sidaner's poetic evening recommends +itself for the quiet intimacy with which it is handled. Herrmann Vogel's +portrait of a gentleman in a chair, also on the east wall, while not +very spontaneous in handling, is interesting nevertheless in its +composition and the psychological characterization of the sitter. Most +of the other pictures in this gallery have really not enough individual +character to single them out, no matter how high their general standard +may be. + +Gallery 13. + +The last and smallest of the French galleries is given over to some +recent phases of French art. After looking at the serious work of the +French in the other galleries, a first-hand acquaintance with this +medley of newest pictures is hardly satisfactory. There is a feeling of +affected primitiveness about most of them, particularly in a small +canvas of a bouquet of flowers in a green vase, which is the acme of +absurdity. If Odilon Redon wanted to be trivial, he has achieved +something quite wonderful. Certain ultra-modern manifestations of art +are never more intolerable than when seen together in large numbers, as +in this gallery. Still, the French section can well afford some of these +experimenting talents, since the general character of their other work +is so high. Maurice Denis' canvas of a spring procession, in just a few +silvery tones, is really lovely; the large number of decorations by him, +all around on the second line, scarcely comes up to the beauty of this +small canvas. + +The French representation deserves much credit for a great number of +reasons, not least for an astounding versatility, always accompanied by +technical excellence. + + + +Italy + +Going over into the Italian galleries, the first impression is that +while there are certain groups of pictures of a very high order, the +general standard of this section is not quite so high as in the French +Department. The Italians seem to have the advantage over the French in +regard to the selection of a background for their galleries. They made +no such mistake as putting a Pullman car floor pattern on the wall, and +the general effect is one of calmness. As in the French section, the +work of the modern painter seems superior to sculptured work of the same +period. The work of Tito and of Mancini, among the painters, stands out +in this Italian collection. + +Gallery 21. + +Tito, whose work can be found in a group of five pictures in this +gallery, has a very pronounced decorative sense, which he employs with +great ease in a group of five most excellent pictures. To students of +technical procedure his work is worthy of study. His under-painting is +done in tempera, and sometimes the complete work, as in the cattle +picture, is done in this medium, which, by an application of varnish, is +then transformed into an oil. The most interesting pictures in his group +of five are the two on the right of his wall. The mythological subjects +underlying both canvases have a classic note, but their refreshing +colour scheme removes these pictures from any classic affiliation. The +woodland scene, enlivened by a few hilarious centaurs pursuing nymphs, +is tremendously sure in handling and very gorgeous in the many golden +browns and greens which control the colour scheme. The kneeling Venus +alongside is unusually alluring in its blue and gold tones, and is one +of the really fine pictures in the exhibition. While the Venus and the +Centaurs are the backbone of the Italian section, Tito's "Blue Lady" is +very chic and, as a colour arrangement of blue-blacks and flesh colour, +most decorative. The canvas in the center, evidently belonging to an +older period of the artist, has nothing of the direct method of the +accomplished master, although in composition it has a certain bigness. +Tito's art has the full and rich expression of an original personality. + +The landscapes in this gallery, of which there are a goodly number, are +all typically Italian in their artificiality of colour and in a certain +sweetness which makes them lose in one's estimation the longer one +studies them. Clever as they are technically, they do not convince and +they do not reflect a thorough knowledge of the spirit of outdoors. All +one admires in the Barbizon men - the lyric feeling of a Corot or the +more dramatic note of a Rousseau - is missing in the modern Italian +landscape as seen in these pictures. They are flippant in their catchy +technique and in the absence of any thought. + +Gallery 22. + +This room is dominated by three portraits by Antonio Mancini, of unusual +cleverness and very fine psychological characterization. Mancini's work +grows on one. While seeming at first rather loose and superficial, these +portraits disclose on more intimate study a fine constructive quality. +They are not particularly interesting in colour; as a matter of fact +they are very monochromatic. Their appeal is based on an intensely +serious quality of studious experimentation, which a very sketchy +technique cannot hide. To the left of the three Mancinis hangs a simple +picture of large proportions called "Maternity," by Pietro Gaudenzi. +This is one of those modern interpretations of the birth of Jesus which +appeals by the individualistic note. The picture is sympathetic by +reason of its restriction to a few simple facts. No doubt it will fail +to receive a wide appreciation, since sociologically any picture of its +type disclosing human life under poverty-stricken conditions is rarely +approved by the public. Nevertheless one of the greatest of all stories +is, with feeling and restraint alike, well rendered on this canvas. + +On the opposite wall Arturo Noci has a very striking interior. There is +nothing tricky about this most effective canvas. The result is simply +and directly attained by good, sound painting. The red curtain in the +distant room is a trifle raw and refuses somewhat to take its place in +the picture. Two landscapes on this wall deserve mention for their fine +skies and their decorative note. Giuseppe Carosi's little landscape with +the oxen is so much better than the one below by the same artist that it +is hard to believe both were done by the same man. "La Valle dell' +Aniene," by Dante Ricci, is big in feeling, well painted, and +unquestionably one of the best landscapes in the Italian section. + +Gallery 23. + +The east gallery is almost entirely given over to sculpture, with one +exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a +painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot +fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to +imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured +could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. It +seems to me an absolutely futile thing to try to represent something in +a medium very badly chosen for this particular stunt. A stunt it is, and +always will be, no matter how much we admire the painstaking drawing and +the infinite care involved. Texturally the canvas is all wrong, because +the sky, the stone, everything in the picture, looks like glass and not +like the various things it is intended to represent. However, it is a +wonderful piece of patience - so much should be said for it. + +Millet's man with the hoe sitting down is the strongest piece of +sculpture in this gallery. The figure doubtless belongs to an older +school, as its discolorations as well as its technical treatment +indicate. Alongside the rest of the things in this small room it is, in +spite of being carried somewhat too far, very forceful and convincing. +No matter whether the man succumbed to the dreariness of work or to the +malarial fever of the Pontine swamps, all that has ever been said about +Millet's man and the terrible fatalism of his facial expression is found +in this piece of sculpture. + +Rodin's influence is making itself felt in most of the other pieces in +this room, as in the Vedani kissing pair. The beautiful colour in the +marble in this group puts much life into it. Nicolini's work shows much +breadth and a fine mastery of form. A frame of animal plaques by Brozzi +adds considerably to the artistic merit of the sculpture. A certain +muscular mannerism is evident in all of them, though not in the least +disturbing. + +Gallery 24. + +Two portraits by Enrico Lionne of very repulsive colour are prominently +hung in the east gallery, without convincing one in the least of this +artist's high standing at home. Cold and artificial, they are not +deserving of the prominent place they occupy. Near the door on the +opposite wall Vincenzo Yrolli presents a street musician and his +audience in a canvas riotous with good colour. The composition and the +literal technical treatment of this work commend themselves highly by +good judgment and spontaneous handling. The two figure pictures by +Pietro Chiesa, on an adjoining wall to the right, ought to be +remembered, and also an interior on the opposite wall by Vianello. + +Gallery 25. + +In the last of the Italian galleries, on the west wall, we observe the +unusual spectacle of a whole family of artists distinguishing itself in +a group of pictures. There is Beppe Ciardi, the father; Guglielmo, the +son; and Emma, the daughter. All of their pictures are conspicuous for +their saneness and big feeling. The father, Beppe, with the center +canvas, has not the breadth and bigness that is so typical of both the +son's pictures of similar subjects. The skies in the younger man's +pictures are particularly fine. The daughter's single canvas, on the +left, to me seems even better than those of both father and brother. A +certain imaginative quality, shown in this big formal garden, +constitutes Emma Ciardi's superiority over the rest of the family. On +the whole the showing of this family is excellent in every way. + +The landscapes in this gallery are far above those mentioned in the Tito +gallery. In fact there are so many other good pictures that a mere +mention of names must suffice. From the Ciardi group on toward the +right, Guido Marussig's "Walled City", Italico Brass' "Pontoon Bridge", +and particularly Scattola's "Venice" are all worthy of comment. +Scattola's picture is very sensitively studied, discreetly painted and +full of the poetry of a summer night. Before leaving the Italian +section, Mentessi's big imaginative architectural study should be +appreciated. It will crystallize the visitor's opinion of the general +excellence of Italy's contribution to the exhibition. + +As a matter of racial tradition, and not so much because of similarity +of standards, we are almost obliged to continue our investigations into +the other nations most closely allied with the Latin people, of Southern +Europe and elsewhere. There is much room to believe that in a +contemporaneous art exhibition the Paris influence should make itself +felt in more than one way. Paris, after all, is the Mecca of all art +students, particularly of the foreign Latin countries. The technical +superiority of the French school of painting has for years caused an +influx of foreign students into Paris, who are now giving us, in such +national sections as those of Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, and +the Philippine Islands, the result of this contact. It will easily be +seen that unless a distinct national outlook, based on scenery, climate, +history, and tradition generally, is added to the mere technical +performance, no matter how clever, a national art can hardly develop. So +we find that with all the good intentions in the art of any of the +countries mentioned, very little typical national expression is brought +out. In choice of subject and colour scheme the art of all of these +countries is very much alike. + + + +Portugal + +The Portuguese section does not present any great painter such as Spain, +for instance, has produced in Sorolla or Zuloaga, though both seem to be +very much admired by all Latin painters, as well as by some of the +Germanic artists, as a certain canvas of a Dutch lady in the Holland +section will demonstrate. + +Nudes are still in vogue, or rather naked women, and probably will be as +long as the sale of strong drink needs to be increased by the kind of +creation commonly known as the saloon picture. There is surely nothing +nobler than the truly idealized interpretation of the human figure by +artistic means, but the purposely sensuous nude is becoming rather a +bore. Painting flesh is one of the most difficult of all things, +particularly as to the correct texture, but there ought to be a limit in +the production of such a type of picture as the one by Veloso Salgado in +the Portuguese section. + +Here a great variety of subjects is treated, mostly with entirely too +much realism. Photographic truthfulness is not the function of painting, +because, first of all, the medium will not allow it without losing a +certain quality indicating the fact that it is painting; and secondly, +art can only be an approximation anyhow, and it should carry its point +by forceful and convincing suggestion rather than by a tightly rendered +photographic fact. The great pictures are first those of a strong +suggestive quality and, secondly, those possessing a certain something +the artist calls design - meaning thereby a more or less arbitrary +arrangement of form and colour effects which will please the eye. The +idea of design has not struck the Portuguese artist as yet; at least it +is not apparent in the pictures of that section. The technical +excellence of their work is uniform and in some cases very creditable, +particularly in the many small canvases by Senhor de Sousa Lopes, the +art commissioner of his country. + +Continuing in the western gallery of the Portuguese section, directly +opposite the nude referred to, an outdoor sewing circle by José Malhoa +arouses interest. The outdoor quality in this canvas is very pronounced, +and the gay enlacement of the luxuriant wistaria with the orange trees +in the distance, together with the multi-coloured ensemble of children, +make for a lovely effect. The middle gallery doubtless holds Portugal's +most important claims upon artistic distinction, in the group of three +portraits and two still-lifes by Columbano. The three portraits are +unusually dignified and psychologically suggestive enough to show that +the painter was not interested in exterior facts alone. The portrait of +the bearded gentleman in the middle is fine, though somewhat academic in +colour. The two little still-lifes wedged in between the larger +portraits are exquisite in every way, and make up for a lot of +superficialities found in this section. All around in this gallery, in +more than a dozen sketches from Spain and Italy, Sousa Lopes shows fine +ability in the handling of paint and great power of observation. All of +these apparently recent things by Senhor Lopes are far more enjoyable +than a huge "Pilgrimage", which, while well painted, is too scattered. +The unity of feeling in the work of Columbano is much more necessary in +a canvas of this size than in a small sketch. (Rembrandt's famous +"Nightwatch" and Velasquez's "Surrender of Breda" illustrate this point +very well.) Malhoa's well-painted interior called "The Native Song" has +more of this desirable feeling of oneness, which may be due to the fact +that it deals with an indoor setting, while de Sousa Lopes' "Pilgrimage" +in the adjoining gallery presents a far more difficult problem in the +reflected and glaring light effect of a southern country. Among the +sculptures of this country Vaz Jor's "Grandmother" is of unusually high +merit and intensely well studied. On the whole there is more academic +training in evidence than originality of expression, but we may expect +good things hereafter from the art of this country, which practically at +no time in the history of art has produced any really great name. + + + +Argentina + +Retracing our steps, we invade the Argentine, in a well-appointed +gallery. The first general impression is very good, though on closer +examination nothing of really great merit holds one's attention for any +length of time. While naturalism reigns in Portugal, a more pronounced +decorative conventional note predominates in this section, particularly +in the portraiture. There is a peculiar superabundance of purple and +dark reds in the Argentine section, which gives this gallery a morbid +quality. On the main wall, in the left corner, Héctor Nava has a very +distinguished "Lady in Black". Among all of the portraits on this wall +it is easily the best, although some charming interiors of a singularly +cool tonality are not without interest. They are too reminiscent of +Frieseke to convince one of their originality. Another "Black Lady", +continuing toward the right on the next wall, has much to recommend her. +A better frame would enhance the merit of this canvas. + +There is no landscape of any importance in the Argentine section, no +matter how hard the effort to find one. They are all singularly +artificial. A small harbor picture by Pedro Delucchi is strong in +colour, as well as in technical treatment. It has an unusual wealth of +colour, and great richness which contrasts strongly with the general +coldness of this section. + + + +Uruguay + +Here another South American republic holds forth in a small gallery off +the Italian section. The gallery is dominated by a large equestrian +portrait of General Galarza, by Blanes Viale. A certain fondness for +disagreeable greens and for decorative effects is noticeable in this +gallery, and one is not convinced of the necessity for a more +comprehensive display. + + + +Cuba + +The same remark applies to the Cuban section, where Romanach's +Düsseldorf style of picture shows at least good academic training, +without rising, however, above illustration in any one of the very well +painted figure pictures. Rodriguez Morey's big, intimate foreground +studies are commendable for their faithfulness and for a certain poetic +quality which takes them out of the realm of mere accurate truthfulness. + + + +Philippine Islands + +The small Philippine section makes one curious to know whether there is +nothing in the tradition of this people related to the art of Asia that +could serve as a basis for their artistic endeavors. To any +serious-minded person it must be evident that the Filipino is not going +to work out his artistic salvation by way of the Paris studio. It must +come out of the soil, so to speak, and must be based on the racial, +religious, and other national elements. It would do the Filipino people +good to see their collection in close proximity to that of other +nations. Aside from that, a natural sequence of artistic development by +developing the more decorative arts of making useful things beautiful - +such things as pots and pans, rugs, and jewelry - would be much more +becoming than this European affectation. The real art of the Filipinos +is to be seen in their art industries in the Philippine Building. + + + +The Orient + +For historical reasons alone, if not for supremacy along artistic lines, +Japan and China should by right be dealt with at the very beginning. But +having had, since time immemorial, a very detached, highly original +note, they fit in anywhere, if not best in between the art of the +Romanic and Germanic races. Practically the entire world owes a great +debt to Japan, for a certain outlook in decorative art has been adopted +from Japan by the best artists of the world. Oriental art is so truly an +art of the people, devoting itself most closely to the artistic +development of the utilitarian things of life, that to see them at their +best one has to look at their furniture, including folding screens, +pottery, jewelry, rugs, and practically everything else that is needed +in the daily life of the people. The art of China and Japan is so old +that its real origin is almost a matter of guesswork, and has a certain +general obscurity to most outsiders, owing to language, religion, and +customs. This has led to a commercial exploitation of their art in +Europe, and in America particularly, based mostly on humbug and partly +on facts. If all the pottery, rugs and furniture said to have come from +distinguished artists and from even more distinguished circles of +ownership, mostly palaces of the Ming dynasty, were enumerated, there +would be nothing left to have come from the atmosphere of the ordinary +Oriental. The Japanese and Chinese are taking quick advantage of the +guilelessness of the western lover of art, and much that is to be seen +in either one of the two sections is rather a concession to western +demand than to native Oriental talent. Only the special student of +oriental art will consent to learn enough of the Japanese or Chinese +language to familiarize himself with any other than the commonly known +artists of these countries, and all that one can do within the frame of +an international exhibition is to single out those things which appeal +on the basis of certain artistic principles which are the same the world +over. To go into the many religious and other sentimental considerations +which are sometimes the basic justification for some very extraordinary +fantastic things, charmingly exploited by certain art dealers, is +impossible within the scope of this book. + + + +Japan + +The Japanese people, at the extreme southern end of the Palace of Fine +Arts, have a representative show of painted screens, of extraordinary +beauty. Anyone, without being in the least familiar with the fauna and +flora of Japan, must admire the tremendously acute power of observation +and surety of drawing which made these designs possible. The two sixfold +screens by Taisei Minakami on the east wall of the eastern gallery are +probably the most magnificently daring examples of modern Japanese art. +To the student of design they offer a most stimulating opportunity for +study. Acutely observed, their tropical subjects, very daring in colour, +are exhaustively beautiful. The spacing of the design, the relative +distribution of the few daring colours against a gold background of +wonderful texture, combine in a picture of great vitality. The art of no +people is so scientific as that of these people, whose every effort, no +matter how insignificant, is technically always sound. Our modern art +schools could very profitably imitate the Japanese principle of teaching +their young students how to do a thing well and of leaving the choice of +subjects to their own inclination. + +Almost opposite, a vertical composition of a lumber camp on a +mountainside, by Bunto Hayashi, attracts by an unusual subject very +descriptively rendered. The picture belongs to the older school, not so +much for the lack of colour, which is often erroneously identified with +the older Japanese works, as for a certain quality of less decoration +and of more detailed treatment of the drawing. The drawing is, of +course, the important element in all Japanese art, since all of their +work has to yield a great deal of pleasure of the intellectual kind at +close distance, on account of the smallness of Japanese dwellings, which +keeps the owner of the picture in close proximity with his artistic +possessions. A picture of crows in a rainstorm, on the same wall, on the +right side of the southern door, and also a very characteristic study of +some kind of cedar, with birds on the left of it, give one an excellent +idea of the astonishing variety of material that the Japanese artist +successfully controls. + +In two irregularly shaped triangular galleries adjoining, Shodo Hirata +maintains the standard of the first gallery, not to forget, either, +Toyen Oka with his oleander bush and the cat on the picturesque fence. +Tesshu Okajima's hollyhock screens are marvels of decorative simplicity, +while Kangai Takakura uses a washday as a motive for a double twofold +screen decoration. The last two artists can both be found in the second +irregular triangular gallery, opposite the first one mentioned. The +central octagonal gallery also is devoted to screen pictures, done by +means of embroidery. Some of them, largely those of native design, are +successful in really giving the quality of the subjects depicted, but +cannot grow enthusiastic over two unduly protected screen embroideries, +a German marine and an English pair of lions, done in silk. They are +both as hard as nails and devoid of any real suggestion of the spirit +which animates either water or lions in reality. If it is so great an +achievement as we are often asked to believe to do certain things in +badly chosen material, then why not try to reproduce Rafael's "Sistine +Madonna" with thumbtacks? Most such attempts to find an agreeable +substitute for the various painting media are merely silly. + +Sharing the hospitality of the cases with the embroidery pictures are +the wood sculptures, some of which are intensely interesting, as, for +instance, the "Man with the Spade." The underlying idea of cubism is +very intelligently embodied in this small figure, without any +affectation. The many small woodblock prints to be seen here do credit +to the reputation which Japanese artists have long enjoyed in this +special field. + +The remaining smaller galleries are given over to replicas of the +originals of older art, modern sculpture, and painting in the modern +style. Why the modern Japanese artists want to divorce themselves from +the traditions of their forefathers seems incomprehensible. There is not +a thing in the western style in this gallery of Japanese painting that +comes anywhere near giving one the artistic thrills won by their +typically Japanese work. I think the sooner these wayward sons are +brought back into the fold of their truly Oriental colleagues, the +better it will be for the national art of Japan, the most profound art +the world has ever seen. + + + +China + +The first impression of the Chinese section is disappointing. There is +no real life in any of the work here displayed, and most of it consists +of modern replicas - some of very excellent quality - of their oldest +and best art treasures. The Chinese seem to be absolutely content to +rest upon their old laurels, the fragrance of which can hardly ever be +exhausted; but nevertheless that does not relieve them of the obligation +of working up new problems in a new way. There is so much religious and +other sentiment woven into their art that to the casual observer much of +the pleasure of looking at the varied examples of applied art is spoiled +by the necessity of having to read all of the longwinded stories +attached to many of them. The freshness of youth, the spirit of +progress, which enliven the Japanese section, are entirely missing in +this display, which seems like a voice from the past - a solemn monument +to an old civilization without any connection with the New Republic and +its modern pretensions. I am afraid China is laboring under conditions +of internal strife which are detrimental to the development of any +artistic expression. + + + +Sweden + +Of all the foreign nations represented, with the exception of Japan and +China, none possesses so distinct a national character as the art of +Sweden. I cannot help expressing my personal conviction that it is the +best national section in the whole exhibition, showing, as it does, not +merely easel painting, but also many splendid examples of so-called +applied art, which often permits one to get a deeper insight into the +standard of art of a people than easel painting alone. It is true that +certain examples of painting in the French or American sections are more +appealing to us, but in the light of the national characteristics of the +people and the country, Swedish art has a very definite quality, +consistently shown. Their work has a robustness which has nothing to do +with the salon aspect of the art of southern Europe, particularly +France. In fact it is almost opposed to the art of the Romanic races, +and distinctly apart from the art of Germany. It is fortunate Sweden +could make such a splendid showing without the support of the art of +such a man as Anders Zorn, who, while decidedly Swedish, is after all +much of a cosmopolitan painter, with all the earmarks of an +international training. The art of the most artistic of all people, that +of the French, is often said to have a decadent note. In comparison, +Swedish art may be said to be absolutely robust, healthy, and vigorous, +without being coarse. To those who pretend to find a certain physical +brutality in Swedish art, I should like to point out that the most +delicate pictures in the entire exhibition - those of John Bauer - are +the chief asset of the Swedish exhibit. The great variety of the work in +this section makes it very interesting, and permits, as said before, +close insight into many phases of modern art. + +The most pronounced individualities in the collection, covering all +fields, are Bruno Liljefors, Gustav Fjaestad, Carl Larsson, John Bauer, +Mr. and Mrs. Boberg, David Edström, Mas-Olle, and others too numerous to +mention. Bruno Liljefors for many years has been known internationally +as one of the best of animal painters, and particularly of sea fowl. He +has had the experience common to many great artists, of working himself +up from very academic beginnings to a wonderful personality of marked +freedom. His canvas of the nine wild swans is perhaps the biggest single +picture in the entire Exposition. It is immediately suggestive of a +decoration, and to think of it in that sense, as a part of a wall seen +from a great distance, makes one almost tremble with expectation. This +truly great picture is a rhythmic masterpiece. The placing of these +graceful swans is marvelously well studied from the point of view of +design, yet none the less does an expression of reality animate these +divine birds. There is something about swans which puts them even above +the king of birds, the eagle. I can conceive of men killing any animal, +but the thought of one of these noble birds falling victim to man's +perverse desires is incomprehensible to me. Of the other pictures by the +same artist, the flock of wild geese, standing in the shallow water of a +stony beach, carries all the conviction of being well studied which +applies to any of Liljefors' pictures. The eagles and the seagulls are +scarcely as interesting as the swans. Liljefors is never better than +when he depicts flying birds - and fly they do. There is never any doubt +about it. Those swans are actually in the air, and moving. A certain +disagreeable fuzziness in the skies of all of his pictures interferes +somewhat with their full enjoyment. + +Of the other painters Mrs. Boberg should be mentioned next. She is the +wife of Ferdinand Boberg, the architect of the Swedish Building, who +himself, as a true artist excelling in a number of things, has a +splendid collection of etchings in the long black and white gallery +adjoining the Liljefors' room. Mrs. Anna Boberg's pictures, in a very +small gallery at the eastern end of this section, are not advantageously +hung. Her work is so decorative, and so painted for distant effect, that +to see it close at hand is disappointing. The eleven of her pictures are +unusual in subject and for that reason win less sympathy than they +deserve. All of them were painted on a trip she made with her husband to +the Lofoden islands, and when one considers the proverbial coldness of +the Arctic seas, her interpretations seem marvelous in their beauty and +richness of colour. A study of their titles in the catalogue seems +hardly necessary for understanding of their meaning, and I for one am +perfectly satisfied to feast on the gorgeous colouring and the great +veracity they possess. Some of them are already sold, a most surprising +thing when one considers that to most people a picture actually executed +in three dimensions is seldom considered meritorious. I do think that +while the physical width and height of Mrs. Boberg's pictures are +governed by conventional considerations, a little less depth of paint +might accomplish the same solid appearance without making one feel like +slipping sideways past them into the next gallery for fear of knocking +off a few lumps of paint. + +In the adjoining gallery, a somewhat larger one on the east, Gustav +Fjaestad's very fine decorations form what we are in the habit of +calling a "one-man show." Mr. Fjaestad certainly has the decorative +feeling, whether he paints a picture or designs a rug. In fact all of +his pictures look like designs for rugs. And why not? If a wall rug is a +decoration, a picture should be one in just the same way. It is hard to +single out among the many good examples the best one, and it may be left +to the taste of the individual, who among nothing but good things cannot +make a poor choice. The time will come again when our artists will find +it honourable and profitable to apply their talents to utilitarian art, +as does Fjaestad, and the interrelated activities of the Swedish in both +fine and applied arts afford a lesson which is by no means new. It is +the basic condition on which the art of the Renaissance flourished that +develops men like the Swedes. + +There is a big difference between Liljefors and Mrs. Boberg, or again +between her and Fjaestad, but not any greater than between all of these +artists and John Bauer. John Bauer's paintings are exquisite, and even +such abused adjectives as "sweet" and "delicate" are not out of place +when applied to his work. I hope we have some enlightened person among +us who can afford to buy the whole batch of them, and do it quickly, +before any more of them are sold singly. It takes more time to enjoy +these little fairy tales than one can afford to give to them. They +possess everything a good illustrative painting ought to have. A wealth +of ideas imaginatively represented, good drawing, and intimate feeling +tell of the keen pleasure the artist must have had in producing these +gems. + +As an illustrator, though very different, Carl Larsson appeals in a +comprehensive group of pictures in another gallery. Carl Larsson's +extraordinary resourcefulness in getting everything he needs out of the +confines of his home has for years been the cause of his great +popularity abroad, and in his thirty-three cheerful drawings he +discloses his entire home life, in all the variety of happenings which +makes married existence a success. His drawing is faultless, his sense +of colour supple and refreshing, and his ability to make such extensive +use of the relatively narrow atmosphere of his home without exhausting +it proves his caliber. Larsson has a roommate of great distinction and +modesty in Oscar Bergman, who has contributed some twenty tender bits of +northern landscapes and marines. They are reminiscent of the Japanese, +although it becomes almost foolish to think of the Japanese every time +someone develops a capacity for acute observation and drawing. Bergman's +little lighthouse is particularly convincing and, like most of these +things, should not be allowed to return to the artist. + +I shall probably have to retrench in attention to the American section +if I keep on giving pages to this section. But in spite of their great +merit, the work of Kallstenius, Schultzberg, Carlberg, and Osslund will +have to go with only meager reference. Osslund's pictures are somewhat +startling at first, owing to a complexity of technical treatment. He +does not seem to be working in the right medium, for I believe his +Japanesque landscapes could be far more sympathetically presented in +watercolour. Of the group comprising his work, his "Waterfall", "Summer +Evening", and "Evening on Angermann Land" are very fascinating. +Mas-Olle's portraits are interesting not only for good technical +painting but also for fine characterization. His portrait of an old +peasant of Dalecarlia is almost faultless. Near the Mas-Olle portrait +Herman Lindquist has a "Sunny April Day" of unusual poetic claim. +Schultzberg's big sunlit winter scenes hardly need recommendation to +justify their increasing popularity. Alfred Bergstrom's poetic +landscapes add more interest, in the small adjoining room on the east. +Marine pictures by Hullgren are the only contributions in that field, +but quite sufficient to maintain the general standard of excellence. The +drunken man seated at a café table is psychologically interesting. As an +object lesson to discourage the consumption of liquor it is the most +effective picture I have ever seen, and certain interests would do well +to buy it for that reason alone, not to speak of the relief this would +afford. Ernst Küsel's animal pictures, opposite John Bauer's delightful +group, seem quite out of place. His ducks and the goats are satisfactory +enough, but I wish he had to live with that calf picture and see it +every day. Küsel is undoubtedly humourously inclined, without knowing +proper limitations. + +The sculpture of the Swedes is of the same unusual excellence that +commands so much respect in their other work. Edstrom easily outranks +his fellow-artists in his group of naturalistic and conventional +architectural heads, in the Liljefors gallery, while in the long and +narrow adjoining gallery a multitude of excellent etchings, drawings, +and black and white work compel mention. They hardly need any +explanation, since in their very character they readily convey their +meaning. One could dwell at greater length upon this most representative +of all national displays, but I fear that it would have to be done at +the expense of the American section, which hospitality has already +placed under a disadvantage. + + + +Holland + +The Netherlands representation is conspicuous for its conservative note, +together with the absence of any single picture which might unduly +excite one by its merit. I do not wish to prejudice the art lover who +strolls into this well appointed section, but coming from Sweden, as we +do, so to speak, since it is Sweden's next door neighbor, it gives one +rather a shock. Most of the Dutch pictures are good, almost too good, in +their academic conventional repetition of the timeworn subjects we have +been in the habit of seeing for the last twenty years. The Swedish +section is full of real thrills, but the complacency of the Netherlands +section can hardly be explained by their national temperament alone. +While the Swedish people seem to be blessed just now with an unusual +number of men of great gifts in the field of art, the Netherlands have +entered into what I hope will be only an interregnum of not overly +original painters. The last quarter of the last century saw their glory +in the careers of men like the elder Israels, the Mesdags, the Maris, +Jacob and Willem, Bosbom, Mauve, Weissenbruch, Poggenbeck, and many +others who have departed during the last ten years, or who, if still +living, have scarcely maintained their high standards of earlier days. +The most illustrious name among the older men is Willem Mesdag, who can +hardly be expected at his age to be doing his best. Speaking of Mesdag, +one of their best marine painters of the older days, one is forcibly +reminded of the fact that though a people of the sea the Dutch do not +seem to possess a single strong marine painter. One looks in vain for +any pictures of the open sea reflecting the seafaring traditions and +activities of the Dutch, and if it were not for Mastenbroek's masterly +harbor pictures, one would have to console oneself over this lack of the +briny element with a view of the Amsterdam Marine Aquarium. +Mastenbroek's big canvas is full of life and well painted. It shows the +harbor of Rotterdam animated by a host of vessels of all kinds and +descriptions. While there is a fine feeling of loose accidental +arrangement about this big picture, it is nevertheless well composed. +His small canvas in the adjoining gallery is technically superb, and to +my mind the best canvas in the whole Dutch show. In the middle of the +same wall Gorter's very decorative autumnal landscape, of a group of +beech-trees, commends itself by an unusual feeling for colour and +design, so lacking in the two almost monochromatic, untemperamental +Witsens on either side. Almost opposite in the same gallery, the most +western in the Netherlands section, hangs a broadly painted canvas by +Breitner, of the timber harbor of Amsterdam. It is not so original a +subject as one is accustomed to see from Breitner, but fully deserving +of the best place on the wall. Thérèse van Duyl-Schwartze's portrait +alongside is equal to her usual performances, and very broad in style +and full of vigor. Jurres' "Don Quixote", Goedvriend's little canvas, +and Bauer's "Oriental Equestrian" should all be mentioned in this +gallery. + +In the middle gallery, on the right of the big Mastenbroek, Christian +Addicks' "Mother and Child" charms by its richness of colouring, while +in the left corner hangs a very decorative still-life in the best manner +of such old Dutch painters as Hondekoeter. Nicolaas Bastert has a +typical Dutch canal, and Willy Sluiter a good study of a Volendam +fisherman. One gallery is entirely devoted to etchings, woodcuts, and +mezzotints, and the standard maintained in this gallery is high. +Martinus Bauer's three etchings are among the finest to be seen anywhere +in the exhibition, and the work of Harting, van Hoytema, and Haverman do +not fall much below his standard. There is young Israels (Isaac) with +some very snappy sketches. Nieuwenkamp is intensely interesting in the +few things he has there, with a certain sense of humor which is +conspicuous for its absence in most Dutch work. The woodcuts of Veldheer +are vital and unusually free from any academic feeling. Considering the +relative size of the Netherlands, they have a remarkably large number of +artists, but scarcely of sufficient bigness of caliber and independence +of character to live up to the traditions of this people. + + + +Germany + +Very modestly tucked away and surrounded by art of the few remaining +neutral nations, in a small gallery adjoining Holland and Sweden, +Germany unofficially and probably even without her knowledge is +represented by a small group of pictures which after many adventures +reached the hospitable shores of California. Originally exhibited at the +last Carnegie Institute Exhibition at Pittsburgh, they found themselves +on the high seas on their return voyage at the beginning of the war, +only to be captured by an English cruiser whose captain was so painfully +struck by the undeniable evidences of German Kultur that instead of +taking them to England he returned them to the United States, to be +included eventually in our exhibition. It would be very wrong to +generalize upon the standard of German art from this small display, but +a number of these pictures can well afford to go entirely upon their own +merit. + +Zügel's cattle picture is a canvas of the first order, by one of the +very important modern animal painters, a man whose fame has penetrated +into all lands where art is at all cultivated. The silvery light of a +summer morning, filtering through overhanging willow-trees upon the +backs of a few Holstein cows, is full of life and admirably loose in its +treatment. Above Zügel, Leo Putz, another Munich man, has a lady near a +pond, broadly painted, and executed in the peculiar Putz method of +square, mosaic-like paint areas which melt into a soft harmony of tender +grays and greens. Stuck's "Nocturne" is affected and unconvincing and +scarcely representative of this master's style. The many other men give +a good account of themselves, particularly Curt Agthe, whose classic +"Nude at the Spring" is of wonderful surface quality. Wenk has an +Italian marine and Benno Becker a landscape from the same country. +Göhler's "Castle Terrace" has a particularly fine sky and a true rococo +atmosphere. Hans von Volkmann's "Field of Ripe Grain" is typical of this +Karlsruhe painter, whose stone lithographs have given German art a +unique place in the art world. + + + +The United States + + + +Almost one-third of the entire Fine Arts Palace is occupied by the art +of the United States, and considering the privileges it enjoys, we have +no reason to offer any excuses. One thing should be said, a fact which +must force itself immediately upon any careful observer - that we have +been very hospitable to the foreign nations at the loss of our own +physical comfort. The growing demand from some of the foreign nations +for more space than originally applied for has crowded the American +section in some instances into rather uncomfortable conditions. On the +other hand we do not seem to have acquired such attractive ways of +hanging our pictures as the Swedes, Hollanders, or Italians practice; +probably for lack of funds. At any rate the American section looks very +businesslike and very democratic, without all the frills and fancies of +other nations, where every psychological advantage has been taken in +order to make things palatable. We have even been criticized for our +lack of spaciousness in hanging, but let us not grieve over this, since +it does at least save steps in walking from one picture to the next. + +Gallery 60. + +Our historical section is largely a mausoleum of portraits which really +have no other excuse for existence than historical interest, unless one +excepts the always excellent portraits of Gilbert Stuart, who certainly +stands out in all that dull company of his fellow-painters of his own +time. He is about the only one who can claim professional standards of +workmanship as well as lifelike characterization of his sitters. His +group of pictures on wall A does his great talent full justice. The +mellow richness of the portrait of General Dearborn stands out as a fine +painting among the many hard and black historical documents in this +gallery. The Captain Anthony portrait above is not less important. I +think his technical superiority and breadth of manner must be doubly +appreciated when one considers the absence of any artistic inspiration +in this country in Stuart's time, although he had the advantage of +several lengthy visits abroad, where he was received with approval by +profession and public alike. Most other portraits in this gallery are +lacking in any individual note and are hopelessly stiff and academic in +colour. Not even the very apparent influence of the great English +portrait masters of their time could save them from mediocrity. The only +pictures worth excepting from this classification, outside of the +Stuarts, are Charles Elliott's "Colonel McKenney" and S. B. Waugh's +portrait of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor. + +Gallery 59. + +In an adjoining gallery toward the north, our chronological +investigations bring us into an atmosphere of story-telling pictures of +the most pronounced Düsseldorf and Munich styles. This period has always +been the source of delight to the populace, which has no concern in the +technical qualities of a picture, a contention which led, more than +anything else, to the healthy reaction we now enjoy as the modern +school. The sentimental tone of most of these pictures and their +self-explanatory illustrative motives no doubt make them easily the lazy +man's delight, but I cannot help feeling that most of their themes could +much more successfully be approached through literature than through the +painter's art. Most of them explain themselves immediately, and those +which do not are helped along by descriptive titles fastened to the +frames, as the taste of that school demands. The great men of this +school in Germany were primarily great painters. Men like Defregger, +Knaus, Vautier, Grützner, Kaulbach, and others will always command high +respect by their technical achievements, no matter how we may disagree +with their choice of subjects. The really worthy ones we have produced +in this field of genre painting are to be found in other galleries and +are represented by men like Hovenden, Currier, and Johnson. The only +real painting among the many figure pictures in this gallery is Peter +Frederick Rothermel's "Martyrdom of St. Agnes." Very rich in colour and +big in composition, it compels great respect. + +We have now reached the middle of the last century, when the influence +of the Barbizon school asserted itself and caused increasing interest in +landscape painting, a field which up to that time had been mixed up with +historical motives, as in a typical composite canvas by Cole (Thomas), +who generally ranks as the most important of the Hudson River School of +landscape painters. There is really not enough artistic moment to this +American group to dignify it by the name of a school. For historical +reasons, however, this classification is very convenient. Cole's four +sketches for the "Voyage of Life" show strong imagination, giving the +impression, however, that he was more interested in mythology than in +the art of painting. + +The first intimation of a really original step in American outdoor +painting, as based on the discoveries of the school of 1825, the +Barbizon school, one receives in this gallery in a number of small +canvases by some of the men we have chosen to classify as the painters +of the Great West. Into this group are put Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, +and Albert Bierstadt. They are so very closely identified with the West +that they are of particular interest to us. Their artistic careers were +as spectacular as their subjects. Stirred by the marvelous tales of the +great scenic wonders of the West, they heroically threw themselves into +a task that no artist could possibly master. They approached their +gigantic subjects with correspondingly large canvases, without ever +giving the essential element, of their huge motives, namely, a certain +feeling of scale, of monumentality, as compared to the pigmy size of the +human figure. Really great pictures of the Yellowstone, the Grand Cañon, +and the lofty mountain-tops still remain to be painted. The daring and +courage of these men has benefited our art very much in a technical +sense. The study of panoramic distances and the necessity for closely +observing out-of-doors new subjects which could not be studied in the +work of other painters, led to a facility in the handling of paint which +really constitutes the chief merit of these artists. In this gallery +(59) two small outdoor sketches by Thomas Hill give a good suggestion of +this Californian's great dexterity in handling paint. His career has +been so closely identified with the Yosemite Valley, where he lived and +died, that these two sketches will serve as a reminder of the very +faithfully studied larger pictures he for many years produced. Peter +Moran, a brother of Thomas, has a cattle picture in this gallery which +needs the backing up of the reputation of the whole Moran family to be +accepted. + +Gallery 58. + +Chronological order is not entirely maintained in gallery 58, where two +large Bierstadt pictures are in control. Bierstadt, with all of his good +painting, does not get any nearer the real spirit of the lofty +mountaintops than all the others of this school. Big and earnest as his +efforts were, they fall short of real achievement, not so much for his +lack of outdoor colour as for the misunderstanding of what is possible +in art and what is impossible. Another landscape in this gallery, +belonging to the contemporary school, however, is Henry Joseph Breuer's +"Santa Inez Mountains". It is a faithful study of a most difficult +subject and very successful in its big feeling, in spite of the +introduction of great detail. It is easily the best Breuer in the +collection. The note of variety in this gallery is maintained in several +portraits and genre pictures of unusual merit. On the right of the +Breuer, Thomas Hicks' "Friendly Warning" atones for a multitude of +mediocre genre pictures in the preceding gallery. Eastman Johnson's +"Drummer Boy" shows good composition, and J. H. E. Partington's study of +a man's head is as fine a piece of painting as was ever done in the +eighties. + +Gallery 64. + +In a big central gallery we meet the more meritorious work of our +painters dependent upon foreign influence. Portraits, genre pictures, +landscapes, and marines tell the story of many individual men working +out their salvation in more or less original fashion. I have spoken at +some length about the pitfall of genre painting, but Thomas Hovenden's +"Breaking Home Ties" redeems the entire school. Irrespective of the fact +that it is a picture very popular with the large public by reason of its +sentimental appeal, it is well painted, and it will always be considered +a good painting. It is devoid of colour, in the sense of the modern +painter, but its very fluent and simple technical character recommends +it highly. Hovenden was a master of his trade. Anybody who doubts this +from his large canvas can easily be convinced by studying the "Peonies" +to the left of it on wall C. The large area of this wall is covered with +six canvases by Thomas Eakins, showing a variety of subjects. His +"Crucifixion" is very good as an academic study but of no other +interest. In the "Concert Singer" he added an interesting subject to +very admirable painting. His other canvases are all sincerely studied +and well done, and they will always be sure of their place in the +history of American painting. Opposite the "Crucifixion," Church's +"Niagara" reminds one that the painting of water involves more than mere +photographic facility. All that one can say about this serious effort is +that if it had been painted under a different star than that which +guided the painters of his time in outdoor studies, it would doubtless +look more like water. Another canvas on the right, a marine by Richards, +has the same feeling for drawing without showing any understanding of +either texture or atmosphere. The old and the new overlap in this +gallery by the inclusion of some of Remington's paintings and also of a +few pieces of sculpture. Remington's paintings will never be classified +as anything but very good illustrations, and in the company of easel +pictures they look much out of place. Their interest is only of a +passing kind. His sculpture is lacking in repose and looks wild and +ill-mannered in the presence of the older things. Homer Martin's appeal, +in two big landscapes on the same wall, may not be very immediate, but a +serious contemplation of these big and noble landscapes will make them +reassuringly sympathetic. Martin's pictures are not exhibition pictures. +They suffer in an exhibition which is after all as much of a specimen +show of conflicting varieties as a display of canned goods in the Food +Palace. Martin, while never having enjoyed the popularity of an Inness, +will always rank as high as any of our best interpreters of the Barbizon +school. + +Gallery 54. + +We have to go over into this gallery in order to get the full meaning of +that great company of men who had something which is so difficult to +discover in many artists, namely, style. Inness and Wyant above +everything have style, a quality which carried their otherwise not very +original work above that of their fellow-painters. We shall never tire +of such canvases as "The Coming Storm," "The Clouded Sun," and the +limpid pastorals by Wyant. They maintain their position as classics. +Winslow Homer occupies a position all by himself. An entire wall full of +specimens by him shows the evolution of the man, his struggle with the +problem of the choice of subjects, and his technical development, +culminating in that one really great theme in the center, showing his +studio in an afternoon fog. Homer's colour is always disappointing, even +in his best, but his sense of design and a certain simple restriction to +a few essentials make up his chief claim upon distinction. Dennis +Bunker's "Lady with a Mirror" would scarcely be believed to belong to +the older period of American art. One of the finest pictures ever +produced by an American painter, it yields a most unusual degree of +artistic pleasure. There is real distinction about this picture, not +only in the graceful idealization of the lady, but also in the refined +colour scheme. Currier's art is very much like Duveneck's, an +observation which is made emphatic by the fact that each one's +masterpiece is a whistling boy, of great simplicity. After a discussion +of Duveneck's work, Currier's artistic antecedents will easily be +established, so no more need be said of his work. + +Gallery 85. + +Across the hall more of our academic school of painters are grouped. +There is George de Forest Brush, the painter of the "Boston Madonna", in +some of his earlier illustrative canvases and a very fine pre-Raphaelite +"Andromeda". Brush is so contradictory at times that this small group is +quite insufficient to do him full justice. Horatio Walker clings +persistently to his conviction of the supremacy of the older methods, +without giving any indication of contact with modern art. His +superiority depends largely upon the human-interest stories he tells +with wonderful breadth and sympathetic understanding. Charles W. +Hawthorne's canvases seem fumbled rather than painted. They are very +hesitating in a technical way and are not sufficiently endowed with +interest to grip one. + +Gallery 57. + +In another gallery in this neighborhood, Edwin Abbey's art is presented +very comprehensively in a number of large and small illustrations - +canvases of more than passing interest. While they are largely +illustrations, their interest is made permanent by reason of the +subjective note which all of them have. Abbey's intense imagination +allowed him to carry a convincingness into his work which is largely +responsible for the very high rank he attained. His art is not the art +of an American in any sense. It is true he was born in Philadelphia, but +a long and successful life spent in Europe has left on his work the +imprint of an aristocracy foreign to our interest. In design, in colour, +Abbey's work is always supremely interesting, and with the astonishing +development of illustration in America, it seems incredible that we +should not have been able to make him return to the land of his birth. + +Galleries fifty-five and fifty-six are modern in aspect and their +contents came into this part of the building for practical reasons. +Wedged in between older periods, it is difficult to combine them with +the rest of modern American art, largely represented in the north side +of the Palace. + +Gallery 56. + +Here two interiors in distinctly different styles stand out among the +multitude. Marion Powers and Elizabeth Nourse add considerably to the +achievement of our women artists in these well-painted canvases. Miss +Powers is very original in an older school, while Miss Nourse displays +all the technical dexterities of the present day. Hitchcock's "Dutch +Tulip Beds," with figural staffage, remind one of a most original +American who after a long struggle established himself with these +colourful designs. His recent death came entirely too soon. + +Gallery 55. + +This room is intensely animated by Potthast's six seashore sketches, +which are composed and very sympathetic in their fine sunlight. Evelyn +McCormick's "Monterey Custom House" is no less sunny, and +conscientiously studied in detail. + +Gallery 65. + +Of particular interest are the pictures in this gallery, constituting an +achievement which few other nations could rival. Devoted exclusively to +the work of living American women artists, it contains convincing +evidences of the good results which the emancipation of women in this +country allowed them to accomplish in the field of art. The standard in +this gallery is very high, and one must admit that Mr. Trask's daring +innovation of putting all the women artists in one big gallery was +justified. They do hold their own, and they do not need any male +assistance to convince one of their big part in the honors of the +exhibition. On two opposing walls, Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux give +full expression of their very vital work. Miss Beaux's work is +compelling in its vigorous technique, fine colour, and daring +composition. Her study in purple and yellow is bold and unusually +successful. On other walls more portraits by Ellen Emmet Rand continue +to hold our attention, particularly the little girl and the black cat. +The portraits of our women painters are all far more original in +composition and colour arrangement than those of the men. Mary Cassatt's +reputation is so universally established as not to need any +introduction. Her art is more French in the many tone gradations of +atmosphere than that of her American colleagues who are more decorative. +Among others Jean McLane, Mr. Johansen's wife, and Annie Lang excel in a +certain breadth of style; while Mrs. Richardson charms by the +sympathetic rendering of the pride and happiness of the young mother. +The composition of this picture, while it is unusual, is successfully +managed. The impression one gains from this large gallery is most +satisfying in every way. The many portraits done by men seen in various +galleries of the exhibition would scarcely make as good a showing in a +group as the work of the women, and it was very wise not to attempt it. + + + +One-Man Rooms + +An approach to the rest of the American section might be made through +the one-man rooms, and since we are on the south side, and for other +perfectly good reasons - not the least, that of importance - we might +start with Whistler. + +Gallery 28. + +Whistler. + +No gallery reflects so much the really serious artist, in his eternal +struggle to express himself simply and exhaustively in line, form, and +colour, as does this Whistler group. A feeling of dissatisfaction, +expressed by many indications of experimentation and change, of +searching for the right line, is clearly indicated in all of these +paintings. He often gives you a chance to choose between a number of +tantalizing forms and lines. It is very apparent that he set himself a +high, almost an unattainable standard, toward which he worked with +varying success. His emotions must have been constantly swinging between +the greatest heights of joy and the abyss of despair. + +The numerous Whistlers in this gallery show him in many periods and many +styles. On wall D, at the lower right, a portrait of an auburn girl, one +of his many fascinating models, shows Whistler more as a pure painter +than any of the other canvases. This doubtless belongs to the period +when he was under Courbet's influence. The richness of pure paint, +dexterously applied, is scarcely found in the many portraits on the same +wall, in which a certain thinness of paint is too much in evidence, no +matter how distinguished and suggestive these canvases are. His sense of +composition, of the placing of areas of different tones and colour, is +markedly evident in all of his work, no matter how experimental and +casual it may be. The "Falling Rocket" is the most wonderful example of +this quality of design. If it is true that it hung for weeks upside down +in the present owner's house, then most decidedly this fact speaks well +for its excellent quality of design, irrespective of its pictorial +meaning. The many small sparks descending rhythmically from an +impenetrable sky are carefully considered in their relative position and +size so as to insure that feeling of pattern which he almost +instinctively gave to everything he did. This picture of the "Falling +Rocket" is of particular interest as the picture which made John Ruskin, +the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, accuse Whistler of flinging a pot +of paint at the face of the public and having the impudence of a coxcomb +to ask two hundred guineas for it. Surely this carefully and cleanly +painted picture shows Whistler as hardly a flinger of paint, and we can +only rejoice over the kind fate which saved Mr. Ruskin from extending +his career into the present age of paint flingers, who, had they lived +in his day, would have proved fatal to the learned professor. The +farthing damages which Whistler received in a mock trial were scarcely +as valuable as the universal admiration this picture receives. + +There never was a painter who manipulated paint with more regard for the +medium than did Whistler. His portrait of Mrs. Milicent Cobden has a +noble beauty of restraint. It is very sensitively painted, and tender +almost to the point of thinness. It fascinates in its subtle appeal, +which the observer is induced to supplement by his own emotion. This +quality of subtlety is the one attribute which makes his work so beloved +by the artist and so difficult of understanding for the layman, who, try +as he may, is not equipped with sufficient technical insight to do +Whistler's paintings full justice. Uneven as his work is, as every +painter admits, it will always be more and more cherished by the +profession and remain more or less of a mystery to the puzzled public, +who would like to follow this painter into the realm of his interests. + +The six figural compositions on the opposite wall show Whistler as +concerned with design pure and simple, rather than meaning or +psychological expression. They are beautiful for the fragrant looseness +of their spacing of delightful, tender areas of neutralized colour, +emphasized here and there by a stronger note of vermilion. Things like +these express his attitude far more than any other thing he ever did. +They show his understanding of the fundamentals of painting - a small +part in the whole unity of beauty of which the world consists. His work +as a painter is, after all, negligible in comparison with the principles +he preached by his many artistic activities. His historical position, as +time goes on and as his associates die, becomes more and more mystical, +and even at this moment his personality has assumed an almost +mythological character. + +Gallery 93. + +Twachtman. + +It is not a far cry to Twachtman, who presents a peculiar combination of +Whistlerian tonality with the methods of the modern impressionist. His +work is relatively high in key, and devoid of any colour resembling +black. The covered skies of early morning, before the breaking through +of the sun, are his chief motives. Snow plays also an important part in +his work, which is most suggestive in the tender beauty of the few +values and colours it is composed of. There is absolutely nothing of the +sensational about his work. To most people of not sufficient interest on +first acquaintance, on better familiarity they yield to the serious +student and sympathetic lover of nature unlimited pleasure. His poetry +is of the true sort, and in finished work like "October", "View on the +Brette", "Bridge in Spring", and "Greenwich Hills", he rises to a very +high level. + +Manship's small statuettes are very effective features of this gallery. +Their linear decorative architectural quality has put Manship into the +front rank of our younger men, and he will have no trouble to +maintain his place. + +Gallery 89. + +Tarbell. + +In an adjoining gallery, Edmund Tarbell is much more striking, in a +number of canvases containing certain qualities, which easily account +for the great popularity he justly enjoys as one of the best of our +American painters. To the student of pictures who does not care whether +they are well painted or not, they are intensely interesting subjects, +reflecting the happy domestic atmosphere of the painter's home, which +has furnished him for years inexhaustible material for many delightful +interpretations of similar subjects. This ability to produce so many +things of equal excellence in a relatively small circle, in one way +proves his greatness. In the last analysis, he has practically +everything in his work one looks for in a work of art. In addition to +having an easily understood idea, his pictures are well composed, +without showing the consciousness of it, as does Whistler. Fine in +colour and handling, beside the idealization of everything he includes +in his work he achieves a certain something which we recognize as style. +He may be a realist in every sense, but he shows how to deal arbitrarily +with his figures in such a way as to endow them with admirable +distinction, without losing the expression of reality. His recent +outdoor work has not the unity of expression of his indoor subjects. It +is difficult, and not really necessary, to single out any work in a +one-man representation of unusual uniformity of excellence. Every one of +his pictures has the earmarks of having been carefully studied. + +Bela Pratt's statue of Nathan Hale is much less academic than the other +sculptures arranged in this gallery. Compared with the high standard of +American small plastic art his works are somewhat dry, though always +conscientiously done. + +Gallery 88. + +Redfield. + +As a realistic painter of the outdoors, E. W. Redfield holds an enviable +position in the field of American art. He is the painter par excellence, +without making any pretension at being anything else. The joy of putting +paint on canvas to suggest a relatively small number of things which +make up the great outdoor country, like skies, distance, land +foregrounds, is his chosen task. He is the most direct painter we have. +With a heavily loaded brush, without any regard for anything but +immediate effect, he expresses his landscapes candidly and convincingly. +He is plain-spoken, truthful, free from any trickery - as wholesome as +his subjects. His a la prima methods embody, to the professional man, +the highest principle of technical perfection, without falling into a +certain physical coarseness so much in evidence in most of our modern +work. His sense of design is keen, without being too apparent, and the +impression one gains from his works is that they are honest +transcriptions of nature by a strong, virile personality. Winter +subjects predominate in his pictures, and he expresses them probably +more convincingly than others - though his Autumn is marvelous in its +richness of colour, and in the two night effects of New York he shows +his acute power of observation in two totally different subjects. His +art is altogether most refreshing and free from all artificialities. + +Gallery 87. + +Duveneck. + +Paradoxical as it may seem, Duveneck's art is carried by the same +painter-qualities found in Redfield. From his dark colour it is +self-evident that he belongs to an older German school - a school which +has been superseded in the affection of Americans by French methods. We +know relatively little, entirely too little, about the generous methods +of the best men of the Munich school, of which Duveneck is so +conspicuous a member. His importance in the history of art can hardly be +set too high, for the soundness of his methods alone. Only the greatest +ever attain the capacity for direct painting which characterizes this +astonishing collection of his pictures. Juiciness is the only word which +will adequately express the result of his brush. The pictures here are +most interesting for the reason that they were all done while he was not +yet twenty-five and while he lived in an atmosphere of workers of whom +Leibl was probably the most famous. There are few paintings - and then +only the greatest - which give one the same satisfaction at a big +distance as well as at close range as Duveneck's do. Men of his caliber +appear only at great intervals. This Duveneck collection, if brought +together permanently, as we are fortunate enough to see it temporarily +here in San Francisco, would become the Mecca of all painters who want +to refresh their memory as to what constitutes real painting. +Unfortunately these canvases are owned by different people, and to think +that they will all have to be scattered again among individual owners is +a shocking thought. The uniformity of excellence in the Duveneck room +forbids any attempt at picking out individual works; however, Duveneck's +equally great accomplishments on another wall, in the field of etching, +are apt to be easily overlooked. The sarcophagus of his wife, done by +his versatile hand, increases the admiration that we, must hold for this +liberal genius. Duveneck's art, no matter how much it is rooted in +foreign soil, will forever make its influence felt for the best of +American art. + +Gallery 79. + +Chase. + +Balancing Duveneck's gallery on the south, William M. Chase continues +the Munich traditions, in the successful treatment of a variety of +subjects for which he has always been famous. Closely associated with +Duveneck, and showing all the rich qualities of the Munich men, Chase's +picturesque personality finds a reflection in his subjects, which all +seem to have been chosen to give him an opportunity to display a certain +bravado of handling which characterizes all of his work. The Chase +collection gives a good idea of the career of this most useful of all +American painters, who in an astonishingly active life has been teacher, +friend, and counsellor to hundreds of the younger people in the field of +art. His life has been most useful - always in the interest of the very +best, with conspicuous success in aiding the uplift of American art. His +still-lifes have for years been famous for their fidelity of +interpretation of a variety of contrasting things, like fishes, copper +bowls, and onions. No less interesting have been his portraits of the +great mass of people who have sat for him. He has never been afraid of +painting anything, and whatever it may be, he has treated it with great +breadth, fine pictorial feeling, and charm of colour. His "Woman with +the White Shawl" has become a classic during his lifetime, and some of +his still-lifes are sufficient to serve as a permanent solid foundation +for his reputation. Chase's art, while decidedly academic, excels in +esprit, in a certain elegant yet energetic expression which after all is +nothing but the painter's own personality reflected in his work. The +delightful set of small landscapes of Italian and American subjects adds +much interest in this collection, which is very well hung against an +effective blue background. + +Gallery 78. + +Hassam. + +Childe Hassam's art at first is very disconcerting, particularly under a +strong midday light. One has at first the feeling that a religious +adherence to a certain impressionistic technique is of more importance +to him than anything else. Entering his gallery from the Chase +collection, one is almost overcome with the contrast of light and dark +presented by these two masters. The contrast of the classic academic +atmosphere of Chase's room shows Hassam pronouncedly as the most radical +impressionist we have. His interest is light, and always more light, +vibration at any cost; which contrasted with Chase's art, or for that +matter anybody's else, Duveneck's, or, for instance, even Whistler's, +becomes almost irritating in its lack of simple surfaces. He does not +eliminate in the sense of the older men, who care more for a unity of +expression than for an approximation to the actual outdoors. There is +sunlight in his work, without a doubt, but it is not always spread over +agreeable subjects. The wooden quality of his figures and the frugal +aspects of his fruit, to us Californians are particularly painful. Of +all his oils in this gallery the two on either side of the "Aphrodite" +on the east wall are by far the best. In them he succeeds in carrying +his point agreeably and convincingly. They are both lovely in colour, +and they give you the feeling of having been well studied. The two +groups of watercolours and gouaches on the side walls are, with the +exception of a wash blue sea, very discreet in quality of paint and most +intimate in feeling, and to my mind do Hassam more credit than the many +other canvases, which seem to be painted for expounding a technical +principle rather than to reveal his innermost feelings. + +Gallery 77. + +Gari Melchers. + +Melchers' style is much more sympathetic than Hassam's without being +less personal. Of modern painters I confess to a particularly great +fondness for Melchers' art. While standing firmly on classic tradition, +it is modern in every sense. One can say everything of good and find +little fault with any of these most conscientiously painted canvases +which make up his contribution to the exhibition. Beginning with his +"Fencing Master", one of his older works, he shows in a great number of +similar subjects his loyalty to Egmond aan den Hoef, a little Dutch +village where he has worked for years. The quality of pattern and colour +in his work is very pronounced, and this, combined with a fine +psychology, makes his work always interesting. He is no radical; the +best as he sees it in any school he has made subservient to his purpose +without any loss of individuality. His pictures yield much pleasure to +public as well as to artist, even in sentimental stories like the +"Sailor and His Sweetheart", or the "Skaters". His finest note he +strikes undoubtedly in the many sympathetic glorifications of motherhood +in his fine modern Madonnas. These works will be the sure foundation of +his fame. No matter whether he calls them "Madonna of the Fields", +"Maternity", or simply "Mother and Child", he presents this greatest of +all subjects as few have ever done. His art is wholesome and sane, but +endowed with a subtle quality of insight into his subjects that will +always assure him a very high place in the history of art. For years he +has been one of the reliable painters of the world, and to meet with his +work at intervals is always a source of great satisfaction. + +Gallery 75. + +Sargent. + +A small adjoining gallery is given entirely over to a few Sargents which +are quite sufficient to maintain this great stylist, whom many believe +the towering giant of the profession. One thing is evident from this +work - that for surety of touch and technical directness he stands +practically alone, though he does not possess the deliberate ease in +which Duveneck rejoices. Sargent's "John Hay" and "Henry James" are +absolutely exhaustive as character studies. His "Nubian Girl", however, +is woody, no matter how interesting in posture. In nothing does he +disclose his marvelous precision of technique so completely as in some +of the outdoor studies, like the "Syrian Goats" and the "Spanish +Stable". There is nothing like them in the exhibition anywhere, and +these two things alone make up for what is really not a comprehensive +display of one of the greatest of modern living painters. However, a man +whose standard of excellence is relatively very even does not need a +large representation. + +Gallery 90. + +Keith. + +In two other small galleries of similar size three California painters +have their inning. While all these are of different caliber, they have +something in common which ties them closely together. It seems peculiar +that a country famed for its sunshine should produce men like Keith, +Mathews,, and McComas, who surely do reflect a rather somber atmosphere, +in a type of work which must be called tonal and arbitrary rather than +naturalistic. + +Keith's collection, with the mass of modern landscape all around, and +even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems +somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and +others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is +intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors +which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's marvelous +dexterity of brushwork really constitutes his chief claim upon fame, and +some of his best things are gems in easy-flowing methods of painting +which the best men of the Barbizon school seldom approached. Keith must +not be looked upon as a painter of nature nor even an interpreter of +nature. He used landscapes simply to express an ever-changing variety of +personal emotion. His attitude toward nature in his later work was of +the most distant kind, although his early career was that of the most +painstaking searcher for physical truthfulness. + +Gallery 76. + +Mathews and McComas. + +Mathews and McComas do not exactly make good company. While closely +related in the decorative quality of their work, they are not alike in +any other way. Mathews' art is emotional. It tells something beyond mere +colour, form, and composition, while McComas' art is mostly technical, +in the clever manipulation of a very difficult medium. His sense of +construction and feeling for effect is very acute. He is becoming so +expert, however, in the handling of watercolour that one sometimes +wishes to see a little more of that accidental charm of surface that his +older work possesses. + + + +General Collection + + + +Having reached far into the heart of the modern American section by way +of the one-man galleries, a chronological pursuit of our study is no +more necessary nor possible. Almost all of the pictures in the modern +American section have been produced since 1904, the year of the last +international exhibition, at St. Louis, and they reflect in a very +surprising way the tremendous advancement of native art to a point where +comparison with the art of the older nations need not be feared. In all +the fields of painting, including all subjects, portraits and figures +generally, landscapes, marines, and still-life, we can turn proudly to a +great number of painters who interpret candidly and vigorously the world +in which we live. + +Gallery 71. + +The gallery nearest to the one just visited gives a good idea of the +mastery of a variety of subjects in the art of painting, and to continue +our investigations from this point is just as logical as from any other +part of the modern American section. In this gallery, easily located by +two large parvenu portraits of dubious merit, are some others which are +really vital expressions of modern art. Beginning on wall A, going to +the right, Luis Mora's "Fortune Teller" and Meakin's landscapes should +be singled out. On the west wall Frederic Clay Bartlett's painting of an +interior and Norwood McGilvary's nocturne charm in different ways, while +on the adjoining wall Ritschel's marine and Rosen's winter scenes +display excellent quality of design, with fine outdoor feeling. Miss +Fortune's Mission interior deserves its distinction of having been +bought by William M. Chase. Robert Nisbet contributes a rare green tree +design, and Hayley Lever's harbor pictures are all performances of +superior merit, + +Gallery 70. + +This gallery is given over entirely to portraits, most of which are so +devoid of any real merit that it is relatively very easy to single out +the good ones. Flagg's portrait of the sculptor Bartlett, a portrait by +Robert David Gauley over the door, the lady with the fur on the second +line on wall B, with her neighbor, Lazar Raditz, by himself, are better +than the many others, which are all well done but do not interest one +enough, for one reason or another. The one picture in this gallery that +comes very near being of supreme beauty is the young lady reclining on a +chaise lounge, the work of E. K. Wetherill. Very few pictures in this +gallery come up to the placid beauty of this distinguished canvas, which +is somewhat handicapped in its aesthetic appeal by some unnecessarily +tawdry bits of furniture and bric-à -brac used in its make-up. + +Gallery 69. + +"Phyllis" here represents John W. Alexander, that most capable artist, +lost to the world recently at the height of a very useful career. John +W. Beatty's and Francis Murphy' landscapes, on either side, are both +beautiful, in the Barbizon spirit. Howard Russell Butler's "Spirits of +the Twilight" is very luminous, and Lawton Parker's "Paresse" in its +sensual note runs "Stella" a close second in a colour scheme and design +of such beauty that one cannot help getting a great deal of aesthetic +satisfaction from it, aside from its too apparent sensational character. + +Gallery 68. + +This large central gallery averages unusually high in the large number +of excellent things it contains. Four big, well studied marines by +William Ritschel make one feel proud of the contribution they make to +the field of American marine painting. It is very hard to say which one +of our four well-represented marine painters, Carlsen, Waugh, Dougherty, +and Ritschel, is most captivating. However, a canvas like Ritschel's "In +the Shadow of the Cliffs" will always hold its own among the best. +Ritschel's work is easily recognized by this robust, healthy tone; it +reveals sound values and intimate study. One of Johansen's small +landscapes, and another one by H. M. Camp, on the second line of this +wall, grow in one's estimation on longer acquaintance. They are in fine +style and very big for their size, largely by reason of their monumental +skies. Howard Cushing's group in the center is full of skillfully +presented detail, without losing in breadth in the many different +subjects he paints. His portrait of a lady, in the center, is +distinguished in every way, not least so in expression. + +Johansen's main group of pictures, all on one wall, stand for breadth +and intimate study alike. The Venetian square canvas in the middle is +one of the jewels of this exhibition. There is no end of distinctive +canvases in this gallery, as one must conclude on going over to the two +big Daniel Garbers, which are more of the typical American type than his +others in the group. The one on the right is a perfect unit of colour, +atmosphere, and pattern. In between, Spencer's backyard pictures reveal +a sympathetic younger painter who, for reason of his choice of +proletarian subjects, does not get the attention he more than deserves. +Most original in technique and charming in tone, they interest wherever +one meets them in the exhibition. + +On the second line a delightful Speicher landscape should not be +overlooked. On wall D an important winter landscape by Schofield reminds +one forcibly of the many excellent painters of ice and snow we have in +this country. They are really the backbone of our American outdoor +artists, and all of them, with the exception of Gardner Symons, can be +found in the exhibition. To this group, beside Redfield and Schofield, +before mentioned, belong Charles Morris Young, John F. Carlson, Charles +Rosen, and others. Leon Kroll's "River Industries" and "Weehawken +Terminal," on the second line, are so typically American in subject that +they would have been unacceptable to the public here twenty years ago. + +Gallery 67. + +This large room continues to hold the attention of the visitor by more +excellent specimens of present-day art. Dougherty's marines as well as +Waugh's very precise, somewhat metallic seascapes have been referred to +before. Dougherty's group of four pictures is augmented by two Spanish +canvases by Lewis Cohen, of which the one to the right is far more +convincing than the other. They are somewhat artificial in colour. Emil +Carlsen's only contribution, a fine open sea, has a quality all its own. +The feeling of pattern in sky and water surface, combined with great +delicacy and suggestion of absolute truthfulness, gives it a quality +quite apart from the energetic art of Waugh, Ritschel, and Dougherty. +John F. Carlson always has style to his work, a certain unaffected, +noble simplicity, well brought out in three sympathetic pictures +grouped near the Emil Carlsen marine. Adding to the conspicuousness of +that wall, Charles H. Davis and Leonard Ochtman hold their own in their +important setting. The only two figure pictures in this neighborhood are +particularly lovely in colour and design, and R. P. R. Neilson deserves +much praise for having struck a unique note conspicuous among the many +commonplace portraits of the present day. Wendt's "Land of Heart's +Desire" is unusually happy, and it supports its title admirably. Very +decorative in feeling, it is compelling in its appeal to the public. +Maynard Dixon, another Californian, shows an original small canvas, "The +Oregon Trail," endowed with big feeling. + +Two cases in this gallery encourage investigation of American +accomplishments in the field of animal sculpture, and on closer +examination of offerings in this most interesting field, we find an +unusually creditable lot of work by Frederick Roth, Albert Laessle, +Arthur Putnam, and Charles Cary Rumsey. They should be considered in a +group if their relative merit is to be fully appreciated. Kemeys and +Proctor somewhat antedate them all in their work (in galleries 69 and +72). Roth is next door to Kemeys in 45, among a variety of things done +mostly in glazed clay. A very fine sense of humor comes to the surface +most conspicuously in "The Butcher", "The Baker", and "The Candlestick +Maker". Putnam and Laessle are in this gallery side by side. In sharp +contrast with the former's muscular and broad type of modeling, the +latter has a very precise and Japanesque quality of detail modeling +which is sometimes a little photographic. Charles Cary Rumsey is only a +few steps away, in gallery 48. In his original subject of a horse and +man drinking he strikes a particularly unique note. + +Gallery 80. + +Here Metcalf's "Blossom Time" reveals the most poetic of our modern +American painters. The man who bought it made a good investment. In ten +years it will be a classic and worth its weight in gold, including the +frame. This canvas gives one more thrills than almost all the others by +the same man - good as they are. The "Trembling Leaves" is superb, but a +fussy frame destroys half the pleasure. Mrs. Philip Hale's elegant and +refined interior, together with Paxton's figural work, prove that we +have conquered successfully a certain field of genre which the American +art-lover has been in the habit of buying in Europe. Paxton's +"Housemaid" is entirely in the spirit of the old Dutch, and his +"Bellissima" is most luminous alongside of his other works. + +Gallery 51. + +This magnetic collection comes somewhat as a shock to the public, which +can't be blamed for its disapproval of the recent sensational +experiments of Henri and Glackens. It is impossible to understand why a +man like Glackens should so illogically abandon the soundness of his +older work and do those inharmonies of form and colour which he presents +on the A wall. His "Woman with Apple" is absolutely absurd and vulgar +beyond description. She has "character," if that is what he is after, +because her vulgarity is convincing. The rest of the things are +ridiculous in their riotous superficiality. Carles seeks the same +expression of individuality for which Glackens strives so hard. In his +small, square picture, "Repose," Carles is most successful. Here he has +created a great work of art - beautiful as well as full of character. +This canvas is one of the most successful of the new style. It needs no +apologies, and it has all the qualities of an old master, with modern +virility and colour added to it. Let us have new things like this and we +shall not regret having tolerantly and patiently watched all the many +idiocities which are paraded around under the pretext of research and +experimentation. Breckenridge's still-lifes are startling at first, but +studied singly they reveal a fine sense of colour. They constitute a +serious and successful contribution to modern art, without being in the +least grotesque. I should like to have one of them in my house, without +fear of their very vigorous colour. In a totally different vein Everett +L. Bryant gives some still-lifes which continue certain impressionistic +methods with wonderful delicacy. In certain surroundings they will add +distinction even to a commonplace room. Anshutz's "Lady in Red" is a +very good academic study in a colour which in large quantities is very +difficult to handle. + +Gallery 50. + +The academic school is continued in spirit in Sergeant +Kendall's refined portraits, augmented by a painted wood sculpture of +unusual quality, reminiscent of the masters of the early German +Renaissance. Louis Kronberg has his customary ballet girl and Hermann +Dudley Murphy some of his typical, refined marines. His surfaces are +always delectable and like the inside of a shell in their glistening +blues and pinks. Both Nelson and Hansen, two native Californians, are +well represented - one by a Monterey coast, the other by a forcefully +painted decorative picture called "The Belated Boat." Lathrop adds two +placid pictures, of which the canal is the more skillfully composed. + +Gallery 49. + +Peace reigns supreme in this gallery of Tryon and Weir. Tryon reflects +all the poetic qualities of the Barbizon group without striking a new +note either technically or in composition. His larger canvases are of +great beauty, very tender and poetic, and altogether too sweet to have +you feel that they were painted for any other reason than to make a +pretty picture. His smaller work gives you that feeling more than his +larger ones. Alden Weir's art is the direct opposite of this. Searching +for truth, character, and beauty, he labors over simple subjects with +great concentration and does not stop until they seem like silver +symphonies. His art is personal and must be studied at great length to +be fully appreciated. It expects a great deal of concentration, but one +willing to take the trouble will be amply rewarded by ever increasing +pleasure. The art of McLure Hamilton is more interesting in the power of +psychological characterization than in painting. His pictures are +painted thinly, more like watercolours than oils. + +Gallery 48. + +No noteworthy contribution is made here, unless one excepts the +academically clever portraits by Troccoli, a landscape by Vonnoh, and a +sumptuous bed of rhododendrons by Edward F. Rook. Two large "Grand +Cañons" again demonstrate the utter futility of trying to paint such +motives, which, in their success, depend entirely upon a feeling of +scale that is almost impossible to attain on a small canvas. + +Gallery 47. + +Here Blumenschein's large Indian compositions are of decorative +character. They are well composed and dramatic. The "Peace Maker" is big +in feeling. Typically American and very unusual are Colin Campbell +Cooper's New York street perspectives. His originality as a painter is +well demonstrated by this choice, which must have taken much courage at +a time when American subjects were more or less despised. Richard +Millers "Pink Lady" does not look a bit convincing, cleverly as it is +painted; it is not interesting enough in the large surfaces of +overnaturalistic pink flesh. Half that size would have been just enough +for this canvas, which is chiefly a concession to the modern mania for +painting large exhibition pictures to attract attention by their size +alone. Groll's desert pictures are disappointing. They have neither +interesting colour nor sufficient atmosphere to come up to the standard +of this typical desert painter. + +Gallery 46. + +There is a lovely note in this gallery, contributed by Ruger Donoho's +garden scenes. Most unusual in subject, they are full of life, vibrant +with colour, and altogether very delightful, a most pleasant change from +the ordinary run of subjects. Frank Dumond's work on another wall (B) +excels in a pleasant mannerism. His work is most thoughtful and well +studied. The two smallest of his paintings are perfect gems in every way +- well balanced by two small tender canvases of southern Europe by Mrs. +Dumond (on the opposite wall). Two portraits in this gallery, Inez +Addams' "Daphne" and Adolphe Borie's "Spring," should not be slighted. +Borie's is very strong, and one of the best portraits on exhibition. +Alongside of it is a winter landscape by Ernest Albert, which, while a +little timid, is nevertheless poetic and more convincing than others of +that type near by. + +Gallery 45. + +Charles Morris Young's art is so refreshing, so spontaneous in every +way, that it catches one's eye immediately on passing on into this room. +His work deserves recognition for more than one reason. His handling of +paint is fresh and clear and a direct aiming for a final expression of +what he wants to convey. Any one of the six subjects is well handled. +They give one the feeling of the artist's thorough understanding of his +material. His own "House in Winter" and the "Red Mill" reach the +high-water mark of landscape painting in the exhibition. Griffin's +pictures, on another wall, so openly disregard technical rules in their +careless superimposition of unnecessary paint that in spite of a great +richness of colour and a certain suggestion of truth, they are not apt +to hold one one's affection very long. They are sincere, I admit, but +careless in technique. There is no doubt about it, because heavy paint +and bare pieces of canvas will not make durable pictures. Birge Harrison +is disappointing in two pastels which seem too chromo-like, too +mechanical, to carry their point. + +Gallery 44. + +This collection is not at all without interest, but with few exceptions +the pictures in it are not strong enough to hold their own with so many +good things abounding elsewhere. Ralph Clarkson's portrait, Bartlett's +schoolyard, Perrine's technically unique landscape, are all meritorious. + +Gallery 43. + +Frederic M. DuMond's "Sea Carvings" in the corner, and Nahl's decorative +composition attract, each in its way, while in another corner a badly +skyed portrait by Hinkle is scarcely given a chance. + +Gallery 74. + +It will be necessary to make a little journey over to the inner side of +the arch of the building to continue and finish the art of modern +America. In this small Gallery, adjoining Sargent's, nothing stirring +happens. Landscapes predominate, with varying interest, but nothing with +any style or unity of expression presents itself, with the exception of +Carl Oscar Borg's "Campagna Romana" and a fine sky over the door by +William J. Kaula. The landscapes of G. W. Sotter and Will S. Robinson +stand out among the rest. + +Gallery 73. + +Next door, in 73, Alson Skinner Clark has been given the privilege of +almost an entire Gallery, without any other justification than +historical interest in his shallow Panama scenes, devoid of any quality. +They are illustrations - that is all. Gifford Beal disappoints in some +superficial paintings of commonplace subjects, which a skillful +technique might easily have turned into something worth while. His "Old +Town Terrace" is much the best, but the collection makes one +apprehensive for Beal's future performances. Paul King's canvas over the +door is excellent, well painted, and interesting in subject. + +Gallery 72. + +There seems no end of productiveness of American painters, and justice +demands more investigation and undeniably more steps. Ladies with +parrots, with and without clothes, are numerous, but the one in here is +more interesting than the others. I hope that not all of these parrot +pictures are meant symbolically. Walter McEwen arouses memories of times +gone by, technically and otherwise, in a huge storytelling Salon +picture. More ladies in conventional sitting posture willingly sat for +more pictures without adding new thrills. Meyer's portraits, Gertrude +Fiske's sketch, Olga Ackerman's group of children, are all deserving of +study. Max Bohm's two big figural pictures are decoratively interesting +enough, but bad in paint. One of the best landscapes can be found here +in Henry Muhrman's work, over the McEwen. There is nothing sensational +about it, but its somber dignity stands out among many modern works. On +the opposite wall Mrs. Sargent's" Mount Tamalpais" is unusual in +composition and rich in colour. + +Separated from the rest of the American section by Holland and Sweden, a +series of galleries are in grave danger of being overlooked. +Undoubtedly, to offset this apparent isolation, some of the most +alluring paintings can be found at this end. + +Gallery 117. + +Here is Frederic Frieseke, our expatriated American, with his +fascinating boudoir scenes. Very high in key and full of detail, at +first they seem restless and crowded, which some actually are, in a +degree. But canvases like "The Garden" and "The Bay Window" and "The +Boudoir" are real jewels of light and colour. "The Bay Window" is the +most placid of his canvases and in conception much finer than his +outdoor subjects. Frieseke's clear, joyous art is typically modern, and +expresses the best tendency of our day. Luis Mora's two watercolours, +while illustrative, hold their own in Frieseke's company. Tanner's big +religious canvas falls far below this capable painter's usual efforts. +Native talent helps out in a delightful marine, honestly painted by +Bruce Nelson, and an apple green and pale pink colour-harmony by +Charlton Fortune. Very much in the style of the Frieseke, Rittman's +"Early Morning in the Garden" is easily taken for the art of his +fascinating neighbor, but it should be recognized as the work 0f another +kindred spirit. + +Gallery 118. + +In 118, landscapes predominate over figural work, at least in quality. +Harry Leslie Hoffman's "Spring Mood," Wilbur Dean Hamilton's tender and +poetic canvas, and Louise Brumbach's city view bathed in the grays of an +early morning call for recognition. + +Gallery 119. + +The general character of the next gallery is different from the +preceding. Given over to oils, watercolours, pastels, lithographs, and +drawings, it presents an interesting appearance. Six pastels by Henry +Muhrman and Frank Mura's charcoal drawings are the leaders here, and the +drawings generally are the best things among the many oils and +watercolours, which were mostly made for purposes of illustration. +Drawings by Martinez, pastels by Miss Percy, two sympathetic drawings by +Miss Hunter, and a few still-lifes in watercolour, by Miss Boone, all +bear testimony to native ability as represented by California. + +Gallery 120. + +The last gallery contains Bellow's bold canvases, of which "The Polo +Game" is the best known, another fine canvas by Henry Muhrman, and some +older American work by Stewart, typical of what we used to send to +Europe in years gone by. + +In the Garden. + +While many plastic works have been mentioned in the survey of the +galleries, still great numbers of statues, statuettes, and fountain +figures call for investigation, out of doors. Sculpture is, on the +whole, not so complex as painting, and dealing with the expression of +emotions much more directly than painting, it can easily be understood. +Of the many pieces displayed outside, Janet Scudder's fountain figures +earn all the applause they receive, and most of the other sculptors are +old friends, since they have been met with in the decorative +embellishments of the architecture of the Exposition. There is Aitken, +with a bust of Taft; Chester Beach, with a young girl in marble, of +great charm; Solon Borglum's Washington, Mrs. Burroughs' garden figure, +Stirling Calder, and Piccirilli - all well remembered. It is gratifying +to meet all these men, and many others, in freer and more detached +expression of their art, under conditions where no severe architectural +restrictions were put upon them. + + + +The Graphic Arts + + + +Conclusion + +It will be necessary to retrace our steps to take up a series of +galleries all along the outer curve of the building. They are devoted to +illustrations, miniatures, stained glass, plaques, and the many +expressions of graphic art we know as black and white, charcoal and +pencil drawing, monotypes, lithotints, etchings, and so on. With +Whistler's etchings on one end of the arch, we find Howard Pyle at the +other. + +Gallery 42. + +Pyle, since his death a few years ago, is recognized as the most +important of American illustrators. His art is most intellectual. It +commands immediate respect for its historical interest, which is based +on more than mere knowledge of the story illustrated. His milieu is +always right, distinctly so when he deals with the West Indian +buccaneers. His sense of colour is simple and dignified. It has the +typical breadth and decorative feeling that men like Jules Guérin and +Maxfield Parrish developed. Pyle was not an ordinary illustrator. His +interest in his work showed much depth and great originality. There is +nobody to take his place. In the small adjoining gallery (41) his black +and white drawings strengthen one's impression of this versatile man's +art. + +Gallery 40. + +Here we have Guérin in all the glory of his rich colour harmonies, which +have made the Exposition famous. Painstaking and conscientious as his +art is, it is always full of power of suggestion. Every square inch of +his most agreeably framed decorations is well considered, with nothing +left to accidental effect. Still, they are full of freedom, very loose +in handling, and always convincing. To choose the best among his eight +is very difficult, although his "Cemetery on the Golden Horn" on longer +study does not seem to be free from a certain artificiality of colour, +in the reddish hue of the reflected sunlight on the cypresses. The "Blue +Mosque at Cairo" is wonderfully poetic, and his "Temple of Sunium" has +all the tragic feeling of the classic ruins of Asia Minor. Opposite +Guérin Mr. and Mrs. Hale display unusual refinement and grace of form in +a unit wall of drawings and pastels. Mrs. Hale's drawings are the +quintessence of delicacy, without possessing any of the sugary +disagreeable sweetness of so many of our popular illustrators. Mr. +Hale's pastels are no less enchanting in his outdoor compositions in +many soft greens - a difficult colour to deal with. The many other +things in this gallery are all worth studying in their conservatism and +radicalism. + +Miniatures abound here and endless sighs are heard of entranced ladies +who have succumbed to the sentimental insipidness of these misplaced +artistic efforts. Miniature painting holds no charm for me. Most of them +are technical stunts and concessions to a faddism which has never had +anything to do with the real problem of painting. Practically all of the +miniatures in the cases are very well done, but when I think of the +physical discomfort of adjusting one's eyes to this pigmy world, then I +cannot help feeling that, considering the low cost of canvas, a great +effort deal of fine effort has been wasted. Looking at miniatures, I am +always reminded of the man who spent several years of his useless life +in writing the Old Testament on the back of a postage stamp. + +Gallery 39. + +McLure Hamilton has a fascinating group of anatomical sketches in this +small gallery. They are all charming fragments of a lady one would like +to know more about. As drawings they are spirited and full of rhythmic +linework. Their fragrant rococo style brings one back into that original +atmosphere the destinies of which were so largely controlled by similar +attractions. The apotheosis in his collection is furnished by a drawing +of a recently abandoned or to-be-occupied nest, presented in a most +suggestive manner. In the cases plaques and medallions abound, the +interest of which is largely attributable to Fraser's excellent work. + +Gallery 38. + +This room continues to hold one's interest, with some small pieces of +plastic art, all of great merit. + +Gallery 37. + +Watercolours make up the chief problems of study in this long room, +without convincing one that we have any too many great painters in this +medium. The best thing among the many commonplace paintings is a marine +by Woodbury which takes you far out on the open sea. In spite of its +size it is a big picture, one of the really big ones in any medium in +the whole exhibition. All of Woodbury's paintings are big in their way, +and prove what can be done in this medium. Many other things here are +only coloured photographs and technical experiments, the exceptions +being Dawson's clever flower studies, Miss Schille's market scenes, and +Henry McCarter's "King of Tara". Murphy's small Venetian sketches are +not so good as they seem at first. + +Gallery 36. + +Things look up considerably in the last of the galleries on the north. A +fine watercolour by Mrs. Mathews, good drawings by Sandona and Fortune, +exposition sketches by Donna Schuster, decorative designs by Lucy Hurry, +are all compelling in their way, while in the cases are any number of +good caricatures, and especially worthy of mention the bird designs by +Charles Emile Heil. + +Gallery 34. + +Across the vestibule the graphic arts are continued, beginning with +colour lithographs and monotypes, and continued with etchings. George +Senseney, Arthur Dow, Helen Hyde, Pedro Lemos, Clark Hobart, and others +too numerous to mention excite considerable interest. A battle of +elephants by Anna Vaughan Hyatt is worthy of study on account of its +unusual subject, so handled. + +Gallery 55. + +This room is entirely devoted to etching and is full of good people. +Auerbach Levy has some portraits splendidly characterized. Arthur Covey, +Mahonri Young, Lester Hornby, Clifford Addams, and Robert Harshe are all +equally well represented, in their many fine etchings, and Perham Nahl +with some monotypes of fine quality. + +Gallery 32 contains George Aid, Frank Armington, D. C. Sturges +(reminiscent of Zorn), and Ernest Roth. Franklin T. Wood's dry-point +portraits are noteworthy as examples of a very difficult technique. + +Galleries 31 and 30. + +Pennell's admirable lithographs and etchings of various scenes are so +descriptive, aside from their technical excellence, that they are not in +need of further recommendation. And neither are Mullgardt's lithographs +nor those of Worth Ryder next door. + +The general character of all of these somewhat inconspicuous galleries +is most satisfactory. They contain in well-arranged fashion the real art +of the people, the things that people who cannot afford to buy paintings +can easily afford to own. Original etchings, mezzotints, and wood block +prints and other process work often more truly contain the real point of +artistic effort than big paintings done laborously with no other +interest than to make a large painting for some show. It is gratifying +and it speaks well for our public to see so many of these small works of +art sold and scattered among the public. Only in this way can we hope to +make our exhibition useful to artist and public alike. Mr. Harshe, Mr. +Trask's able and conscientious assistant, has put much labor and thought +into the arrangement of these many cases and wallspaces, in a really +instructive way. It does not seem necessary to go into the meaning of +the many examples of graphic art. They are often self-explanatory, +particularly where used for illustration, and so far as their technical +production is concerned, it is too big a subject to fit into the +physical confines of this book. + +Much of this work to all indications, is going to remain with us, and +the success of our exposition can hardly be measured better than by the +ever-increasing number of purchasers. Art has to live, and in our +country it exists only by the patronage which comes directly from the +people, since federal, state and municipal governments seldom contribute +toward its support. Not until the community feels it a privilege rather +than a duty to give substantial encouragement to our artists will they +ever feel completely at home or will they be able to do their best work. + +Art is becoming more of a necessity in our midst, while not so long ago +it was more or less an affected interest of the rich. We have all the +conditions and the talent to allow us to push ahead into the front rank +of the art of the world, and an exposition like this gives more than +encouraging evidence of the awakening spirit of national American art. +May this exposition mark an epoch in the art of America! - and +particularly of the West, as other expositions have in the westward +march of civilization, which has now found its goal where it must either +achieve or perish. For us to stand still or to return to the +pre-exposition period would be calamity. We have here in California, of +all the states of the Union, conditions to offer, which, if properly +availed of, would give us a unique position on the continent. +Climatically and historically we have all the stimulating necessities +for a great art, and it is our duty to take advantage of them. + + + +Appendix + + + +Bibliography + + + +To the student and lover of art, a list of helpful reference books and +periodicals might be of interest, and the following publications are +recommended as sources of reference, of information and for study. They +cover a wide range of subjects treated historically, technically and +biographically, and they will be found very interesting as a nucleus for +a home library of art. + +Art For Life's Sake - Chas. H. Caffin +American Masters of Painting - Chas. H. Caffin +American Masters of Sculpture - Chas. H. Caffin +How to Study Pictures - Chas. H. Caffin +The Story of American Painting - Chas. H. Caffin +Short History of Art - Edited by Charles H. Caffin - Julia De Forest +The Classic Point of View - Kenyon Cox +What is Art? - John C. Van Dyke +The Meaning of Pictures - John C. Van Dyke +How to Judge of A Picture - John C. Van Dyke +History of Painting - John C. Van Dyke +Art For Art's Sake - John C. Van Dyke +New Guides to Old Masters - John C. Van Dyke +Studies in Pictures - John C. Van Dyke +The Appreciation of Sculpture - Russell Sturgis +The Appreciation of Pictures - Russell Sturgis +The History of Modern Art - Muther +Modern Art - Meier Graefe +Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages - Julia de Wolf Addison +Apollo, A History of Art Throughout the Ages - S. Reinach +Six Lectures on Painting - G. Clausen +Landscape Painting - Birge Harrison +Landscape Painting - Alfred East +History of American Art - Sadakichi Hartmann +Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures - + Henry R. Poore +Design in Theory and Practice - Ernest A. Batchelder +Line and Form - Walter Crane +Heritage of Hiroshige - Dora Amsden +Impressions of Ukiyo-Ye - Dora Amsden +Biographical Sketches of American Artists - Michigan State Library +Is It Art? Post-Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism - J. Nilsen Laurvik + + + + +Periodicals + +Art and Progress +The Craftsman +The International Studio + + + +Index to Galleries + + + +Argentina - Gallery 112 +China - Gallery 94-97 +Cuba - Gallery 20 +France + - Gallery 13-18 + - Gallery 13 + - Gallery 14 + - Gallery 15 + - Gallery 16 + - Gallery 17 + - Gallery 18 +Germany - Gallery 108 +Italy + - Gallery 21-25 + - Gallery 21 + - Gallery 22 + - Gallery 23 + - Gallery 24 + - Gallery 25 +Japan - Gallery 1-10 +Holland - Gallery 113-116 +Norway - Gallery 144-150 (Annex) +Philippines - Gallery 98 +Portugal - Gallery 109-111 +Sweden - Gallery 99-107 +Uruguay - Gallery 19 +Retrospective Art: + - Gallery 61 + - Gallery 62 + - Gallery 63 + - Gallery 91 + - Gallery 92 +United States + - Gallery 26 + - Gallery 27 + - Gallery 28-29 (Whistler) + - Gallery 30, 31 + - Gallery 32, 33, 34, 36 + - Gallery 35 (Vestibule) + - Gallery 37, 38, 39 + - Gallery 40, 41, 42 + - Gallery 43, 44 + - Gallery 45 + - Gallery 46, 47 + - Gallery 48, 49 + - Gallery 50 + - Gallery 51 + - Gallery 52, 53 (Offices) + - Gallery 54 + - Gallery 55, 56 + - Gallery 57 + - Gallery 58 + - Gallery 59 + - Gallery 60 + - Gallery 61 + - Gallery 62 + - Gallery 63 + - Gallery 64 + - Gallery 65 + - Gallery 66 + - Gallery 67 + - Gallery 68, 69, 70 + - Gallery 71 + - Gallery 72 + - Gallery 73 + - Gallery 74 + - Gallery 75 (Sargent) + - Gallery 76 (Mathews and McComas) + - Gallery 77 (Melchers) + - Gallery 78 (Hassam) + - Gallery 79 (Chase) + - Gallery 80 + - Gallery 81, 82, 83, 84 (Offices) + - Gallery 85 + - Gallery 86 + - Gallery 87 (Duveneck) + - Gallery 88 (Redfield) + - Gallery 89 (Tarbell) + - Gallery 90 (Keith) + - Gallery 91 + - Gallery 92 + - Gallery 93 + - Gallery 117 + - Gallery 118, 119 + - Gallery 120 + + + +The Galleries of the Exposition, by Eugen Neuhaus, Published by Paul +Elder and Company, San Francisco, was printed at their Tomoye Press, +under the direction of H. A. Funke, in July Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4672 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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We need your donations. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 +Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file. + + +Title: The Galleries of the Exposition + +Author: Eugen Neuhaus + +Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4672] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on February 26, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Galleries of the Exposition +by Eugen Neuhaus +******This file should be named 4672.txt or 4672.zip****** + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +The "legal small print" and other information about this book +may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this +important information, as it gives you specific rights and +tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used. + +*** +This etext was produced by David A. Schwan. + +The Galleries of the Exposition + + + +A Critical Review of the Paintings, Statuary and the Graphic Arts in The +Palace of Fine Arts at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition + + + +By +Eugen Neuhaus +Assistant Professor of Decorative Design, University of California and +Member of the International Jury of Awards in the Department of Fine +Arts of the Exposition + + +To John E. D. Trask +Director of the Department of Fine Arts of the Panama-Pacific +International Exposition, untiring worker and able executive + + + +Contents + + + +Introduction - An Historical Review. The Function of Art. +Retrospective Art +The Foreign Nations +- France +- Italy +- Portugal +- Argentina +- Uruguay +- Cuba +- Philippine Islands +- The Orient +- Japan +- China +- Sweden +- Holland +- Germany +The United States +- One-Man Rooms +- Whistler +- Twachtman +- Tarbell +- Redfield +- Duveneck +- Chase +- Hassam +- Gari Melchers +- Sargent +- Keith +- Mathews and McComas +- General Collection +The Graphic Arts - Conclusion +Appendix +Bibliography - A list of helpful reference books and periodicals for the + student and lover of art. +Index to Galleries + + + +List of Illustrations + + + +Phyllis --------------------- John W. Alexander +Woman and Child: Rose Scarf - Mary Cassatt +Morning in the Provence ----- Henri Georget +The Promenade --------------- Gustave Pierre +The Procession -------------- Ettore Tito +The Fortune Teller ---------- F. Luis Mora +Water Fall ------------------ Elmer Schofield +The Peacemaker -------------- Ernest L. Blumenschein +The White Vase -------------- Hugh H. Breckenridge +Winter in the Forest -------- Anshelm Schultzberg +Winter at Amsterdam --------- Willem Witsen +In the Rhine Meadows -------- Heinrich Von Zugel +The Mirror ------------------ Dennis Miller Bunker +Coming of the Line Storm ---- Frederick J. Waugh +Lavender and Old Ivory ------ Lilian Westcott Hale +Green and Violet: Portrait of Mrs. E. Milicent Cobden - James McNeill + Whistler +The Dreamer ----------------- Edmund C. Tarbell +Whistling Boy --------------- Frank Duveneck +Self Portrait --------------- William Merritt Chase +Spanish Courtyard ----------- John Singer Sargent +Oaks of the Monte ----------- Francis McComas +Blue Depths ----------------- William Ritschel +Floating Ice: Early Morning - Charles Rosen +The Land of Heart's Desire -- William Wendt +The Housemaid --------------- William McGregor Paxton +My House in Winter ---------- Charles Morris Young +Quarry: Evening ------------- Daniel Garber +Beyond ---------------------- Chester Beach +In the Studio --------------- Ellen Emmet Rand +Eucalypti, Berkeley Hills --- Eugen Neuhaus +Floor Plan, Palace of Fine Arts + + + +Introduction + + + +The artistic appeals of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition +through architecture and the allied decorative arts are so engrossing +that one yields to the call of the independent Fine Arts only with +considerable reluctance. The visitor, however, finds himself cleverly +tempted by numerous stray bits of detached sculpture, effectively placed +amidst shrubbery near the Laguna, and almost without knowing he is drawn +into that enchanting colonnade which leads one to the spacious portals +of the Palace of Fine Arts. + +It was a vast undertaking to gather such numbers of pictures together, +but the reward was great - not only to have gratified one's sense of +beauty, but to have contributed toward a broader civilization, on the +Pacific Coast specifically, and for the world in general besides. It +must be admitted that it was no small task, in the face of many very +unusual adverse circumstances, to bring together here the art of the +world. Mr. John E. D. Trask deserves unstinted praise for the +perseverance with which, under most trying circumstances, unusual enough +to defeat almost any collective undertaking, he brought together this +highly creditable collection of art. Wartime conditions abroad and the +great distance to the Pacific Coast, not to speak of difficulties of +physical transportation, called for a singularly capable executive, such +as John E. D. Trask has proved himself to be, and the world should +gratefully acknowledge a big piece of work well done. I do not believe +the art exhibition needs any apologies. Its general character is such as +fully to satisfy the standards of former international expositions. + +It seems only rational that, with the notorious absence of any important +permanent exhibition of works of art on the Pacific Coast, an effort +should have been made to present within the exhibit the development of +the art of easel painting since its inception, because it seems +impossible to do justice to any phase of art without an opportunity of +comparison, such as the exposition affords. The retrospective aspects of +the exhibition are absorbingly interesting, not so much for the +presentation of any eminently great works of art as for the splendid +chance for first-hand comparison of different periods. Painting is +relatively so new an art that the earliest paintings we know of do not +differ materially in a technical sense from our present-day work. +Archaeology has disinterred various badly preserved and unpresentable +relics of old arts such as sculpture and architecture. It is little so +with pictures. Painting is really the most recent of all the fine arts. +It must seem almost unbelievable that the greatest periods of +architecture and sculpture had become classic when painting made its +début as an independent art. It is true enough that the Assyrians and +Egyptians used colour, but not in the sense of the modern easel painter. +We are also informed, rather less than more reliably, that a gentleman +by the name of Apelles, in the days of Phidias, painted still-lifes so +naturally that birds were tempted to peck at them, and we know much more +accurately of the many delightful bits of wall-painting the rich man of +Pompeii and Herculaneum used to have put on his walls, but the easel +painting is a creation of modern times. + +The sole reason for this can hardly be explained better than by pointing +out the long-standing lack of a suitable medium which would permit the +making of finer paintings, other than wall and decorative paintings. The +old tempera medium was hardly suited to finer work, since it was a +makeshift of very inadequate working qualities. Briefly, the method +consisted of mixing any pigment or paint in powder form with any +suitable sticky substance which would make it adhere to a surface. +Sticky substances frequently used were the tree gums collected from +certain fruit-trees, including the fig and the cherry. This crude method +is known by the word "tempera," which comes from the Latin "temperare," +to modify or mix, and denotes merely any alteration of the original +pigment. Tempera painting, as the only technique known, was really a +great blessing to the world, since it prevented the wholesale production +in a short time of such vast quantities of pictures as the world +nowadays is asked to enjoy. I am not so sure that the two brothers, the +Flemish painters Hubert and Jan van Eyck, who are said to have given us +the modern oil method, are really so much deserving of praise, since +their improved method of painting with oils caused a production of +paintings half of which might much better have remained unpainted. The +one thing that can be said of all paintings made before their day is +that they were painted for a practical purpose. They had to fit into +certain physical conditions, architectural or other. Most modern +paintings are simply painted on a gambler's chance of finding suitable +surroundings afterwards. Nowadays a picture is produced with the one +idea of separating it from the rest of the world by a more or less +hideous gold frame, the design of which in many cases is out of all +relation to the picture as well as to the wall. In fact, most frames +impress one as nothing but attempts to make them as costly as possible. + +I imagine that practically all true painters would rather do their +pictures under and for a given physical condition, to support and be +supported by architecture; but with the unfortunate present-day +elimination of paintings from most architectural problems, most artists +have to paint their pictures for an imaginary condition. The present +production of paintings has become absolutely unmindful of the true, +function of a painting, which is to decorate in collaboration with the +other arts - architecture and sculpture. + +It is necessary to bear these facts in mind in trying to do justice to a +large aggregate of canvases in an international exhibition, or any +exhibition. Thousands of pictures, created by a host of different +artists, are temporarily thrown together. The result, of course, can +never be entirely satisfying. Many devices are employed to overcome this +very disturbing condition and with varying success. The hanging of +pictures against neutral backgrounds, the grouping of works of one man, +the selection of works of similar tonality, colour schemes, technique, +subject, style, etc. - these are all well known methods of trying to +overcome the essential artificiality of the methods of exhibition of +modern paintings. I doubt whether so long as we insist upon art +exhibitions of the conventionally accepted type, we shall ever be able +to present pictures with due regard to their meaning. We must not make +the mistake of blaming a director of an exhibition for a difficulty +which he cannot possibly overcome. So long as painters turn out +thousands of pictures, we can expect only the results which are much in +evidence in all modern exhibitions. The fault is entirely with the +artist, who is forever painting easel pictures, and neglecting the great +field of decorative painting. On investigation of our exhibition we +shall find that the good picture - that is, the picture of a certain +respectful attitude toward its function, which is largely decorative - +is far less injured by unavoidable neighbors than the loud-mouthed +canvas of the "Look! Here I am!" variety, which is afraid of being +overlooked. Art exhibitions of the generally adopted modern type are +logically intolerable, and the only solution of the problem of the +correct presentation of pictures is to display fewer of them, within +certain individual rooms, designed by artists, where a few pictures will +take their place with their surroundings in a unity of artistic +expression. + +It is certainly no small task to enjoy a large exhibit like ours and to +preserve one's peace of mind. The purpose of these pages is to assist in +guiding the uninitiated, in his visit and in retrospect, without +depriving him of the pleasure of personal observation and investigation. +It is not to be expected that all pictures exhibited should be of a +superior kind. If so, we should never be able to learn to recognize the +good among the bad. So many pictures are only experiments. Only by +having the opportunity for comparison can we learn to discriminate. The +predominant characteristic of our art exhibition is its instructive +value in teaching the development of painting by successive periods, +sometimes represented and some times only indicated. The person who +never had the opportunity to visit the larger historical collections of +paintings abroad, could here obtain an idea of the many changes in +subjects, as well as in technique, which have taken place in the +relatively short existence of the art of painting. It is unfortunately +true that the majority of people are not at all interested in the +technical procedure of the making of the picture, but wholly in the +subject matter. If this be pleasing, the picture is apt to be declared a +success. The artist, on the other hand, and to my mind very justly, +looks primarily for what he calls good painting, and a simple statement +of these two points of view explains a great deal of very deplorable +friction between the artist and the willing and enthusiastic layman, who +is constantly discouraged by finding that his artist friend greets his +pet canvas with a cynical smile. + +The subject of the appreciation of pictures from a theoretical point of +view is not exactly the purpose of this book. So enormous is it that it +could be dealt with adequately only in a separate volume the writing of +which I look forward to with joyful anticipation. What I should like to +do - and I should be very glad if I could succeed - is to bring the +public a little closer to the artist's point of view through the +discussion of the merit of certain notable works of art. It is my +conviction that it is the manifestations of an artists artistic +conscience which make exhibitions good, and not the question whether the +public likes certain pictures or not. Only by constant study, a serious +attitude, and a willingness to follow the artist into his realm can the +public hope fully to enjoy the meaning of the artist's endeavors. + + + +The Galleries of the Exposition + + + +Retrospective Art + + + +It would seem only logical to begin our investigation with the pictures +chronologically oldest, at the same time recognizing that European art +has the right to first consideration. We are the hosts to the art of the +world. Our own art is the newest, and yet occupies a large number of +galleries most conspicuously, but it will not lose by waiting for +attention till the end. + +Gallery 63. + +Some of the very earliest paintings in the exhibition are found in one +of the large center rooms on the left, where a very stately Tiepolo +controls the artistic atmosphere of a large gallery. This picture has +all the qualities of an old Italian master of the best kind. Its +composition is big and dignified and in the interest and richness of its +color scheme it has here few equals. The chief characteristic of this +splendid canvas is bigness of style. In its treatment it is a typical +old master, in the best meaning of the term. + +On the left of this Tiepolo, a rather sombre canvas by Ribera claims +attention by the peculiar lighting scheme, so typical of this Italian +master. While there is what we might call a quality of flood lighting in +the Tiepolo, giving an envelope of warm, mellow light to the whole +picture, Ribera concentrates his light somewhat theatrically upon his +subjects, as in the St. Jerome. The picture is freely painted, with the +very convincing anatomical skill that is manifest in most of Ribera's +work. His shadows are sometimes black and impenetrable, a quality which +his pictures may not have had at the time of their production, and which +may be partly the result of age. The Goya on the same wall is +uninteresting - one of those poor Goyas which have caused delay in the +just placing of this great Spaniard in the history of art. + +The Turner below the Goya has all the imaginative qualities of that +great Englishman's best work. Venice may never look the way Turner +painted it, but his interpretation of a gorgeous sunset over a canal is +surely fascinating enough in its suggestion of wealth of form and color. +Sir William Beechey's large canvas of a group of children and a dog +probably presented no easy task to the painter. The attempt at a +skillful and agreeable arrangement of children in pictures is often +artificial, and so it is to my mind in this canvas. Nevertheless the +colouring, together with the spontaneous technique, put it high above +many canvases of similar type. The Spanish painting on the right of the +Beechey could well afford to have attached to it the name of one of the +best artists of any school. The unknown painter of this Spanish +gentleman knew how to disclose the psychology of his sitter in a +straightforward way that would have done honor to Velasquez, or to Frans +Hals, of whom this picture is even more suggestive. + +Below this very fine portrait Sir Godfrey Kneller is represented by a +canvas very typical of the eighteenth century English portrait painters. +The canvas has a little of the character of everybody, without being +sufficiently individual. Reynolds' "Lady Ballington" has a wonderful +quality of repose and serenity, one of the chief merits of the work of +all those great English portrait painters of the eighteenth century. No +matter whose work it is, whether of Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner, or any of +that classic period of the painters of distinguished people, they always +impress by the dignity of their composition and colour. We do not know +in all cases how distinguished their sitters really were, but like +Reynolds' "Lady Ballington," they must often have been of a sort +superior physically as well as intellectually. + +Above the Reynolds a small Gainsborough landscape blends well with the +predominant brown of these old canvases. From the point of view of the +modern landscape painter, who believes in the superiority of his outlook +and attitude toward nature, we can only be glad that Gainsborough's fame +does not depend upon his representation of out-of-doors. This small +canvas, like the very big one on the opposite wall, is interesting in +design. But neither gives one the feeling of outdoors that our modern +landscape painters so successfully impart. Historically they are very +interesting, and even though they carry the name of such a master of +portraits as Gainsborough undoubtedly was, they are devoid of all the +refreshing qualities that modern art has given to the world. + +Sir Peter Lely and Sir Henry Raeburn claim particular attention on the +north wall - the first by a deftly painted portrait of a lady, and the +other by a broadly executed likeness of John Wauchope. As portraits go, +the first picture is one of the finest in the gallery. Very conspicuous +by their size, the two big Romney portraits on the east wall are not in +the same class with either the Lawrence or the Reynolds on the same +wall. The great Lawrence portrait, the lady with the black hat, is +one of the most superb portraits in the world. There is a peculiar charm +about this canvas quite independent of the very attractive Lady Margaret +represented in the picture. The luscious blacks and pale reds and the +neutral cream silk cape make for a colour harmony seldom achieved. +Reynolds' portrait of John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, is equally rich +and full of fine colour contrasts. The shrewd-looking gentleman is +psychologically well given, although one's attention is detracted from +the head by the gorgeous raiment of a dignitary of the church. + +I think Hogarth's portrait on the small wall to the right does not +disclose this master at his best, nor does Hoppner rise to the level of +his best work in the large portrait alongside of it. The Marchioness of +Wellesley is better and more sympathetically rendered than her two +children, who barely manage to stay in the picture. + +On the whole an atmosphere of dignity permeates this gallery of older +masters. One may deplore the lack of many characteristics of modern art +in many of the old pictures. They are very often lifeless and stiff, but +the worst of them are far more agreeable than most of those of our own +time. The serene beauty of the Tiepolo, the Lawrence, and the +Gainsborough portrait has hardly been surpassed since their day. Our age +is, of course, the age of the landscape painter, the outdoor painter, as +opposed to the indoor portraits of these great masters. It would not be +right to judge a Gainsborough by his landscapes any more than it would +be to judge a modern landscape painter by his portraits. But no matter +how uninteresting these old landscapes are, their brown tonality insures +them a certain dignity of inoffensiveness which a mediocre modern work +of art never possesses, I would rather any time have a bad old picture +than a bad one of the very recent schools. Modesty is not one of the +chief attributes of modern art, and the silent protest of a gallery such +as the one we are now in, the artist can well afford to heed. + +The sculpture in this gallery has no relation to the historical +character of the room, but fits well into the atmosphere. Adolph A. +Weinman's admirable "Descending Night" is so familiar to all Exposition +visitors, in its adaptation in a fine fountain in the Court of the +Universe, that no more reference need be made to it. Here in bronze on a +small scale, it is even more refined. Mrs. Saint Gaudens' charming +family group, in burnt clay, is not so well in harmony with this gallery +of older work, but infinitely more appealing than J. Q. A. Ward's +"Hunter" or Cyrus Dallin's "Indian". Both of these groups lack +suggestive quality. They are carried too far. Edward Kemeys' "Buffaloes" +lacks a sense of balance. The defeated buffalo, pushed over the cliff, +takes the interest of the observer outside of the center of the +composition, and a lack of balance is noticeable in this otherwise well +modelled group. + +Gallery 91. + +In this room one is carried farther back into the earlier phases of +painting by a Luini of pronounced decorative quality. The picture is +probably a part of a larger scheme, but it is well composed into the +frame which holds it. Besides, it is of interest as the only piece of +old mural painting included in the exhibition. The ground on which the +angel is painted is a piece of the plaster surface of the original wall +of which this fragment was a part. The method of producing these fresco +paintings (al fresco calco) necessitated the employment of a practical +plasterer besides the painter. The painting was first drawn carefully on +paper and then transferred in its outlines upon freshly prepared +plaster, just put upon the wall. Having no other means of making the +paint adhere to the surface, the painter had to rely upon the chemical +reaction of the plaster, which would eventually unify the paint with +itself. It was a very tedious process, which nowadays has been +superseded by the method of painting on canvas, which after completion +in the studio is fastened to the wall. Above the Luini hangs a very +Byzantine looking Timoteo Viti "Madonna" of interesting colour and good +design, but with a Christ child of very doubtful anatomy, and also two +old sixteenth century Dutch pictures - a Jan Steen and a Teniers. I have +my doubts as to the authenticity of the last two pictures. They are both +interesting as disclosing the fondness of the Dutch painters of the +sixteenth century for over-naturalistic subjects. + +On wall B two pictures, without author or title, appeal to one's +imagination. They are both well painted and rich in colour. A certain +big decorative quality puts them far above their neighbor - a Dutch +canvas of bad composition with no redeeming features other than +historical interest. Jacopo da Ponte's big "Lazarus" has a certain noble +dignity. Though it is rather black in shadows, it is not devoid of +colour feeling. On either side are two old Spanish portraits of children +of royalty. They impress by their very fine decorative note, charmingly +enhanced by the wonderful frames. Another Ribera, as forceful as the one +mentioned before, easily stands out among the many pictures in this +gallery, most of which are only of historical interest. The whole aspect +of this little gallery is one of extreme remoteness from modern thought +and idea, but as an object lesson of certain older periods it is +invaluable. + +Gallery 92. + +Chronologically a typical old Charles Le Brun presides over a very +interesting lot of pictures, mostly French. This academic canvas, of +Darius' family at the feet of Alexander, has not the simplicity and +decorative quality of the Italian pictures of that period, and it is +entirely too complex to be enjoyable. The beautiful Courbet on the left, +while suggestive of Ribera in its severe disposal of light and shadow, +has also a quality of its own, a wonderful mellowness which gives it a +unity of expression lacking in its turbulent neighbor on the right. + +Among the other bigger pictures in this small gallery, a very poetic +Cazin, "The Repentance of Simon Peter," commands attention by a certain +outdoor quality which faintly suggests the Barbizon school. One does not +know what to admire most in this fine canvas. As a figural picture it is +intensely beautiful, and merely as a landscape it is of convincing +charm. It is to my mind one of the finest paintings in the exhibition, +and a constant source of great pleasure. + +The big Tissot offers few excuses for having been painted at all. It is +nothing but a big illustration - all it tells could have been said on a +very small canvas. There is no real painting in it, nor composition - +nothing else, for that matter. The two Monticellis on the same wall make +up for the Tissot. Rich in colour and design, the one to the left is +particularly fine. The Van Marcke on the same wall is typical of this +painter's methods, but does not disclose his talent for very interesting +pictorial compositions, for which he was known. + +On the opposite wall an older Israels gives lone a good idea of the +earlier period of this great Dutch painter, justly counted as one of the +great figures of the second half of the last century. While of recent +date, his art belongs to the older school - without attaching any odium +to that classification. The Barbizon school, the most important of the +last century, is very fitly represented by two charming and most +delicate Corots on either side of the Israels. The one to the right is +particularly tender and poetic. While by no means an attempt at a +naturalistic impressionistic interpretation of nature, like a modern +Metcalf, for instance, their suggestive power is so great as to overcome +a certain lack of colour by the convincingness of the mood represented. +Daubigny and Rousseau, of that great company of the school of 1825, are +merely suggested in two small and very conscientious studies. + +Gallery 62. + +This will always be remembered as the gallery of the "Green Madonna". +Whatever caused this "Green Madonna" to be honored by a Grand Prix at +Paris will always remain one of those mysteries with which the world is +laden. Of all disagreeable colour schemes, it is certainly one of the +least appealing ever put upon a canvas. It is hardly a scheme at all, +since I do not believe the juxtaposition of so many different slimy +greens, nowhere properly relieved nor accentuated by a complementary +red, can ever be called a scheme. Technically speaking, the canvas is +well painted, but it is hardly worthy of the attention its size and +subject win. Dagnan-Bouveret has rendered good service as a teacher and +also as a painter of animal life, but in this canvas he surely is not up +to his best. + +The Barbizon men continue to hold one's attention by a splendid Troyon. +It is one of the best of his canvases I have ever seen. The little Diaz +alongside of it is also typical of this very luminous painter, who often +attains a lusciousness of colour in his work not reached by any other of +the Barbizon men. + +Fortuny, in an Algiers picture, shows the same brilliant technical +quality which is so much in evidence in a small watercolor in the +preceding gallery. Jules Bastien-LePage's studio nude seems very +unhappily placed in a naturalistic background into which it does not +fit, and Cazin's big canvas, while very dignified, hardly comes up to +the level of his repenting "Simon Peter", in the other gallery. +Pelouse's landscape, of singularly beautiful composition and colour, +should not be overlooked. It is alongside the Cazin. + +While almost all the pictures referred to so far are of the French +school, there are three pictures of the older German school - two +Lenbachs, one a very accurately drawn portrait of the German philosopher +Mommsen, and the other a portrait of himself. They show this powerful +artist in two different aspects. While the Mommsen is one of his later, +broader pictures, the portrait of himself is of an earlier date, showing +the artist as the serious student he has always been. Adolph Schreyer, +another German, with his Bedouin pictures, was the pet of the art lovers +in his day, and pictures like this can be found in almost every +collection in the world. + +The miscellaneous sculpture in this gallery is full of interest and +gives one a good suggestion of the great mass of small modern sculpture +found throughout the galleries. Mora's Indian figures are particularly +interesting from their originality of theme. Mora tries hard to be +unconventional, without going into the bizarre, and succeeds very well. + +Gallery 61. + +The difference of appearance in the four older galleries discussed and +the one now visited is so marked as to lead one to believe that our +investigations have not been conducted in the proper chronological +order. All the art of the world, up to and including the Barbizon +school, is characterized by a predominant brown colour which, on account +of its warmth, is never disagreeable, although sometimes monotonous. The +daring of the Englishman Constable in painting a landscape outdoors led +to the development of a new point of view, which the older artists did +not welcome. Constable and the men of the Barbizon school realized for +the first time that outdoor conditions were totally different from the +studio atmosphere, and while the work of such men as Corot, Millet, +Daubigny, Rousseau, and Diaz is only slightly removed from the somber +brown of the studio type, it recognizes a new aspect of things which was +to be much farther developed than they ever dreamed. Just as Constable +shocked his contemporaries by his - for that time - vivid outdoor blues +and greens, so the men of the school of 1870, or the impressionists, +surprised and outraged their fellowmen with a type of picture which we +see in control of this delightfully refreshing gallery. We can testify +by this time that Constable, although much opposed in his day, seems +very tame to us today, and caution seems well advised before a final +judgment of impressionism is passed. The slogan of this gallery seems to +be, "More light and plenty of it!" The Monet wall gives a very good idea +of the impressionistic school, in seven different canvases ranging from +earlier more conventional examples to some of his latest efforts. One +more fully understands the goal that these men, like Monet, Renoir, +Sisley, Pissarro, and others in this gallery were striving for when, in +an apparently radical way, they discarded the attitude of their +predecessors, in their search for light. It is true they encountered +technical difficulties which forced them into an opacity of painting +which is absolutely opposed to the smooth, sometimes licked appearance +of the old masters. Many of these men must be viewed as great +experimenters, who opened up new avenues without being entirely able to +realize themselves. They are collectively known generally as +impressionists, though the word "plein-airist" - luminist - has been +chosen sometimes by them and by their admirers. The neo-impressionists +in pictorial principle do not differ from the impressionist. Their +technical procedure is different, and based on an optical law which +proves that pure primary colours, put alongside of each other in +alternating small quantities, will give, at a certain distance, a +freshness and sparkle of atmosphere not attained by the earlier +technical methods of the impressionistic school, which does not in the +putting on of the paint differ from the old school. Besides, this use of +pure paint enabled them to have the mixing of the paint, so to speak, +done on the canvas, as the various primary colours juxtaposed would +produce any desired number of secondary and tertiary colours without +loss of freshness. In other words a green would be produced, not by +mixing yellow and blue on the palette, but by putting a yellow dot and a +blue dot alongside of each other, and so ad infinitum. According to the +form of their colour dots they were called pointillistes, poiristes, and +other more or less self-explanatory names. The service of these men to +art can never be estimated too highly. The modern school of landscape +painting particularly, and other art involving indoor subjects, are +based entirely on the principles Monet discovered to the profession. + +Pissarro, on either end of the wall opposite the Monet, appeals more in +the new method of the neo-impressionists than Monet, by reason of much +more interesting subjects. The one Pissarro on the right is of the first +order from every point of view, demonstrating the superiority of the +neo-impressionistic style applied to a very original and interesting +subject. "The River Seine," by Sisley, is also wonderfully typical of +this new style, while of the two Renoirs, only the still-life can really +be called successful. There is an unfortunate fuzziness in his landscape +which defeats all effect of difference of texture in the various objects +of which this picture is composed. + +There are a number of canvases in this gallery which have nothing to do +with the predominating impressionistic character of the gallery. The +Puvis de Chavannes gives one a very fine idea of the idealistic outlook +of this greatest of all modern decorators. His art is so genuinely +decorative that to see one of his pictures in a frame seems almost +pathetic, when we think how infinitely more beautiful it would look as +part of a wall. Eugène Carrière is very well represented by a stately +portrait of a lady with a small dog. Carrière's mellow richness is +entirely his own and rarely met with in any other artist's work. + +On the west wall opposite the Puvis four very different canvases deserve +to be mentioned. In the center a young Russian, Nicholas Fechin, +displays a very unusual virtuosity in a picture of a somewhat +sensual-looking young creature. Aside from the fascination of this young +human animal, the handling of paint in this canvas is most +extraordinary, possessing a technical quality few other canvases in the +entire exhibition have. There is life, such as very few painters ever +attain, and seen only in the work of a master. This work is not entirely +a Nell Brinkley in oil, either. I confess I have a strange fondness for +this weird canvas. + +The international character of this gallery is most pronounced. Directly +above the Fechin, Frits Thaulow, the Norwegian, justifies his reputation +as the painter of flowing water in a picture of great beauty. Gaston La +Touche faintly discloses in a large canvas his imaginative style, +carried so much farther in his later work. Joseph Bail, the Frenchman, +got into this gallery probably only on the basis of size, to balance the +La Touche on the other side. To all appearances Bail has very little in +common with the general modern character of this gallery. Nevertheless +his canvas has merit in many ways. + + + +Foreign Nations + + + +France + +A discussion of the impressionistic school makes it almost imperative to +continue our investigation by way of the French Section. France is +easily to modern art what Italy was to the art of the Renaissance or +Greece to antiquity. Almost all countries, with the exception of those +of northern Europe, have gone to school at Paris. It becomes quite +evident at first glance that a certain very desirable spaciousness in +the hanging of the pictures contributes much toward the generally +favorable impression of this section of the exhibition, though it is +hard to understand why this fine effect should have been spoiled by the +pattern used on the wall-covering. It seems unbelievable that a people +like the French should so violate a fundamental principle, which a +first-semester art student would scarcely do. The otherwise delightful +impression of the French section, so excellently arranged, is +considerably impaired by this faux pas. There is no chronological +succession in evidence in the hanging of pictures in the six galleries +of this section, and old and new, conservative and radical, are hung +together with no other consideration than harmonious ensemble. + +Gallery 18. + +In the western end of the section presided over by a decorative painting +of some aras among orange trees (over the west door), a beautiful, +almost classic canvas by Henri Georget commands immediate attention. The +poetic idealism of this decorative landscape, together with a fine +joyousness, give it unusual character. Alongside of it a very +intelligently painted little canvas by Albert Guillaume shows the +interior of an art dealer's shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts +to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very +"advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever +psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid +helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized +by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much +neglected field, it is one of the finest things of recent years. On the +extreme left of this wall a very fine bit of painting of an Arabian +fairy tale by E. Dinet deserves to be mentioned. + +Almost opposite this small canvas Lucien Simon has a large picture +painted with the bravura for which he is famous. The atmosphere of this +fine interior is simply and spontaneously achieved, and the three +figures of mother, nurse and balky baby are excellently drawn. The +still-life by Moride, to the left of this picture, shows all the +earmarks of the modern school without sacrificing a certain delicacy of +handling which is often considered by many modern painters a confession +of weakness. A fine Dutch canvas on the extreme left of this wall, by +Guillaume-Roger, attracts by a fine decorative note seldom found in +pictures of French easel painters. + +The east wall of this gallery is distinguished by a number of fine +landscapes by different men. Beginning on the left side of the door +Jules-Emile Zingg presents two tonally skillful winter landscapes of +great fidelity, while on the right is Henry Grosjean's delicate +atmospheric study of a broad valley floor. A decorative watercolour of +the Versailles Gardens, by Mlle. Carpentier, commands admiration by +reason of its fine composition as well as by the economical but +effective technique of putting transparent paint over a charcoal +drawing. The sculpture in this gallery is of no great moment. Like much +of the modern French sculpture it is very well done in a technical sense +without disclosing great concentration of mind. + +Gallery 17. + +A variety of subjects continues to impress one in this gallery. +Portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects, with here and there a +genre note, make the general character of the French exhibit, showing at +every turn the great technical dexterity for which French art has long +been celebrated. There is no picture of outstanding merit in this +gallery, unless one would single out a very sympathetic, simple +landscape by Paul Buffet and the Lucien Griveau landscape called "The +Silver Thread," diagonally opposite, a canvas of rich tonality and +distinctive composition. + +Gallery 16. + +An adjoining gallery toward the east has a great number of excellent +pictures to hold the attention of the visitor. To begin with the figure +painters, the Desch portrait of a little girl in empire costume appeals +by its genuinely original design. The carefully considered pattern +effect of this canvas is most agreeable and well assisted by a very +refined colour scheme. Although a trifle dry, the quality of painting in +this canvas is the same as that which makes Whistler's work so +interesting. This painting is one of the great assets of the French +section, and to my mind one of the great pictures of the entire +exhibition. Balancing the Desch canvas, one finds another figural canvas +of great beauty of design, by Georges Devoux. "Farewell," while of a +sentimental character, is strong in drawing and composition. It is very +consistent throughout. Everything in the picture has been carefully +considered to support the poetic, sentimental character of the painting, +which is admirably delicate and convincing without being disagreeably +weak. + +Jacques-Emile Blanche is represented in this gallery by his well-known +portrait of the dancer Nijinski. A certain Oriental splendor of colour +is the keynote of this canvas, which is much more carelessly painted +than most of Blanche's very clever older portraits. On the opposite wall +Caro-Delvaille shows his dexterity in the portrait of a lady. The lady +is a rather unimportant adjunct to the painting and seems merely to have +been used to support a magnificently painted gown. There is a peculiar +contrast in the very naturalistically painted gown and the severe +interpretation of the face of the sitter. Ernest Laurent's portrait of +Mlle. X is typically French in its loose and suggestive style of +painting, and easily one of the many good portraits in the gallery. + +Among the landscapes Andrè Dauchez' "Concarneau," Charles Milcendeau's +"Washerwomen," on the opposite wall, and last but not least, Renè +Mènard's "Opal Sea" - a small picture of great beauty - deserve +recognition. Pierre Roche has a statuette of Loïe Fuller in this gallery +which is conspicuous by its daring composition and simple treatment. + +Gallery 15. + +Entering this gallery, the first canvas to attract one's attention, by +reason of its boldness of composition and colour, is a large Lucien +Simon called "The Gondola." The versatility of this artist is well +brought out by another picture of a baby, about to be bathed, previously +referred to, and by a third canvas, of "The Communicants," near "The +Gondola." Simon seems to have no difficulty in using several mediums and +styles of expression equally well, as a comparison between "The Gondola" +and "The Communicants" will easily prove. This former picture is the +more original of the two technically, in colour as well as in +composition. It is in danger of losing one's sympathy by a badly +selected frame. Near it hangs a trifolium of virgins, of very anaemic +colour. The drawing, however, is so very sensitive in this canvas that +it makes good for the unconvincing anaemic colour scheme. + +The gem of this gallery is a small landscape of Amédée-Julien +Marcel-Clément, of extraordinarily fine composition. A fine decorative +quality is its chief asset, and its sympathetic technical handling adds +much to the enjoyment of this picture. Bartholemé's kneeling figure in +the center of the room is of wonderful nobility of expression and +entirely free from a certain extreme physical naturalism so often found +in modern French sculpture. + +Gallery 14. + +Passing into the next gallery, where figural pictures predominate, a +very swingy composition of a Brittany festival, by Charles-René +Darrieux, is most conspicuous, for the forceful handling and the fine +quality of movement which characterize the procession of figures +rhythmically moving through the picture. Of the two large nudes on the +same wall, one, a Besnard, is vulgarly physical, although well painted, +and the other too insipid to make one feel that the French penchant for +nudes is sufficiently justified. Le Sidaner's poetic evening recommends +itself for the quiet intimacy with which it is handled. Herrmann Vogel's +portrait of a gentleman in a chair, also on the east wall, while not +very spontaneous in handling, is interesting nevertheless in its +composition and the psychological characterization of the sitter. Most +of the other pictures in this gallery have really not enough individual +character to single them out, no matter how high their general standard +may be. + +Gallery 13. + +The last and smallest of the French galleries is given over to some +recent phases of French art. After looking at the serious work of the +French in the other galleries, a first-hand acquaintance with this +medley of newest pictures is hardly satisfactory. There is a feeling of +affected primitiveness about most of them, particularly in a small +canvas of a bouquet of flowers in a green vase, which is the acme of +absurdity. If Odilon Redon wanted to be trivial, he has achieved +something quite wonderful. Certain ultra-modern manifestations of art +are never more intolerable than when seen together in large numbers, as +in this gallery. Still, the French section can well afford some of these +experimenting talents, since the general character of their other work +is so high. Maurice Denis' canvas of a spring procession, in just a few +silvery tones, is really lovely; the large number of decorations by him, +all around on the second line, scarcely comes up to the beauty of this +small canvas. + +The French representation deserves much credit for a great number of +reasons, not least for an astounding versatility, always accompanied by +technical excellence. + + + +Italy + +Going over into the Italian galleries, the first impression is that +while there are certain groups of pictures of a very high order, the +general standard of this section is not quite so high as in the French +Department. The Italians seem to have the advantage over the French in +regard to the selection of a background for their galleries. They made +no such mistake as putting a Pullman car floor pattern on the wall, and +the general effect is one of calmness. As in the French section, the +work of the modern painter seems superior to sculptured work of the same +period. The work of Tito and of Mancini, among the painters, stands out +in this Italian collection. + +Gallery 21. + +Tito, whose work can be found in a group of five pictures in this +gallery, has a very pronounced decorative sense, which he employs with +great ease in a group of five most excellent pictures. To students of +technical procedure his work is worthy of study. His under-painting is +done in tempera, and sometimes the complete work, as in the cattle +picture, is done in this medium, which, by an application of varnish, is +then transformed into an oil. The most interesting pictures in his group +of five are the two on the right of his wall. The mythological subjects +underlying both canvases have a classic note, but their refreshing +colour scheme removes these pictures from any classic affiliation. The +woodland scene, enlivened by a few hilarious centaurs pursuing nymphs, +is tremendously sure in handling and very gorgeous in the many golden +browns and greens which control the colour scheme. The kneeling Venus +alongside is unusually alluring in its blue and gold tones, and is one +of the really fine pictures in the exhibition. While the Venus and the +Centaurs are the backbone of the Italian section, Tito's "Blue Lady" is +very chic and, as a colour arrangement of blue-blacks and flesh colour, +most decorative. The canvas in the center, evidently belonging to an +older period of the artist, has nothing of the direct method of the +accomplished master, although in composition it has a certain bigness. +Tito's art has the full and rich expression of an original personality. + +The landscapes in this gallery, of which there are a goodly number, are +all typically Italian in their artificiality of colour and in a certain +sweetness which makes them lose in one's estimation the longer one +studies them. Clever as they are technically, they do not convince and +they do not reflect a thorough knowledge of the spirit of outdoors. All +one admires in the Barbizon men - the lyric feeling of a Corot or the +more dramatic note of a Rousseau - is missing in the modern Italian +landscape as seen in these pictures. They are flippant in their catchy +technique and in the absence of any thought. + +Gallery 22. + +This room is dominated by three portraits by Antonio Mancini, of unusual +cleverness and very fine psychological characterization. Mancini's work +grows on one. While seeming at first rather loose and superficial, these +portraits disclose on more intimate study a fine constructive quality. +They are not particularly interesting in colour; as a matter of fact +they are very monochromatic. Their appeal is based on an intensely +serious quality of studious experimentation, which a very sketchy +technique cannot hide. To the left of the three Mancinis hangs a simple +picture of large proportions called "Maternity," by Pietro Gaudenzi. +This is one of those modern interpretations of the birth of Jesus which +appeals by the individualistic note. The picture is sympathetic by +reason of its restriction to a few simple facts. No doubt it will fail +to receive a wide appreciation, since sociologically any picture of its +type disclosing human life under poverty-stricken conditions is rarely +approved by the public. Nevertheless one of the greatest of all stories +is, with feeling and restraint alike, well rendered on this canvas. + +On the opposite wall Arturo Noci has a very striking interior. There is +nothing tricky about this most effective canvas. The result is simply +and directly attained by good, sound painting. The red curtain in the +distant room is a trifle raw and refuses somewhat to take its place in +the picture. Two landscapes on this wall deserve mention for their fine +skies and their decorative note. Giuseppe Carosi's little landscape with +the oxen is so much better than the one below by the same artist that it +is hard to believe both were done by the same man. "La Valle dell' +Aniene," by Dante Ricci, is big in feeling, well painted, and +unquestionably one of the best landscapes in the Italian section. + +Gallery 23. + +The east gallery is almost entirely given over to sculpture, with one +exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a +painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot +fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to +imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured +could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. It +seems to me an absolutely futile thing to try to represent something in +a medium very badly chosen for this particular stunt. A stunt it is, and +always will be, no matter how much we admire the painstaking drawing and +the infinite care involved. Texturally the canvas is all wrong, because +the sky, the stone, everything in the picture, looks like glass and not +like the various things it is intended to represent. However, it is a +wonderful piece of patience - so much should be said for it. + +Millet's man with the hoe sitting down is the strongest piece of +sculpture in this gallery. The figure doubtless belongs to an older +school, as its discolorations as well as its technical treatment +indicate. Alongside the rest of the things in this small room it is, in +spite of being carried somewhat too far, very forceful and convincing. +No matter whether the man succumbed to the dreariness of work or to the +malarial fever of the Pontine swamps, all that has ever been said about +Millet's man and the terrible fatalism of his facial expression is found +in this piece of sculpture. + +Rodin's influence is making itself felt in most of the other pieces in +this room, as in the Vedani kissing pair. The beautiful colour in the +marble in this group puts much life into it. Nicolini's work shows much +breadth and a fine mastery of form. A frame of animal plaques by Brozzi +adds considerably to the artistic merit of the sculpture. A certain +muscular mannerism is evident in all of them, though not in the least +disturbing. + +Gallery 24. + +Two portraits by Enrico Lionne of very repulsive colour are prominently +hung in the east gallery, without convincing one in the least of this +artist's high standing at home. Cold and artificial, they are not +deserving of the prominent place they occupy. Near the door on the +opposite wall Vincenzo Yrolli presents a street musician and his +audience in a canvas riotous with good colour. The composition and the +literal technical treatment of this work commend themselves highly by +good judgment and spontaneous handling. The two figure pictures by +Pietro Chiesa, on an adjoining wall to the right, ought to be +remembered, and also an interior on the opposite wall by Vianello. + +Gallery 25. + +In the last of the Italian galleries, on the west wall, we observe the +unusual spectacle of a whole family of artists distinguishing itself in +a group of pictures. There is Beppe Ciardi, the father; Guglielmo, the +son; and Emma, the daughter. All of their pictures are conspicuous for +their saneness and big feeling. The father, Beppe, with the center +canvas, has not the breadth and bigness that is so typical of both the +son's pictures of similar subjects. The skies in the younger man's +pictures are particularly fine. The daughter's single canvas, on the +left, to me seems even better than those of both father and brother. A +certain imaginative quality, shown in this big formal garden, +constitutes Emma Ciardi's superiority over the rest of the family. On +the whole the showing of this family is excellent in every way. + +The landscapes in this gallery are far above those mentioned in the Tito +gallery. In fact there are so many other good pictures that a mere +mention of names must suffice. From the Ciardi group on toward the +right, Guido Marussig's "Walled City", Italico Brass' "Pontoon Bridge", +and particularly Scattola's "Venice" are all worthy of comment. +Scattola's picture is very sensitively studied, discreetly painted and +full of the poetry of a summer night. Before leaving the Italian +section, Mentessi's big imaginative architectural study should be +appreciated. It will crystallize the visitor's opinion of the general +excellence of Italy's contribution to the exhibition. + +As a matter of racial tradition, and not so much because of similarity +of standards, we are almost obliged to continue our investigations into +the other nations most closely allied with the Latin people, of Southern +Europe and elsewhere. There is much room to believe that in a +contemporaneous art exhibition the Paris influence should make itself +felt in more than one way. Paris, after all, is the Mecca of all art +students, particularly of the foreign Latin countries. The technical +superiority of the French school of painting has for years caused an +influx of foreign students into Paris, who are now giving us, in such +national sections as those of Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, and +the Philippine Islands, the result of this contact. It will easily be +seen that unless a distinct national outlook, based on scenery, climate, +history, and tradition generally, is added to the mere technical +performance, no matter how clever, a national art can hardly develop. So +we find that with all the good intentions in the art of any of the +countries mentioned, very little typical national expression is brought +out. In choice of subject and colour scheme the art of all of these +countries is very much alike. + + + +Portugal + +The Portuguese section does not present any great painter such as Spain, +for instance, has produced in Sorolla or Zuloaga, though both seem to be +very much admired by all Latin painters, as well as by some of the +Germanic artists, as a certain canvas of a Dutch lady in the Holland +section will demonstrate. + +Nudes are still in vogue, or rather naked women, and probably will be as +long as the sale of strong drink needs to be increased by the kind of +creation commonly known as the saloon picture. There is surely nothing +nobler than the truly idealized interpretation of the human figure by +artistic means, but the purposely sensuous nude is becoming rather a +bore. Painting flesh is one of the most difficult of all things, +particularly as to the correct texture, but there ought to be a limit in +the production of such a type of picture as the one by Veloso Salgado in +the Portuguese section. + +Here a great variety of subjects is treated, mostly with entirely too +much realism. Photographic truthfulness is not the function of painting, +because, first of all, the medium will not allow it without losing a +certain quality indicating the fact that it is painting; and secondly, +art can only be an approximation anyhow, and it should carry its point +by forceful and convincing suggestion rather than by a tightly rendered +photographic fact. The great pictures are first those of a strong +suggestive quality and, secondly, those possessing a certain something +the artist calls design - meaning thereby a more or less arbitrary +arrangement of form and colour effects which will please the eye. The +idea of design has not struck the Portuguese artist as yet; at least it +is not apparent in the pictures of that section. The technical +excellence of their work is uniform and in some cases very creditable, +particularly in the many small canvases by Senhor de Sousa Lopes, the +art commissioner of his country. + +Continuing in the western gallery of the Portuguese section, directly +opposite the nude referred to, an outdoor sewing circle by José Malhoa +arouses interest. The outdoor quality in this canvas is very pronounced, +and the gay enlacement of the luxuriant wistaria with the orange trees +in the distance, together with the multi-coloured ensemble of children, +make for a lovely effect. The middle gallery doubtless holds Portugal's +most important claims upon artistic distinction, in the group of three +portraits and two still-lifes by Columbano. The three portraits are +unusually dignified and psychologically suggestive enough to show that +the painter was not interested in exterior facts alone. The portrait of +the bearded gentleman in the middle is fine, though somewhat academic in +colour. The two little still-lifes wedged in between the larger +portraits are exquisite in every way, and make up for a lot of +superficialities found in this section. All around in this gallery, in +more than a dozen sketches from Spain and Italy, Sousa Lopes shows fine +ability in the handling of paint and great power of observation. All of +these apparently recent things by Senhor Lopes are far more enjoyable +than a huge "Pilgrimage", which, while well painted, is too scattered. +The unity of feeling in the work of Columbano is much more necessary in +a canvas of this size than in a small sketch. (Rembrandt's famous +"Nightwatch" and Velasquez's "Surrender of Breda" illustrate this point +very well.) Malhoa's well-painted interior called "The Native Song" has +more of this desirable feeling of oneness, which may be due to the fact +that it deals with an indoor setting, while de Sousa Lopes' "Pilgrimage" +in the adjoining gallery presents a far more difficult problem in the +reflected and glaring light effect of a southern country. Among the +sculptures of this country Vaz Jor's "Grandmother" is of unusually high +merit and intensely well studied. On the whole there is more academic +training in evidence than originality of expression, but we may expect +good things hereafter from the art of this country, which practically at +no time in the history of art has produced any really great name. + + + +Argentina + +Retracing our steps, we invade the Argentine, in a well-appointed +gallery. The first general impression is very good, though on closer +examination nothing of really great merit holds one's attention for any +length of time. While naturalism reigns in Portugal, a more pronounced +decorative conventional note predominates in this section, particularly +in the portraiture. There is a peculiar superabundance of purple and +dark reds in the Argentine section, which gives this gallery a morbid +quality. On the main wall, in the left corner, Héctor Nava has a very +distinguished "Lady in Black". Among all of the portraits on this wall +it is easily the best, although some charming interiors of a singularly +cool tonality are not without interest. They are too reminiscent of +Frieseke to convince one of their originality. Another "Black Lady", +continuing toward the right on the next wall, has much to recommend her. +A better frame would enhance the merit of this canvas. + +There is no landscape of any importance in the Argentine section, no +matter how hard the effort to find one. They are all singularly +artificial. A small harbor picture by Pedro Delucchi is strong in +colour, as well as in technical treatment. It has an unusual wealth of +colour, and great richness which contrasts strongly with the general +coldness of this section. + + + +Uruguay + +Here another South American republic holds forth in a small gallery off +the Italian section. The gallery is dominated by a large equestrian +portrait of General Galarza, by Blanes Viale. A certain fondness for +disagreeable greens and for decorative effects is noticeable in this +gallery, and one is not convinced of the necessity for a more +comprehensive display. + + + +Cuba + +The same remark applies to the Cuban section, where Romanach's +Düsseldorf style of picture shows at least good academic training, +without rising, however, above illustration in any one of the very well +painted figure pictures. Rodriguez Morey's big, intimate foreground +studies are commendable for their faithfulness and for a certain poetic +quality which takes them out of the realm of mere accurate truthfulness. + + + +Philippine Islands + +The small Philippine section makes one curious to know whether there is +nothing in the tradition of this people related to the art of Asia that +could serve as a basis for their artistic endeavors. To any +serious-minded person it must be evident that the Filipino is not going +to work out his artistic salvation by way of the Paris studio. It must +come out of the soil, so to speak, and must be based on the racial, +religious, and other national elements. It would do the Filipino people +good to see their collection in close proximity to that of other +nations. Aside from that, a natural sequence of artistic development by +developing the more decorative arts of making useful things beautiful - +such things as pots and pans, rugs, and jewelry - would be much more +becoming than this European affectation. The real art of the Filipinos +is to be seen in their art industries in the Philippine Building. + + + +The Orient + +For historical reasons alone, if not for supremacy along artistic lines, +Japan and China should by right be dealt with at the very beginning. But +having had, since time immemorial, a very detached, highly original +note, they fit in anywhere, if not best in between the art of the +Romanic and Germanic races. Practically the entire world owes a great +debt to Japan, for a certain outlook in decorative art has been adopted +from Japan by the best artists of the world. Oriental art is so truly an +art of the people, devoting itself most closely to the artistic +development of the utilitarian things of life, that to see them at their +best one has to look at their furniture, including folding screens, +pottery, jewelry, rugs, and practically everything else that is needed +in the daily life of the people. The art of China and Japan is so old +that its real origin is almost a matter of guesswork, and has a certain +general obscurity to most outsiders, owing to language, religion, and +customs. This has led to a commercial exploitation of their art in +Europe, and in America particularly, based mostly on humbug and partly +on facts. If all the pottery, rugs and furniture said to have come from +distinguished artists and from even more distinguished circles of +ownership, mostly palaces of the Ming dynasty, were enumerated, there +would be nothing left to have come from the atmosphere of the ordinary +Oriental. The Japanese and Chinese are taking quick advantage of the +guilelessness of the western lover of art, and much that is to be seen +in either one of the two sections is rather a concession to western +demand than to native Oriental talent. Only the special student of +oriental art will consent to learn enough of the Japanese or Chinese +language to familiarize himself with any other than the commonly known +artists of these countries, and all that one can do within the frame of +an international exhibition is to single out those things which appeal +on the basis of certain artistic principles which are the same the world +over. To go into the many religious and other sentimental considerations +which are sometimes the basic justification for some very extraordinary +fantastic things, charmingly exploited by certain art dealers, is +impossible within the scope of this book. + + + +Japan + +The Japanese people, at the extreme southern end of the Palace of Fine +Arts, have a representative show of painted screens, of extraordinary +beauty. Anyone, without being in the least familiar with the fauna and +flora of Japan, must admire the tremendously acute power of observation +and surety of drawing which made these designs possible. The two sixfold +screens by Taisei Minakami on the east wall of the eastern gallery are +probably the most magnificently daring examples of modern Japanese art. +To the student of design they offer a most stimulating opportunity for +study. Acutely observed, their tropical subjects, very daring in colour, +are exhaustively beautiful. The spacing of the design, the relative +distribution of the few daring colours against a gold background of +wonderful texture, combine in a picture of great vitality. The art of no +people is so scientific as that of these people, whose every effort, no +matter how insignificant, is technically always sound. Our modern art +schools could very profitably imitate the Japanese principle of teaching +their young students how to do a thing well and of leaving the choice of +subjects to their own inclination. + +Almost opposite, a vertical composition of a lumber camp on a +mountainside, by Bunto Hayashi, attracts by an unusual subject very +descriptively rendered. The picture belongs to the older school, not so +much for the lack of colour, which is often erroneously identified with +the older Japanese works, as for a certain quality of less decoration +and of more detailed treatment of the drawing. The drawing is, of +course, the important element in all Japanese art, since all of their +work has to yield a great deal of pleasure of the intellectual kind at +close distance, on account of the smallness of Japanese dwellings, which +keeps the owner of the picture in close proximity with his artistic +possessions. A picture of crows in a rainstorm, on the same wall, on the +right side of the southern door, and also a very characteristic study of +some kind of cedar, with birds on the left of it, give one an excellent +idea of the astonishing variety of material that the Japanese artist +successfully controls. + +In two irregularly shaped triangular galleries adjoining, Shodo Hirata +maintains the standard of the first gallery, not to forget, either, +Toyen Oka with his oleander bush and the cat on the picturesque fence. +Tesshu Okajima's hollyhock screens are marvels of decorative simplicity, +while Kangai Takakura uses a washday as a motive for a double twofold +screen decoration. The last two artists can both be found in the second +irregular triangular gallery, opposite the first one mentioned. The +central octagonal gallery also is devoted to screen pictures, done by +means of embroidery. Some of them, largely those of native design, are +successful in really giving the quality of the subjects depicted, but +cannot grow enthusiastic over two unduly protected screen embroideries, +a German marine and an English pair of lions, done in silk. They are +both as hard as nails and devoid of any real suggestion of the spirit +which animates either water or lions in reality. If it is so great an +achievement as we are often asked to believe to do certain things in +badly chosen material, then why not try to reproduce Rafael's "Sistine +Madonna" with thumbtacks? Most such attempts to find an agreeable +substitute for the various painting media are merely silly. + +Sharing the hospitality of the cases with the embroidery pictures are +the wood sculptures, some of which are intensely interesting, as, for +instance, the "Man with the Spade." The underlying idea of cubism is +very intelligently embodied in this small figure, without any +affectation. The many small woodblock prints to be seen here do credit +to the reputation which Japanese artists have long enjoyed in this +special field. + +The remaining smaller galleries are given over to replicas of the +originals of older art, modern sculpture, and painting in the modern +style. Why the modern Japanese artists want to divorce themselves from +the traditions of their forefathers seems incomprehensible. There is not +a thing in the western style in this gallery of Japanese painting that +comes anywhere near giving one the artistic thrills won by their +typically Japanese work. I think the sooner these wayward sons are +brought back into the fold of their truly Oriental colleagues, the +better it will be for the national art of Japan, the most profound art +the world has ever seen. + + + +China + +The first impression of the Chinese section is disappointing. There is +no real life in any of the work here displayed, and most of it consists +of modern replicas - some of very excellent quality - of their oldest +and best art treasures. The Chinese seem to be absolutely content to +rest upon their old laurels, the fragrance of which can hardly ever be +exhausted; but nevertheless that does not relieve them of the obligation +of working up new problems in a new way. There is so much religious and +other sentiment woven into their art that to the casual observer much of +the pleasure of looking at the varied examples of applied art is spoiled +by the necessity of having to read all of the longwinded stories +attached to many of them. The freshness of youth, the spirit of +progress, which enliven the Japanese section, are entirely missing in +this display, which seems like a voice from the past - a solemn monument +to an old civilization without any connection with the New Republic and +its modern pretensions. I am afraid China is laboring under conditions +of internal strife which are detrimental to the development of any +artistic expression. + + + +Sweden + +Of all the foreign nations represented, with the exception of Japan and +China, none possesses so distinct a national character as the art of +Sweden. I cannot help expressing my personal conviction that it is the +best national section in the whole exhibition, showing, as it does, not +merely easel painting, but also many splendid examples of so-called +applied art, which often permits one to get a deeper insight into the +standard of art of a people than easel painting alone. It is true that +certain examples of painting in the French or American sections are more +appealing to us, but in the light of the national characteristics of the +people and the country, Swedish art has a very definite quality, +consistently shown. Their work has a robustness which has nothing to do +with the salon aspect of the art of southern Europe, particularly +France. In fact it is almost opposed to the art of the Romanic races, +and distinctly apart from the art of Germany. It is fortunate Sweden +could make such a splendid showing without the support of the art of +such a man as Anders Zorn, who, while decidedly Swedish, is after all +much of a cosmopolitan painter, with all the earmarks of an +international training. The art of the most artistic of all people, that +of the French, is often said to have a decadent note. In comparison, +Swedish art may be said to be absolutely robust, healthy, and vigorous, +without being coarse. To those who pretend to find a certain physical +brutality in Swedish art, I should like to point out that the most +delicate pictures in the entire exhibition - those of John Bauer - are +the chief asset of the Swedish exhibit. The great variety of the work in +this section makes it very interesting, and permits, as said before, +close insight into many phases of modern art. + +The most pronounced individualities in the collection, covering all +fields, are Bruno Liljefors, Gustav Fjaestad, Carl Larsson, John Bauer, +Mr. and Mrs. Boberg, David Edström, Mas-Olle, and others too numerous to +mention. Bruno Liljefors for many years has been known internationally +as one of the best of animal painters, and particularly of sea fowl. He +has had the experience common to many great artists, of working himself +up from very academic beginnings to a wonderful personality of marked +freedom. His canvas of the nine wild swans is perhaps the biggest single +picture in the entire Exposition. It is immediately suggestive of a +decoration, and to think of it in that sense, as a part of a wall seen +from a great distance, makes one almost tremble with expectation. This +truly great picture is a rhythmic masterpiece. The placing of these +graceful swans is marvelously well studied from the point of view of +design, yet none the less does an expression of reality animate these +divine birds. There is something about swans which puts them even above +the king of birds, the eagle. I can conceive of men killing any animal, +but the thought of one of these noble birds falling victim to man's +perverse desires is incomprehensible to me. Of the other pictures by the +same artist, the flock of wild geese, standing in the shallow water of a +stony beach, carries all the conviction of being well studied which +applies to any of Liljefors' pictures. The eagles and the seagulls are +scarcely as interesting as the swans. Liljefors is never better than +when he depicts flying birds - and fly they do. There is never any doubt +about it. Those swans are actually in the air, and moving. A certain +disagreeable fuzziness in the skies of all of his pictures interferes +somewhat with their full enjoyment. + +Of the other painters Mrs. Boberg should be mentioned next. She is the +wife of Ferdinand Boberg, the architect of the Swedish Building, who +himself, as a true artist excelling in a number of things, has a +splendid collection of etchings in the long black and white gallery +adjoining the Liljefors' room. Mrs. Anna Boberg's pictures, in a very +small gallery at the eastern end of this section, are not advantageously +hung. Her work is so decorative, and so painted for distant effect, that +to see it close at hand is disappointing. The eleven of her pictures are +unusual in subject and for that reason win less sympathy than they +deserve. All of them were painted on a trip she made with her husband to +the Lofoden islands, and when one considers the proverbial coldness of +the Arctic seas, her interpretations seem marvelous in their beauty and +richness of colour. A study of their titles in the catalogue seems +hardly necessary for understanding of their meaning, and I for one am +perfectly satisfied to feast on the gorgeous colouring and the great +veracity they possess. Some of them are already sold, a most surprising +thing when one considers that to most people a picture actually executed +in three dimensions is seldom considered meritorious. I do think that +while the physical width and height of Mrs. Boberg's pictures are +governed by conventional considerations, a little less depth of paint +might accomplish the same solid appearance without making one feel like +slipping sideways past them into the next gallery for fear of knocking +off a few lumps of paint. + +In the adjoining gallery, a somewhat larger one on the east, Gustav +Fjaestad's very fine decorations form what we are in the habit of +calling a "one-man show." Mr. Fjaestad certainly has the decorative +feeling, whether he paints a picture or designs a rug. In fact all of +his pictures look like designs for rugs. And why not? If a wall rug is a +decoration, a picture should be one in just the same way. It is hard to +single out among the many good examples the best one, and it may be left +to the taste of the individual, who among nothing but good things cannot +make a poor choice. The time will come again when our artists will find +it honourable and profitable to apply their talents to utilitarian art, +as does Fjaestad, and the interrelated activities of the Swedish in both +fine and applied arts afford a lesson which is by no means new. It is +the basic condition on which the art of the Renaissance flourished that +develops men like the Swedes. + +There is a big difference between Liljefors and Mrs. Boberg, or again +between her and Fjaestad, but not any greater than between all of these +artists and John Bauer. John Bauer's paintings are exquisite, and even +such abused adjectives as "sweet" and "delicate" are not out of place +when applied to his work. I hope we have some enlightened person among +us who can afford to buy the whole batch of them, and do it quickly, +before any more of them are sold singly. It takes more time to enjoy +these little fairy tales than one can afford to give to them. They +possess everything a good illustrative painting ought to have. A wealth +of ideas imaginatively represented, good drawing, and intimate feeling +tell of the keen pleasure the artist must have had in producing these +gems. + +As an illustrator, though very different, Carl Larsson appeals in a +comprehensive group of pictures in another gallery. Carl Larsson's +extraordinary resourcefulness in getting everything he needs out of the +confines of his home has for years been the cause of his great +popularity abroad, and in his thirty-three cheerful drawings he +discloses his entire home life, in all the variety of happenings which +makes married existence a success. His drawing is faultless, his sense +of colour supple and refreshing, and his ability to make such extensive +use of the relatively narrow atmosphere of his home without exhausting +it proves his caliber. Larsson has a roommate of great distinction and +modesty in Oscar Bergman, who has contributed some twenty tender bits of +northern landscapes and marines. They are reminiscent of the Japanese, +although it becomes almost foolish to think of the Japanese every time +someone develops a capacity for acute observation and drawing. Bergman's +little lighthouse is particularly convincing and, like most of these +things, should not be allowed to return to the artist. + +I shall probably have to retrench in attention to the American section +if I keep on giving pages to this section. But in spite of their great +merit, the work of Kallstenius, Schultzberg, Carlberg, and Osslund will +have to go with only meager reference. Osslund's pictures are somewhat +startling at first, owing to a complexity of technical treatment. He +does not seem to be working in the right medium, for I believe his +Japanesque landscapes could be far more sympathetically presented in +watercolour. Of the group comprising his work, his "Waterfall", "Summer +Evening", and "Evening on Angermann Land" are very fascinating. +Mas-Olle's portraits are interesting not only for good technical +painting but also for fine characterization. His portrait of an old +peasant of Dalecarlia is almost faultless. Near the Mas-Olle portrait +Herman Lindquist has a "Sunny April Day" of unusual poetic claim. +Schultzberg's big sunlit winter scenes hardly need recommendation to +justify their increasing popularity. Alfred Bergstrom's poetic +landscapes add more interest, in the small adjoining room on the east. +Marine pictures by Hullgren are the only contributions in that field, +but quite sufficient to maintain the general standard of excellence. The +drunken man seated at a café table is psychologically interesting. As an +object lesson to discourage the consumption of liquor it is the most +effective picture I have ever seen, and certain interests would do well +to buy it for that reason alone, not to speak of the relief this would +afford. Ernst Küsel's animal pictures, opposite John Bauer's delightful +group, seem quite out of place. His ducks and the goats are satisfactory +enough, but I wish he had to live with that calf picture and see it +every day. Küsel is undoubtedly humourously inclined, without knowing +proper limitations. + +The sculpture of the Swedes is of the same unusual excellence that +commands so much respect in their other work. Edstrom easily outranks +his fellow-artists in his group of naturalistic and conventional +architectural heads, in the Liljefors gallery, while in the long and +narrow adjoining gallery a multitude of excellent etchings, drawings, +and black and white work compel mention. They hardly need any +explanation, since in their very character they readily convey their +meaning. One could dwell at greater length upon this most representative +of all national displays, but I fear that it would have to be done at +the expense of the American section, which hospitality has already +placed under a disadvantage. + + + +Holland + +The Netherlands representation is conspicuous for its conservative note, +together with the absence of any single picture which might unduly +excite one by its merit. I do not wish to prejudice the art lover who +strolls into this well appointed section, but coming from Sweden, as we +do, so to speak, since it is Sweden's next door neighbor, it gives one +rather a shock. Most of the Dutch pictures are good, almost too good, in +their academic conventional repetition of the timeworn subjects we have +been in the habit of seeing for the last twenty years. The Swedish +section is full of real thrills, but the complacency of the Netherlands +section can hardly be explained by their national temperament alone. +While the Swedish people seem to be blessed just now with an unusual +number of men of great gifts in the field of art, the Netherlands have +entered into what I hope will be only an interregnum of not overly +original painters. The last quarter of the last century saw their glory +in the careers of men like the elder Israels, the Mesdags, the Maris, +Jacob and Willem, Bosbom, Mauve, Weissenbruch, Poggenbeck, and many +others who have departed during the last ten years, or who, if still +living, have scarcely maintained their high standards of earlier days. +The most illustrious name among the older men is Willem Mesdag, who can +hardly be expected at his age to be doing his best. Speaking of Mesdag, +one of their best marine painters of the older days, one is forcibly +reminded of the fact that though a people of the sea the Dutch do not +seem to possess a single strong marine painter. One looks in vain for +any pictures of the open sea reflecting the seafaring traditions and +activities of the Dutch, and if it were not for Mastenbroek's masterly +harbor pictures, one would have to console oneself over this lack of the +briny element with a view of the Amsterdam Marine Aquarium. +Mastenbroek's big canvas is full of life and well painted. It shows the +harbor of Rotterdam animated by a host of vessels of all kinds and +descriptions. While there is a fine feeling of loose accidental +arrangement about this big picture, it is nevertheless well composed. +His small canvas in the adjoining gallery is technically superb, and to +my mind the best canvas in the whole Dutch show. In the middle of the +same wall Gorter's very decorative autumnal landscape, of a group of +beech-trees, commends itself by an unusual feeling for colour and +design, so lacking in the two almost monochromatic, untemperamental +Witsens on either side. Almost opposite in the same gallery, the most +western in the Netherlands section, hangs a broadly painted canvas by +Breitner, of the timber harbor of Amsterdam. It is not so original a +subject as one is accustomed to see from Breitner, but fully deserving +of the best place on the wall. Thérèse van Duyl-Schwartze's portrait +alongside is equal to her usual performances, and very broad in style +and full of vigor. Jurres' "Don Quixote", Goedvriend's little canvas, +and Bauer's "Oriental Equestrian" should all be mentioned in this +gallery. + +In the middle gallery, on the right of the big Mastenbroek, Christian +Addicks' "Mother and Child" charms by its richness of colouring, while +in the left corner hangs a very decorative still-life in the best manner +of such old Dutch painters as Hondekoeter. Nicolaas Bastert has a +typical Dutch canal, and Willy Sluiter a good study of a Volendam +fisherman. One gallery is entirely devoted to etchings, woodcuts, and +mezzotints, and the standard maintained in this gallery is high. +Martinus Bauer's three etchings are among the finest to be seen anywhere +in the exhibition, and the work of Harting, van Hoytema, and Haverman do +not fall much below his standard. There is young Israels (Isaac) with +some very snappy sketches. Nieuwenkamp is intensely interesting in the +few things he has there, with a certain sense of humor which is +conspicuous for its absence in most Dutch work. The woodcuts of Veldheer +are vital and unusually free from any academic feeling. Considering the +relative size of the Netherlands, they have a remarkably large number of +artists, but scarcely of sufficient bigness of caliber and independence +of character to live up to the traditions of this people. + + + +Germany + +Very modestly tucked away and surrounded by art of the few remaining +neutral nations, in a small gallery adjoining Holland and Sweden, +Germany unofficially and probably even without her knowledge is +represented by a small group of pictures which after many adventures +reached the hospitable shores of California. Originally exhibited at the +last Carnegie Institute Exhibition at Pittsburgh, they found themselves +on the high seas on their return voyage at the beginning of the war, +only to be captured by an English cruiser whose captain was so painfully +struck by the undeniable evidences of German Kultur that instead of +taking them to England he returned them to the United States, to be +included eventually in our exhibition. It would be very wrong to +generalize upon the standard of German art from this small display, but +a number of these pictures can well afford to go entirely upon their own +merit. + +Zügel's cattle picture is a canvas of the first order, by one of the +very important modern animal painters, a man whose fame has penetrated +into all lands where art is at all cultivated. The silvery light of a +summer morning, filtering through overhanging willow-trees upon the +backs of a few Holstein cows, is full of life and admirably loose in its +treatment. Above Zügel, Leo Putz, another Munich man, has a lady near a +pond, broadly painted, and executed in the peculiar Putz method of +square, mosaic-like paint areas which melt into a soft harmony of tender +grays and greens. Stuck's "Nocturne" is affected and unconvincing and +scarcely representative of this master's style. The many other men give +a good account of themselves, particularly Curt Agthe, whose classic +"Nude at the Spring" is of wonderful surface quality. Wenk has an +Italian marine and Benno Becker a landscape from the same country. +Göhler's "Castle Terrace" has a particularly fine sky and a true rococo +atmosphere. Hans von Volkmann's "Field of Ripe Grain" is typical of this +Karlsruhe painter, whose stone lithographs have given German art a +unique place in the art world. + + + +The United States + + + +Almost one-third of the entire Fine Arts Palace is occupied by the art +of the United States, and considering the privileges it enjoys, we have +no reason to offer any excuses. One thing should be said, a fact which +must force itself immediately upon any careful observer - that we have +been very hospitable to the foreign nations at the loss of our own +physical comfort. The growing demand from some of the foreign nations +for more space than originally applied for has crowded the American +section in some instances into rather uncomfortable conditions. On the +other hand we do not seem to have acquired such attractive ways of +hanging our pictures as the Swedes, Hollanders, or Italians practice; +probably for lack of funds. At any rate the American section looks very +businesslike and very democratic, without all the frills and fancies of +other nations, where every psychological advantage has been taken in +order to make things palatable. We have even been criticized for our +lack of spaciousness in hanging, but let us not grieve over this, since +it does at least save steps in walking from one picture to the next. + +Gallery 60. + +Our historical section is largely a mausoleum of portraits which really +have no other excuse for existence than historical interest, unless one +excepts the always excellent portraits of Gilbert Stuart, who certainly +stands out in all that dull company of his fellow-painters of his own +time. He is about the only one who can claim professional standards of +workmanship as well as lifelike characterization of his sitters. His +group of pictures on wall A does his great talent full justice. The +mellow richness of the portrait of General Dearborn stands out as a fine +painting among the many hard and black historical documents in this +gallery. The Captain Anthony portrait above is not less important. I +think his technical superiority and breadth of manner must be doubly +appreciated when one considers the absence of any artistic inspiration +in this country in Stuart's time, although he had the advantage of +several lengthy visits abroad, where he was received with approval by +profession and public alike. Most other portraits in this gallery are +lacking in any individual note and are hopelessly stiff and academic in +colour. Not even the very apparent influence of the great English +portrait masters of their time could save them from mediocrity. The only +pictures worth excepting from this classification, outside of the +Stuarts, are Charles Elliott's "Colonel McKenney" and S. B. Waugh's +portrait of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor. + +Gallery 59. + +In an adjoining gallery toward the north, our chronological +investigations bring us into an atmosphere of story-telling pictures of +the most pronounced Düsseldorf and Munich styles. This period has always +been the source of delight to the populace, which has no concern in the +technical qualities of a picture, a contention which led, more than +anything else, to the healthy reaction we now enjoy as the modern +school. The sentimental tone of most of these pictures and their +self-explanatory illustrative motives no doubt make them easily the lazy +man's delight, but I cannot help feeling that most of their themes could +much more successfully be approached through literature than through the +painter's art. Most of them explain themselves immediately, and those +which do not are helped along by descriptive titles fastened to the +frames, as the taste of that school demands. The great men of this +school in Germany were primarily great painters. Men like Defregger, +Knaus, Vautier, Grützner, Kaulbach, and others will always command high +respect by their technical achievements, no matter how we may disagree +with their choice of subjects. The really worthy ones we have produced +in this field of genre painting are to be found in other galleries and +are represented by men like Hovenden, Currier, and Johnson. The only +real painting among the many figure pictures in this gallery is Peter +Frederick Rothermel's "Martyrdom of St. Agnes." Very rich in colour and +big in composition, it compels great respect. + +We have now reached the middle of the last century, when the influence +of the Barbizon school asserted itself and caused increasing interest in +landscape painting, a field which up to that time had been mixed up with +historical motives, as in a typical composite canvas by Cole (Thomas), +who generally ranks as the most important of the Hudson River School of +landscape painters. There is really not enough artistic moment to this +American group to dignify it by the name of a school. For historical +reasons, however, this classification is very convenient. Cole's four +sketches for the "Voyage of Life" show strong imagination, giving the +impression, however, that he was more interested in mythology than in +the art of painting. + +The first intimation of a really original step in American outdoor +painting, as based on the discoveries of the school of 1825, the +Barbizon school, one receives in this gallery in a number of small +canvases by some of the men we have chosen to classify as the painters +of the Great West. Into this group are put Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, +and Albert Bierstadt. They are so very closely identified with the West +that they are of particular interest to us. Their artistic careers were +as spectacular as their subjects. Stirred by the marvelous tales of the +great scenic wonders of the West, they heroically threw themselves into +a task that no artist could possibly master. They approached their +gigantic subjects with correspondingly large canvases, without ever +giving the essential element, of their huge motives, namely, a certain +feeling of scale, of monumentality, as compared to the pigmy size of the +human figure. Really great pictures of the Yellowstone, the Grand Cañon, +and the lofty mountain-tops still remain to be painted. The daring and +courage of these men has benefited our art very much in a technical +sense. The study of panoramic distances and the necessity for closely +observing out-of-doors new subjects which could not be studied in the +work of other painters, led to a facility in the handling of paint which +really constitutes the chief merit of these artists. In this gallery +(59) two small outdoor sketches by Thomas Hill give a good suggestion of +this Californian's great dexterity in handling paint. His career has +been so closely identified with the Yosemite Valley, where he lived and +died, that these two sketches will serve as a reminder of the very +faithfully studied larger pictures he for many years produced. Peter +Moran, a brother of Thomas, has a cattle picture in this gallery which +needs the backing up of the reputation of the whole Moran family to be +accepted. + +Gallery 58. + +Chronological order is not entirely maintained in gallery 58, where two +large Bierstadt pictures are in control. Bierstadt, with all of his good +painting, does not get any nearer the real spirit of the lofty +mountaintops than all the others of this school. Big and earnest as his +efforts were, they fall short of real achievement, not so much for his +lack of outdoor colour as for the misunderstanding of what is possible +in art and what is impossible. Another landscape in this gallery, +belonging to the contemporary school, however, is Henry Joseph Breuer's +"Santa Inez Mountains". It is a faithful study of a most difficult +subject and very successful in its big feeling, in spite of the +introduction of great detail. It is easily the best Breuer in the +collection. The note of variety in this gallery is maintained in several +portraits and genre pictures of unusual merit. On the right of the +Breuer, Thomas Hicks' "Friendly Warning" atones for a multitude of +mediocre genre pictures in the preceding gallery. Eastman Johnson's +"Drummer Boy" shows good composition, and J. H. E. Partington's study of +a man's head is as fine a piece of painting as was ever done in the +eighties. + +Gallery 64. + +In a big central gallery we meet the more meritorious work of our +painters dependent upon foreign influence. Portraits, genre pictures, +landscapes, and marines tell the story of many individual men working +out their salvation in more or less original fashion. I have spoken at +some length about the pitfall of genre painting, but Thomas Hovenden's +"Breaking Home Ties" redeems the entire school. Irrespective of the fact +that it is a picture very popular with the large public by reason of its +sentimental appeal, it is well painted, and it will always be considered +a good painting. It is devoid of colour, in the sense of the modern +painter, but its very fluent and simple technical character recommends +it highly. Hovenden was a master of his trade. Anybody who doubts this +from his large canvas can easily be convinced by studying the "Peonies" +to the left of it on wall C. The large area of this wall is covered with +six canvases by Thomas Eakins, showing a variety of subjects. His +"Crucifixion" is very good as an academic study but of no other +interest. In the "Concert Singer" he added an interesting subject to +very admirable painting. His other canvases are all sincerely studied +and well done, and they will always be sure of their place in the +history of American painting. Opposite the "Crucifixion," Church's +"Niagara" reminds one that the painting of water involves more than mere +photographic facility. All that one can say about this serious effort is +that if it had been painted under a different star than that which +guided the painters of his time in outdoor studies, it would doubtless +look more like water. Another canvas on the right, a marine by Richards, +has the same feeling for drawing without showing any understanding of +either texture or atmosphere. The old and the new overlap in this +gallery by the inclusion of some of Remington's paintings and also of a +few pieces of sculpture. Remington's paintings will never be classified +as anything but very good illustrations, and in the company of easel +pictures they look much out of place. Their interest is only of a +passing kind. His sculpture is lacking in repose and looks wild and +ill-mannered in the presence of the older things. Homer Martin's appeal, +in two big landscapes on the same wall, may not be very immediate, but a +serious contemplation of these big and noble landscapes will make them +reassuringly sympathetic. Martin's pictures are not exhibition pictures. +They suffer in an exhibition which is after all as much of a specimen +show of conflicting varieties as a display of canned goods in the Food +Palace. Martin, while never having enjoyed the popularity of an Inness, +will always rank as high as any of our best interpreters of the Barbizon +school. + +Gallery 54. + +We have to go over into this gallery in order to get the full meaning of +that great company of men who had something which is so difficult to +discover in many artists, namely, style. Inness and Wyant above +everything have style, a quality which carried their otherwise not very +original work above that of their fellow-painters. We shall never tire +of such canvases as "The Coming Storm," "The Clouded Sun," and the +limpid pastorals by Wyant. They maintain their position as classics. +Winslow Homer occupies a position all by himself. An entire wall full of +specimens by him shows the evolution of the man, his struggle with the +problem of the choice of subjects, and his technical development, +culminating in that one really great theme in the center, showing his +studio in an afternoon fog. Homer's colour is always disappointing, even +in his best, but his sense of design and a certain simple restriction to +a few essentials make up his chief claim upon distinction. Dennis +Bunker's "Lady with a Mirror" would scarcely be believed to belong to +the older period of American art. One of the finest pictures ever +produced by an American painter, it yields a most unusual degree of +artistic pleasure. There is real distinction about this picture, not +only in the graceful idealization of the lady, but also in the refined +colour scheme. Currier's art is very much like Duveneck's, an +observation which is made emphatic by the fact that each one's +masterpiece is a whistling boy, of great simplicity. After a discussion +of Duveneck's work, Currier's artistic antecedents will easily be +established, so no more need be said of his work. + +Gallery 85. + +Across the hall more of our academic school of painters are grouped. +There is George de Forest Brush, the painter of the "Boston Madonna", in +some of his earlier illustrative canvases and a very fine pre-Raphaelite +"Andromeda". Brush is so contradictory at times that this small group is +quite insufficient to do him full justice. Horatio Walker clings +persistently to his conviction of the supremacy of the older methods, +without giving any indication of contact with modern art. His +superiority depends largely upon the human-interest stories he tells +with wonderful breadth and sympathetic understanding. Charles W. +Hawthorne's canvases seem fumbled rather than painted. They are very +hesitating in a technical way and are not sufficiently endowed with +interest to grip one. + +Gallery 57. + +In another gallery in this neighborhood, Edwin Abbey's art is presented +very comprehensively in a number of large and small illustrations - +canvases of more than passing interest. While they are largely +illustrations, their interest is made permanent by reason of the +subjective note which all of them have. Abbey's intense imagination +allowed him to carry a convincingness into his work which is largely +responsible for the very high rank he attained. His art is not the art +of an American in any sense. It is true he was born in Philadelphia, but +a long and successful life spent in Europe has left on his work the +imprint of an aristocracy foreign to our interest. In design, in colour, +Abbey's work is always supremely interesting, and with the astonishing +development of illustration in America, it seems incredible that we +should not have been able to make him return to the land of his birth. + +Galleries fifty-five and fifty-six are modern in aspect and their +contents came into this part of the building for practical reasons. +Wedged in between older periods, it is difficult to combine them with +the rest of modern American art, largely represented in the north side +of the Palace. + +Gallery 56. + +Here two interiors in distinctly different styles stand out among the +multitude. Marion Powers and Elizabeth Nourse add considerably to the +achievement of our women artists in these well-painted canvases. Miss +Powers is very original in an older school, while Miss Nourse displays +all the technical dexterities of the present day. Hitchcock's "Dutch +Tulip Beds," with figural staffage, remind one of a most original +American who after a long struggle established himself with these +colourful designs. His recent death came entirely too soon. + +Gallery 55. + +This room is intensely animated by Potthast's six seashore sketches, +which are composed and very sympathetic in their fine sunlight. Evelyn +McCormick's "Monterey Custom House" is no less sunny, and +conscientiously studied in detail. + +Gallery 65. + +Of particular interest are the pictures in this gallery, constituting an +achievement which few other nations could rival. Devoted exclusively to +the work of living American women artists, it contains convincing +evidences of the good results which the emancipation of women in this +country allowed them to accomplish in the field of art. The standard in +this gallery is very high, and one must admit that Mr. Trask's daring +innovation of putting all the women artists in one big gallery was +justified. They do hold their own, and they do not need any male +assistance to convince one of their big part in the honors of the +exhibition. On two opposing walls, Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux give +full expression of their very vital work. Miss Beaux's work is +compelling in its vigorous technique, fine colour, and daring +composition. Her study in purple and yellow is bold and unusually +successful. On other walls more portraits by Ellen Emmet Rand continue +to hold our attention, particularly the little girl and the black cat. +The portraits of our women painters are all far more original in +composition and colour arrangement than those of the men. Mary Cassatt's +reputation is so universally established as not to need any +introduction. Her art is more French in the many tone gradations of +atmosphere than that of her American colleagues who are more decorative. +Among others Jean McLane, Mr. Johansen's wife, and Annie Lang excel in a +certain breadth of style; while Mrs. Richardson charms by the +sympathetic rendering of the pride and happiness of the young mother. +The composition of this picture, while it is unusual, is successfully +managed. The impression one gains from this large gallery is most +satisfying in every way. The many portraits done by men seen in various +galleries of the exhibition would scarcely make as good a showing in a +group as the work of the women, and it was very wise not to attempt it. + + + +One-Man Rooms + +An approach to the rest of the American section might be made through +the one-man rooms, and since we are on the south side, and for other +perfectly good reasons - not the least, that of importance - we might +start with Whistler. + +Gallery 28. + +Whistler. + +No gallery reflects so much the really serious artist, in his eternal +struggle to express himself simply and exhaustively in line, form, and +colour, as does this Whistler group. A feeling of dissatisfaction, +expressed by many indications of experimentation and change, of +searching for the right line, is clearly indicated in all of these +paintings. He often gives you a chance to choose between a number of +tantalizing forms and lines. It is very apparent that he set himself a +high, almost an unattainable standard, toward which he worked with +varying success. His emotions must have been constantly swinging between +the greatest heights of joy and the abyss of despair. + +The numerous Whistlers in this gallery show him in many periods and many +styles. On wall D, at the lower right, a portrait of an auburn girl, one +of his many fascinating models, shows Whistler more as a pure painter +than any of the other canvases. This doubtless belongs to the period +when he was under Courbet's influence. The richness of pure paint, +dexterously applied, is scarcely found in the many portraits on the same +wall, in which a certain thinness of paint is too much in evidence, no +matter how distinguished and suggestive these canvases are. His sense of +composition, of the placing of areas of different tones and colour, is +markedly evident in all of his work, no matter how experimental and +casual it may be. The "Falling Rocket" is the most wonderful example of +this quality of design. If it is true that it hung for weeks upside down +in the present owner's house, then most decidedly this fact speaks well +for its excellent quality of design, irrespective of its pictorial +meaning. The many small sparks descending rhythmically from an +impenetrable sky are carefully considered in their relative position and +size so as to insure that feeling of pattern which he almost +instinctively gave to everything he did. This picture of the "Falling +Rocket" is of particular interest as the picture which made John Ruskin, +the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, accuse Whistler of flinging a pot +of paint at the face of the public and having the impudence of a coxcomb +to ask two hundred guineas for it. Surely this carefully and cleanly +painted picture shows Whistler as hardly a flinger of paint, and we can +only rejoice over the kind fate which saved Mr. Ruskin from extending +his career into the present age of paint flingers, who, had they lived +in his day, would have proved fatal to the learned professor. The +farthing damages which Whistler received in a mock trial were scarcely +as valuable as the universal admiration this picture receives. + +There never was a painter who manipulated paint with more regard for the +medium than did Whistler. His portrait of Mrs. Milicent Cobden has a +noble beauty of restraint. It is very sensitively painted, and tender +almost to the point of thinness. It fascinates in its subtle appeal, +which the observer is induced to supplement by his own emotion. This +quality of subtlety is the one attribute which makes his work so beloved +by the artist and so difficult of understanding for the layman, who, try +as he may, is not equipped with sufficient technical insight to do +Whistler's paintings full justice. Uneven as his work is, as every +painter admits, it will always be more and more cherished by the +profession and remain more or less of a mystery to the puzzled public, +who would like to follow this painter into the realm of his interests. + +The six figural compositions on the opposite wall show Whistler as +concerned with design pure and simple, rather than meaning or +psychological expression. They are beautiful for the fragrant looseness +of their spacing of delightful, tender areas of neutralized colour, +emphasized here and there by a stronger note of vermilion. Things like +these express his attitude far more than any other thing he ever did. +They show his understanding of the fundamentals of painting - a small +part in the whole unity of beauty of which the world consists. His work +as a painter is, after all, negligible in comparison with the principles +he preached by his many artistic activities. His historical position, as +time goes on and as his associates die, becomes more and more mystical, +and even at this moment his personality has assumed an almost +mythological character. + +Gallery 93. + +Twachtman. + +It is not a far cry to Twachtman, who presents a peculiar combination of +Whistlerian tonality with the methods of the modern impressionist. His +work is relatively high in key, and devoid of any colour resembling +black. The covered skies of early morning, before the breaking through +of the sun, are his chief motives. Snow plays also an important part in +his work, which is most suggestive in the tender beauty of the few +values and colours it is composed of. There is absolutely nothing of the +sensational about his work. To most people of not sufficient interest on +first acquaintance, on better familiarity they yield to the serious +student and sympathetic lover of nature unlimited pleasure. His poetry +is of the true sort, and in finished work like "October", "View on the +Brette", "Bridge in Spring", and "Greenwich Hills", he rises to a very +high level. + +Manship's small statuettes are very effective features of this gallery. +Their linear decorative architectural quality has put Manship into the +front rank of our younger men, and he will have no trouble to +maintain his place. + +Gallery 89. + +Tarbell. + +In an adjoining gallery, Edmund Tarbell is much more striking, in a +number of canvases containing certain qualities, which easily account +for the great popularity he justly enjoys as one of the best of our +American painters. To the student of pictures who does not care whether +they are well painted or not, they are intensely interesting subjects, +reflecting the happy domestic atmosphere of the painter's home, which +has furnished him for years inexhaustible material for many delightful +interpretations of similar subjects. This ability to produce so many +things of equal excellence in a relatively small circle, in one way +proves his greatness. In the last analysis, he has practically +everything in his work one looks for in a work of art. In addition to +having an easily understood idea, his pictures are well composed, +without showing the consciousness of it, as does Whistler. Fine in +colour and handling, beside the idealization of everything he includes +in his work he achieves a certain something which we recognize as style. +He may be a realist in every sense, but he shows how to deal arbitrarily +with his figures in such a way as to endow them with admirable +distinction, without losing the expression of reality. His recent +outdoor work has not the unity of expression of his indoor subjects. It +is difficult, and not really necessary, to single out any work in a +one-man representation of unusual uniformity of excellence. Every one of +his pictures has the earmarks of having been carefully studied. + +Bela Pratt's statue of Nathan Hale is much less academic than the other +sculptures arranged in this gallery. Compared with the high standard of +American small plastic art his works are somewhat dry, though always +conscientiously done. + +Gallery 88. + +Redfield. + +As a realistic painter of the outdoors, E. W. Redfield holds an enviable +position in the field of American art. He is the painter par excellence, +without making any pretension at being anything else. The joy of putting +paint on canvas to suggest a relatively small number of things which +make up the great outdoor country, like skies, distance, land +foregrounds, is his chosen task. He is the most direct painter we have. +With a heavily loaded brush, without any regard for anything but +immediate effect, he expresses his landscapes candidly and convincingly. +He is plain-spoken, truthful, free from any trickery - as wholesome as +his subjects. His a la prima methods embody, to the professional man, +the highest principle of technical perfection, without falling into a +certain physical coarseness so much in evidence in most of our modern +work. His sense of design is keen, without being too apparent, and the +impression one gains from his works is that they are honest +transcriptions of nature by a strong, virile personality. Winter +subjects predominate in his pictures, and he expresses them probably +more convincingly than others - though his Autumn is marvelous in its +richness of colour, and in the two night effects of New York he shows +his acute power of observation in two totally different subjects. His +art is altogether most refreshing and free from all artificialities. + +Gallery 87. + +Duveneck. + +Paradoxical as it may seem, Duveneck's art is carried by the same +painter-qualities found in Redfield. From his dark colour it is +self-evident that he belongs to an older German school - a school which +has been superseded in the affection of Americans by French methods. We +know relatively little, entirely too little, about the generous methods +of the best men of the Munich school, of which Duveneck is so +conspicuous a member. His importance in the history of art can hardly be +set too high, for the soundness of his methods alone. Only the greatest +ever attain the capacity for direct painting which characterizes this +astonishing collection of his pictures. Juiciness is the only word which +will adequately express the result of his brush. The pictures here are +most interesting for the reason that they were all done while he was not +yet twenty-five and while he lived in an atmosphere of workers of whom +Leibl was probably the most famous. There are few paintings - and then +only the greatest - which give one the same satisfaction at a big +distance as well as at close range as Duveneck's do. Men of his caliber +appear only at great intervals. This Duveneck collection, if brought +together permanently, as we are fortunate enough to see it temporarily +here in San Francisco, would become the Mecca of all painters who want +to refresh their memory as to what constitutes real painting. +Unfortunately these canvases are owned by different people, and to think +that they will all have to be scattered again among individual owners is +a shocking thought. The uniformity of excellence in the Duveneck room +forbids any attempt at picking out individual works; however, Duveneck's +equally great accomplishments on another wall, in the field of etching, +are apt to be easily overlooked. The sarcophagus of his wife, done by +his versatile hand, increases the admiration that we, must hold for this +liberal genius. Duveneck's art, no matter how much it is rooted in +foreign soil, will forever make its influence felt for the best of +American art. + +Gallery 79. + +Chase. + +Balancing Duveneck's gallery on the south, William M. Chase continues +the Munich traditions, in the successful treatment of a variety of +subjects for which he has always been famous. Closely associated with +Duveneck, and showing all the rich qualities of the Munich men, Chase's +picturesque personality finds a reflection in his subjects, which all +seem to have been chosen to give him an opportunity to display a certain +bravado of handling which characterizes all of his work. The Chase +collection gives a good idea of the career of this most useful of all +American painters, who in an astonishingly active life has been teacher, +friend, and counsellor to hundreds of the younger people in the field of +art. His life has been most useful - always in the interest of the very +best, with conspicuous success in aiding the uplift of American art. His +still-lifes have for years been famous for their fidelity of +interpretation of a variety of contrasting things, like fishes, copper +bowls, and onions. No less interesting have been his portraits of the +great mass of people who have sat for him. He has never been afraid of +painting anything, and whatever it may be, he has treated it with great +breadth, fine pictorial feeling, and charm of colour. His "Woman with +the White Shawl" has become a classic during his lifetime, and some of +his still-lifes are sufficient to serve as a permanent solid foundation +for his reputation. Chase's art, while decidedly academic, excels in +esprit, in a certain elegant yet energetic expression which after all is +nothing but the painter's own personality reflected in his work. The +delightful set of small landscapes of Italian and American subjects adds +much interest in this collection, which is very well hung against an +effective blue background. + +Gallery 78. + +Hassam. + +Childe Hassam's art at first is very disconcerting, particularly under a +strong midday light. One has at first the feeling that a religious +adherence to a certain impressionistic technique is of more importance +to him than anything else. Entering his gallery from the Chase +collection, one is almost overcome with the contrast of light and dark +presented by these two masters. The contrast of the classic academic +atmosphere of Chase's room shows Hassam pronouncedly as the most radical +impressionist we have. His interest is light, and always more light, +vibration at any cost; which contrasted with Chase's art, or for that +matter anybody's else, Duveneck's, or, for instance, even Whistler's, +becomes almost irritating in its lack of simple surfaces. He does not +eliminate in the sense of the older men, who care more for a unity of +expression than for an approximation to the actual outdoors. There is +sunlight in his work, without a doubt, but it is not always spread over +agreeable subjects. The wooden quality of his figures and the frugal +aspects of his fruit, to us Californians are particularly painful. Of +all his oils in this gallery the two on either side of the "Aphrodite" +on the east wall are by far the best. In them he succeeds in carrying +his point agreeably and convincingly. They are both lovely in colour, +and they give you the feeling of having been well studied. The two +groups of watercolours and gouaches on the side walls are, with the +exception of a wash blue sea, very discreet in quality of paint and most +intimate in feeling, and to my mind do Hassam more credit than the many +other canvases, which seem to be painted for expounding a technical +principle rather than to reveal his innermost feelings. + +Gallery 77. + +Gari Melchers. + +Melchers' style is much more sympathetic than Hassam's without being +less personal. Of modern painters I confess to a particularly great +fondness for Melchers' art. While standing firmly on classic tradition, +it is modern in every sense. One can say everything of good and find +little fault with any of these most conscientiously painted canvases +which make up his contribution to the exhibition. Beginning with his +"Fencing Master", one of his older works, he shows in a great number of +similar subjects his loyalty to Egmond aan den Hoef, a little Dutch +village where he has worked for years. The quality of pattern and colour +in his work is very pronounced, and this, combined with a fine +psychology, makes his work always interesting. He is no radical; the +best as he sees it in any school he has made subservient to his purpose +without any loss of individuality. His pictures yield much pleasure to +public as well as to artist, even in sentimental stories like the +"Sailor and His Sweetheart", or the "Skaters". His finest note he +strikes undoubtedly in the many sympathetic glorifications of motherhood +in his fine modern Madonnas. These works will be the sure foundation of +his fame. No matter whether he calls them "Madonna of the Fields", +"Maternity", or simply "Mother and Child", he presents this greatest of +all subjects as few have ever done. His art is wholesome and sane, but +endowed with a subtle quality of insight into his subjects that will +always assure him a very high place in the history of art. For years he +has been one of the reliable painters of the world, and to meet with his +work at intervals is always a source of great satisfaction. + +Gallery 75. + +Sargent. + +A small adjoining gallery is given entirely over to a few Sargents which +are quite sufficient to maintain this great stylist, whom many believe +the towering giant of the profession. One thing is evident from this +work - that for surety of touch and technical directness he stands +practically alone, though he does not possess the deliberate ease in +which Duveneck rejoices. Sargent's "John Hay" and "Henry James" are +absolutely exhaustive as character studies. His "Nubian Girl", however, +is woody, no matter how interesting in posture. In nothing does he +disclose his marvelous precision of technique so completely as in some +of the outdoor studies, like the "Syrian Goats" and the "Spanish +Stable". There is nothing like them in the exhibition anywhere, and +these two things alone make up for what is really not a comprehensive +display of one of the greatest of modern living painters. However, a man +whose standard of excellence is relatively very even does not need a +large representation. + +Gallery 90. + +Keith. + +In two other small galleries of similar size three California painters +have their inning. While all these are of different caliber, they have +something in common which ties them closely together. It seems peculiar +that a country famed for its sunshine should produce men like Keith, +Mathews,, and McComas, who surely do reflect a rather somber atmosphere, +in a type of work which must be called tonal and arbitrary rather than +naturalistic. + +Keith's collection, with the mass of modern landscape all around, and +even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems +somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and +others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is +intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors +which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's marvelous +dexterity of brushwork really constitutes his chief claim upon fame, and +some of his best things are gems in easy-flowing methods of painting +which the best men of the Barbizon school seldom approached. Keith must +not be looked upon as a painter of nature nor even an interpreter of +nature. He used landscapes simply to express an ever-changing variety of +personal emotion. His attitude toward nature in his later work was of +the most distant kind, although his early career was that of the most +painstaking searcher for physical truthfulness. + +Gallery 76. + +Mathews and McComas. + +Mathews and McComas do not exactly make good company. While closely +related in the decorative quality of their work, they are not alike in +any other way. Mathews' art is emotional. It tells something beyond mere +colour, form, and composition, while McComas' art is mostly technical, +in the clever manipulation of a very difficult medium. His sense of +construction and feeling for effect is very acute. He is becoming so +expert, however, in the handling of watercolour that one sometimes +wishes to see a little more of that accidental charm of surface that his +older work possesses. + + + +General Collection + + + +Having reached far into the heart of the modern American section by way +of the one-man galleries, a chronological pursuit of our study is no +more necessary nor possible. Almost all of the pictures in the modern +American section have been produced since 1904, the year of the last +international exhibition, at St. Louis, and they reflect in a very +surprising way the tremendous advancement of native art to a point where +comparison with the art of the older nations need not be feared. In all +the fields of painting, including all subjects, portraits and figures +generally, landscapes, marines, and still-life, we can turn proudly to a +great number of painters who interpret candidly and vigorously the world +in which we live. + +Gallery 71. + +The gallery nearest to the one just visited gives a good idea of the +mastery of a variety of subjects in the art of painting, and to continue +our investigations from this point is just as logical as from any other +part of the modern American section. In this gallery, easily located by +two large parvenu portraits of dubious merit, are some others which are +really vital expressions of modern art. Beginning on wall A, going to +the right, Luis Mora's "Fortune Teller" and Meakin's landscapes should +be singled out. On the west wall Frederic Clay Bartlett's painting of an +interior and Norwood McGilvary's nocturne charm in different ways, while +on the adjoining wall Ritschel's marine and Rosen's winter scenes +display excellent quality of design, with fine outdoor feeling. Miss +Fortune's Mission interior deserves its distinction of having been +bought by William M. Chase. Robert Nisbet contributes a rare green tree +design, and Hayley Lever's harbor pictures are all performances of +superior merit, + +Gallery 70. + +This gallery is given over entirely to portraits, most of which are so +devoid of any real merit that it is relatively very easy to single out +the good ones. Flagg's portrait of the sculptor Bartlett, a portrait by +Robert David Gauley over the door, the lady with the fur on the second +line on wall B, with her neighbor, Lazar Raditz, by himself, are better +than the many others, which are all well done but do not interest one +enough, for one reason or another. The one picture in this gallery that +comes very near being of supreme beauty is the young lady reclining on a +chaise lounge, the work of E. K. Wetherill. Very few pictures in this +gallery come up to the placid beauty of this distinguished canvas, which +is somewhat handicapped in its aesthetic appeal by some unnecessarily +tawdry bits of furniture and bric-à-brac used in its make-up. + +Gallery 69. + +"Phyllis" here represents John W. Alexander, that most capable artist, +lost to the world recently at the height of a very useful career. John +W. Beatty's and Francis Murphy' landscapes, on either side, are both +beautiful, in the Barbizon spirit. Howard Russell Butler's "Spirits of +the Twilight" is very luminous, and Lawton Parker's "Paresse" in its +sensual note runs "Stella" a close second in a colour scheme and design +of such beauty that one cannot help getting a great deal of aesthetic +satisfaction from it, aside from its too apparent sensational character. + +Gallery 68. + +This large central gallery averages unusually high in the large number +of excellent things it contains. Four big, well studied marines by +William Ritschel make one feel proud of the contribution they make to +the field of American marine painting. It is very hard to say which one +of our four well-represented marine painters, Carlsen, Waugh, Dougherty, +and Ritschel, is most captivating. However, a canvas like Ritschel's "In +the Shadow of the Cliffs" will always hold its own among the best. +Ritschel's work is easily recognized by this robust, healthy tone; it +reveals sound values and intimate study. One of Johansen's small +landscapes, and another one by H. M. Camp, on the second line of this +wall, grow in one's estimation on longer acquaintance. They are in fine +style and very big for their size, largely by reason of their monumental +skies. Howard Cushing's group in the center is full of skillfully +presented detail, without losing in breadth in the many different +subjects he paints. His portrait of a lady, in the center, is +distinguished in every way, not least so in expression. + +Johansen's main group of pictures, all on one wall, stand for breadth +and intimate study alike. The Venetian square canvas in the middle is +one of the jewels of this exhibition. There is no end of distinctive +canvases in this gallery, as one must conclude on going over to the two +big Daniel Garbers, which are more of the typical American type than his +others in the group. The one on the right is a perfect unit of colour, +atmosphere, and pattern. In between, Spencer's backyard pictures reveal +a sympathetic younger painter who, for reason of his choice of +proletarian subjects, does not get the attention he more than deserves. +Most original in technique and charming in tone, they interest wherever +one meets them in the exhibition. + +On the second line a delightful Speicher landscape should not be +overlooked. On wall D an important winter landscape by Schofield reminds +one forcibly of the many excellent painters of ice and snow we have in +this country. They are really the backbone of our American outdoor +artists, and all of them, with the exception of Gardner Symons, can be +found in the exhibition. To this group, beside Redfield and Schofield, +before mentioned, belong Charles Morris Young, John F. Carlson, Charles +Rosen, and others. Leon Kroll's "River Industries" and "Weehawken +Terminal," on the second line, are so typically American in subject that +they would have been unacceptable to the public here twenty years ago. + +Gallery 67. + +This large room continues to hold the attention of the visitor by more +excellent specimens of present-day art. Dougherty's marines as well as +Waugh's very precise, somewhat metallic seascapes have been referred to +before. Dougherty's group of four pictures is augmented by two Spanish +canvases by Lewis Cohen, of which the one to the right is far more +convincing than the other. They are somewhat artificial in colour. Emil +Carlsen's only contribution, a fine open sea, has a quality all its own. +The feeling of pattern in sky and water surface, combined with great +delicacy and suggestion of absolute truthfulness, gives it a quality +quite apart from the energetic art of Waugh, Ritschel, and Dougherty. +John F. Carlson always has style to his work, a certain unaffected, +noble simplicity, well brought out in three sympathetic pictures +grouped near the Emil Carlsen marine. Adding to the conspicuousness of +that wall, Charles H. Davis and Leonard Ochtman hold their own in their +important setting. The only two figure pictures in this neighborhood are +particularly lovely in colour and design, and R. P. R. Neilson deserves +much praise for having struck a unique note conspicuous among the many +commonplace portraits of the present day. Wendt's "Land of Heart's +Desire" is unusually happy, and it supports its title admirably. Very +decorative in feeling, it is compelling in its appeal to the public. +Maynard Dixon, another Californian, shows an original small canvas, "The +Oregon Trail," endowed with big feeling. + +Two cases in this gallery encourage investigation of American +accomplishments in the field of animal sculpture, and on closer +examination of offerings in this most interesting field, we find an +unusually creditable lot of work by Frederick Roth, Albert Laessle, +Arthur Putnam, and Charles Cary Rumsey. They should be considered in a +group if their relative merit is to be fully appreciated. Kemeys and +Proctor somewhat antedate them all in their work (in galleries 69 and +72). Roth is next door to Kemeys in 45, among a variety of things done +mostly in glazed clay. A very fine sense of humor comes to the surface +most conspicuously in "The Butcher", "The Baker", and "The Candlestick +Maker". Putnam and Laessle are in this gallery side by side. In sharp +contrast with the former's muscular and broad type of modeling, the +latter has a very precise and Japanesque quality of detail modeling +which is sometimes a little photographic. Charles Cary Rumsey is only a +few steps away, in gallery 48. In his original subject of a horse and +man drinking he strikes a particularly unique note. + +Gallery 80. + +Here Metcalf's "Blossom Time" reveals the most poetic of our modern +American painters. The man who bought it made a good investment. In ten +years it will be a classic and worth its weight in gold, including the +frame. This canvas gives one more thrills than almost all the others by +the same man - good as they are. The "Trembling Leaves" is superb, but a +fussy frame destroys half the pleasure. Mrs. Philip Hale's elegant and +refined interior, together with Paxton's figural work, prove that we +have conquered successfully a certain field of genre which the American +art-lover has been in the habit of buying in Europe. Paxton's +"Housemaid" is entirely in the spirit of the old Dutch, and his +"Bellissima" is most luminous alongside of his other works. + +Gallery 51. + +This magnetic collection comes somewhat as a shock to the public, which +can't be blamed for its disapproval of the recent sensational +experiments of Henri and Glackens. It is impossible to understand why a +man like Glackens should so illogically abandon the soundness of his +older work and do those inharmonies of form and colour which he presents +on the A wall. His "Woman with Apple" is absolutely absurd and vulgar +beyond description. She has "character," if that is what he is after, +because her vulgarity is convincing. The rest of the things are +ridiculous in their riotous superficiality. Carles seeks the same +expression of individuality for which Glackens strives so hard. In his +small, square picture, "Repose," Carles is most successful. Here he has +created a great work of art - beautiful as well as full of character. +This canvas is one of the most successful of the new style. It needs no +apologies, and it has all the qualities of an old master, with modern +virility and colour added to it. Let us have new things like this and we +shall not regret having tolerantly and patiently watched all the many +idiocities which are paraded around under the pretext of research and +experimentation. Breckenridge's still-lifes are startling at first, but +studied singly they reveal a fine sense of colour. They constitute a +serious and successful contribution to modern art, without being in the +least grotesque. I should like to have one of them in my house, without +fear of their very vigorous colour. In a totally different vein Everett +L. Bryant gives some still-lifes which continue certain impressionistic +methods with wonderful delicacy. In certain surroundings they will add +distinction even to a commonplace room. Anshutz's "Lady in Red" is a +very good academic study in a colour which in large quantities is very +difficult to handle. + +Gallery 50. + +The academic school is continued in spirit in Sergeant +Kendall's refined portraits, augmented by a painted wood sculpture of +unusual quality, reminiscent of the masters of the early German +Renaissance. Louis Kronberg has his customary ballet girl and Hermann +Dudley Murphy some of his typical, refined marines. His surfaces are +always delectable and like the inside of a shell in their glistening +blues and pinks. Both Nelson and Hansen, two native Californians, are +well represented - one by a Monterey coast, the other by a forcefully +painted decorative picture called "The Belated Boat." Lathrop adds two +placid pictures, of which the canal is the more skillfully composed. + +Gallery 49. + +Peace reigns supreme in this gallery of Tryon and Weir. Tryon reflects +all the poetic qualities of the Barbizon group without striking a new +note either technically or in composition. His larger canvases are of +great beauty, very tender and poetic, and altogether too sweet to have +you feel that they were painted for any other reason than to make a +pretty picture. His smaller work gives you that feeling more than his +larger ones. Alden Weir's art is the direct opposite of this. Searching +for truth, character, and beauty, he labors over simple subjects with +great concentration and does not stop until they seem like silver +symphonies. His art is personal and must be studied at great length to +be fully appreciated. It expects a great deal of concentration, but one +willing to take the trouble will be amply rewarded by ever increasing +pleasure. The art of McLure Hamilton is more interesting in the power of +psychological characterization than in painting. His pictures are +painted thinly, more like watercolours than oils. + +Gallery 48. + +No noteworthy contribution is made here, unless one excepts the +academically clever portraits by Troccoli, a landscape by Vonnoh, and a +sumptuous bed of rhododendrons by Edward F. Rook. Two large "Grand +Cañons" again demonstrate the utter futility of trying to paint such +motives, which, in their success, depend entirely upon a feeling of +scale that is almost impossible to attain on a small canvas. + +Gallery 47. + +Here Blumenschein's large Indian compositions are of decorative +character. They are well composed and dramatic. The "Peace Maker" is big +in feeling. Typically American and very unusual are Colin Campbell +Cooper's New York street perspectives. His originality as a painter is +well demonstrated by this choice, which must have taken much courage at +a time when American subjects were more or less despised. Richard +Millers "Pink Lady" does not look a bit convincing, cleverly as it is +painted; it is not interesting enough in the large surfaces of +overnaturalistic pink flesh. Half that size would have been just enough +for this canvas, which is chiefly a concession to the modern mania for +painting large exhibition pictures to attract attention by their size +alone. Groll's desert pictures are disappointing. They have neither +interesting colour nor sufficient atmosphere to come up to the standard +of this typical desert painter. + +Gallery 46. + +There is a lovely note in this gallery, contributed by Ruger Donoho's +garden scenes. Most unusual in subject, they are full of life, vibrant +with colour, and altogether very delightful, a most pleasant change from +the ordinary run of subjects. Frank Dumond's work on another wall (B) +excels in a pleasant mannerism. His work is most thoughtful and well +studied. The two smallest of his paintings are perfect gems in every way +- well balanced by two small tender canvases of southern Europe by Mrs. +Dumond (on the opposite wall). Two portraits in this gallery, Inez +Addams' "Daphne" and Adolphe Borie's "Spring," should not be slighted. +Borie's is very strong, and one of the best portraits on exhibition. +Alongside of it is a winter landscape by Ernest Albert, which, while a +little timid, is nevertheless poetic and more convincing than others of +that type near by. + +Gallery 45. + +Charles Morris Young's art is so refreshing, so spontaneous in every +way, that it catches one's eye immediately on passing on into this room. +His work deserves recognition for more than one reason. His handling of +paint is fresh and clear and a direct aiming for a final expression of +what he wants to convey. Any one of the six subjects is well handled. +They give one the feeling of the artist's thorough understanding of his +material. His own "House in Winter" and the "Red Mill" reach the +high-water mark of landscape painting in the exhibition. Griffin's +pictures, on another wall, so openly disregard technical rules in their +careless superimposition of unnecessary paint that in spite of a great +richness of colour and a certain suggestion of truth, they are not apt +to hold one one's affection very long. They are sincere, I admit, but +careless in technique. There is no doubt about it, because heavy paint +and bare pieces of canvas will not make durable pictures. Birge Harrison +is disappointing in two pastels which seem too chromo-like, too +mechanical, to carry their point. + +Gallery 44. + +This collection is not at all without interest, but with few exceptions +the pictures in it are not strong enough to hold their own with so many +good things abounding elsewhere. Ralph Clarkson's portrait, Bartlett's +schoolyard, Perrine's technically unique landscape, are all meritorious. + +Gallery 43. + +Frederic M. DuMond's "Sea Carvings" in the corner, and Nahl's decorative +composition attract, each in its way, while in another corner a badly +skyed portrait by Hinkle is scarcely given a chance. + +Gallery 74. + +It will be necessary to make a little journey over to the inner side of +the arch of the building to continue and finish the art of modern +America. In this small Gallery, adjoining Sargent's, nothing stirring +happens. Landscapes predominate, with varying interest, but nothing with +any style or unity of expression presents itself, with the exception of +Carl Oscar Borg's "Campagna Romana" and a fine sky over the door by +William J. Kaula. The landscapes of G. W. Sotter and Will S. Robinson +stand out among the rest. + +Gallery 73. + +Next door, in 73, Alson Skinner Clark has been given the privilege of +almost an entire Gallery, without any other justification than +historical interest in his shallow Panama scenes, devoid of any quality. +They are illustrations - that is all. Gifford Beal disappoints in some +superficial paintings of commonplace subjects, which a skillful +technique might easily have turned into something worth while. His "Old +Town Terrace" is much the best, but the collection makes one +apprehensive for Beal's future performances. Paul King's canvas over the +door is excellent, well painted, and interesting in subject. + +Gallery 72. + +There seems no end of productiveness of American painters, and justice +demands more investigation and undeniably more steps. Ladies with +parrots, with and without clothes, are numerous, but the one in here is +more interesting than the others. I hope that not all of these parrot +pictures are meant symbolically. Walter McEwen arouses memories of times +gone by, technically and otherwise, in a huge storytelling Salon +picture. More ladies in conventional sitting posture willingly sat for +more pictures without adding new thrills. Meyer's portraits, Gertrude +Fiske's sketch, Olga Ackerman's group of children, are all deserving of +study. Max Bohm's two big figural pictures are decoratively interesting +enough, but bad in paint. One of the best landscapes can be found here +in Henry Muhrman's work, over the McEwen. There is nothing sensational +about it, but its somber dignity stands out among many modern works. On +the opposite wall Mrs. Sargent's" Mount Tamalpais" is unusual in +composition and rich in colour. + +Separated from the rest of the American section by Holland and Sweden, a +series of galleries are in grave danger of being overlooked. +Undoubtedly, to offset this apparent isolation, some of the most +alluring paintings can be found at this end. + +Gallery 117. + +Here is Frederic Frieseke, our expatriated American, with his +fascinating boudoir scenes. Very high in key and full of detail, at +first they seem restless and crowded, which some actually are, in a +degree. But canvases like "The Garden" and "The Bay Window" and "The +Boudoir" are real jewels of light and colour. "The Bay Window" is the +most placid of his canvases and in conception much finer than his +outdoor subjects. Frieseke's clear, joyous art is typically modern, and +expresses the best tendency of our day. Luis Mora's two watercolours, +while illustrative, hold their own in Frieseke's company. Tanner's big +religious canvas falls far below this capable painter's usual efforts. +Native talent helps out in a delightful marine, honestly painted by +Bruce Nelson, and an apple green and pale pink colour-harmony by +Charlton Fortune. Very much in the style of the Frieseke, Rittman's +"Early Morning in the Garden" is easily taken for the art of his +fascinating neighbor, but it should be recognized as the work 0f another +kindred spirit. + +Gallery 118. + +In 118, landscapes predominate over figural work, at least in quality. +Harry Leslie Hoffman's "Spring Mood," Wilbur Dean Hamilton's tender and +poetic canvas, and Louise Brumbach's city view bathed in the grays of an +early morning call for recognition. + +Gallery 119. + +The general character of the next gallery is different from the +preceding. Given over to oils, watercolours, pastels, lithographs, and +drawings, it presents an interesting appearance. Six pastels by Henry +Muhrman and Frank Mura's charcoal drawings are the leaders here, and the +drawings generally are the best things among the many oils and +watercolours, which were mostly made for purposes of illustration. +Drawings by Martinez, pastels by Miss Percy, two sympathetic drawings by +Miss Hunter, and a few still-lifes in watercolour, by Miss Boone, all +bear testimony to native ability as represented by California. + +Gallery 120. + +The last gallery contains Bellow's bold canvases, of which "The Polo +Game" is the best known, another fine canvas by Henry Muhrman, and some +older American work by Stewart, typical of what we used to send to +Europe in years gone by. + +In the Garden. + +While many plastic works have been mentioned in the survey of the +galleries, still great numbers of statues, statuettes, and fountain +figures call for investigation, out of doors. Sculpture is, on the +whole, not so complex as painting, and dealing with the expression of +emotions much more directly than painting, it can easily be understood. +Of the many pieces displayed outside, Janet Scudder's fountain figures +earn all the applause they receive, and most of the other sculptors are +old friends, since they have been met with in the decorative +embellishments of the architecture of the Exposition. There is Aitken, +with a bust of Taft; Chester Beach, with a young girl in marble, of +great charm; Solon Borglum's Washington, Mrs. Burroughs' garden figure, +Stirling Calder, and Piccirilli - all well remembered. It is gratifying +to meet all these men, and many others, in freer and more detached +expression of their art, under conditions where no severe architectural +restrictions were put upon them. + + + +The Graphic Arts + + + +Conclusion + +It will be necessary to retrace our steps to take up a series of +galleries all along the outer curve of the building. They are devoted to +illustrations, miniatures, stained glass, plaques, and the many +expressions of graphic art we know as black and white, charcoal and +pencil drawing, monotypes, lithotints, etchings, and so on. With +Whistler's etchings on one end of the arch, we find Howard Pyle at the +other. + +Gallery 42. + +Pyle, since his death a few years ago, is recognized as the most +important of American illustrators. His art is most intellectual. It +commands immediate respect for its historical interest, which is based +on more than mere knowledge of the story illustrated. His milieu is +always right, distinctly so when he deals with the West Indian +buccaneers. His sense of colour is simple and dignified. It has the +typical breadth and decorative feeling that men like Jules Guérin and +Maxfield Parrish developed. Pyle was not an ordinary illustrator. His +interest in his work showed much depth and great originality. There is +nobody to take his place. In the small adjoining gallery (41) his black +and white drawings strengthen one's impression of this versatile man's +art. + +Gallery 40. + +Here we have Guérin in all the glory of his rich colour harmonies, which +have made the Exposition famous. Painstaking and conscientious as his +art is, it is always full of power of suggestion. Every square inch of +his most agreeably framed decorations is well considered, with nothing +left to accidental effect. Still, they are full of freedom, very loose +in handling, and always convincing. To choose the best among his eight +is very difficult, although his "Cemetery on the Golden Horn" on longer +study does not seem to be free from a certain artificiality of colour, +in the reddish hue of the reflected sunlight on the cypresses. The "Blue +Mosque at Cairo" is wonderfully poetic, and his "Temple of Sunium" has +all the tragic feeling of the classic ruins of Asia Minor. Opposite +Guérin Mr. and Mrs. Hale display unusual refinement and grace of form in +a unit wall of drawings and pastels. Mrs. Hale's drawings are the +quintessence of delicacy, without possessing any of the sugary +disagreeable sweetness of so many of our popular illustrators. Mr. +Hale's pastels are no less enchanting in his outdoor compositions in +many soft greens - a difficult colour to deal with. The many other +things in this gallery are all worth studying in their conservatism and +radicalism. + +Miniatures abound here and endless sighs are heard of entranced ladies +who have succumbed to the sentimental insipidness of these misplaced +artistic efforts. Miniature painting holds no charm for me. Most of them +are technical stunts and concessions to a faddism which has never had +anything to do with the real problem of painting. Practically all of the +miniatures in the cases are very well done, but when I think of the +physical discomfort of adjusting one's eyes to this pigmy world, then I +cannot help feeling that, considering the low cost of canvas, a great +effort deal of fine effort has been wasted. Looking at miniatures, I am +always reminded of the man who spent several years of his useless life +in writing the Old Testament on the back of a postage stamp. + +Gallery 39. + +McLure Hamilton has a fascinating group of anatomical sketches in this +small gallery. They are all charming fragments of a lady one would like +to know more about. As drawings they are spirited and full of rhythmic +linework. Their fragrant rococo style brings one back into that original +atmosphere the destinies of which were so largely controlled by similar +attractions. The apotheosis in his collection is furnished by a drawing +of a recently abandoned or to-be-occupied nest, presented in a most +suggestive manner. In the cases plaques and medallions abound, the +interest of which is largely attributable to Fraser's excellent work. + +Gallery 38. + +This room continues to hold one's interest, with some small pieces of +plastic art, all of great merit. + +Gallery 37. + +Watercolours make up the chief problems of study in this long room, +without convincing one that we have any too many great painters in this +medium. The best thing among the many commonplace paintings is a marine +by Woodbury which takes you far out on the open sea. In spite of its +size it is a big picture, one of the really big ones in any medium in +the whole exhibition. All of Woodbury's paintings are big in their way, +and prove what can be done in this medium. Many other things here are +only coloured photographs and technical experiments, the exceptions +being Dawson's clever flower studies, Miss Schille's market scenes, and +Henry McCarter's "King of Tara". Murphy's small Venetian sketches are +not so good as they seem at first. + +Gallery 36. + +Things look up considerably in the last of the galleries on the north. A +fine watercolour by Mrs. Mathews, good drawings by Sandona and Fortune, +exposition sketches by Donna Schuster, decorative designs by Lucy Hurry, +are all compelling in their way, while in the cases are any number of +good caricatures, and especially worthy of mention the bird designs by +Charles Emile Heil. + +Gallery 34. + +Across the vestibule the graphic arts are continued, beginning with +colour lithographs and monotypes, and continued with etchings. George +Senseney, Arthur Dow, Helen Hyde, Pedro Lemos, Clark Hobart, and others +too numerous to mention excite considerable interest. A battle of +elephants by Anna Vaughan Hyatt is worthy of study on account of its +unusual subject, so handled. + +Gallery 55. + +This room is entirely devoted to etching and is full of good people. +Auerbach Levy has some portraits splendidly characterized. Arthur Covey, +Mahonri Young, Lester Hornby, Clifford Addams, and Robert Harshe are all +equally well represented, in their many fine etchings, and Perham Nahl +with some monotypes of fine quality. + +Gallery 32 contains George Aid, Frank Armington, D. C. Sturges +(reminiscent of Zorn), and Ernest Roth. Franklin T. Wood's dry-point +portraits are noteworthy as examples of a very difficult technique. + +Galleries 31 and 30. + +Pennell's admirable lithographs and etchings of various scenes are so +descriptive, aside from their technical excellence, that they are not in +need of further recommendation. And neither are Mullgardt's lithographs +nor those of Worth Ryder next door. + +The general character of all of these somewhat inconspicuous galleries +is most satisfactory. They contain in well-arranged fashion the real art +of the people, the things that people who cannot afford to buy paintings +can easily afford to own. Original etchings, mezzotints, and wood block +prints and other process work often more truly contain the real point of +artistic effort than big paintings done laborously with no other +interest than to make a large painting for some show. It is gratifying +and it speaks well for our public to see so many of these small works of +art sold and scattered among the public. Only in this way can we hope to +make our exhibition useful to artist and public alike. Mr. Harshe, Mr. +Trask's able and conscientious assistant, has put much labor and thought +into the arrangement of these many cases and wallspaces, in a really +instructive way. It does not seem necessary to go into the meaning of +the many examples of graphic art. They are often self-explanatory, +particularly where used for illustration, and so far as their technical +production is concerned, it is too big a subject to fit into the +physical confines of this book. + +Much of this work to all indications, is going to remain with us, and +the success of our exposition can hardly be measured better than by the +ever-increasing number of purchasers. Art has to live, and in our +country it exists only by the patronage which comes directly from the +people, since federal, state and municipal governments seldom contribute +toward its support. Not until the community feels it a privilege rather +than a duty to give substantial encouragement to our artists will they +ever feel completely at home or will they be able to do their best work. + +Art is becoming more of a necessity in our midst, while not so long ago +it was more or less an affected interest of the rich. We have all the +conditions and the talent to allow us to push ahead into the front rank +of the art of the world, and an exposition like this gives more than +encouraging evidence of the awakening spirit of national American art. +May this exposition mark an epoch in the art of America! - and +particularly of the West, as other expositions have in the westward +march of civilization, which has now found its goal where it must either +achieve or perish. For us to stand still or to return to the +pre-exposition period would be calamity. We have here in California, of +all the states of the Union, conditions to offer, which, if properly +availed of, would give us a unique position on the continent. +Climatically and historically we have all the stimulating necessities +for a great art, and it is our duty to take advantage of them. + + + +Appendix + + + +Bibliography + + + +To the student and lover of art, a list of helpful reference books and +periodicals might be of interest, and the following publications are +recommended as sources of reference, of information and for study. They +cover a wide range of subjects treated historically, technically and +biographically, and they will be found very interesting as a nucleus for +a home library of art. + +Art For Life's Sake - Chas. H. Caffin +American Masters of Painting - Chas. H. Caffin +American Masters of Sculpture - Chas. H. Caffin +How to Study Pictures - Chas. H. Caffin +The Story of American Painting - Chas. H. Caffin +Short History of Art - Edited by Charles H. Caffin - Julia De Forest +The Classic Point of View - Kenyon Cox +What is Art? - John C. Van Dyke +The Meaning of Pictures - John C. Van Dyke +How to Judge of A Picture - John C. Van Dyke +History of Painting - John C. Van Dyke +Art For Art's Sake - John C. Van Dyke +New Guides to Old Masters - John C. Van Dyke +Studies in Pictures - John C. Van Dyke +The Appreciation of Sculpture - Russell Sturgis +The Appreciation of Pictures - Russell Sturgis +The History of Modern Art - Muther +Modern Art - Meier Graefe +Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages - Julia de Wolf Addison +Apollo, A History of Art Throughout the Ages - S. Reinach +Six Lectures on Painting - G. Clausen +Landscape Painting - Birge Harrison +Landscape Painting - Alfred East +History of American Art - Sadakichi Hartmann +Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures - + Henry R. Poore +Design in Theory and Practice - Ernest A. Batchelder +Line and Form - Walter Crane +Heritage of Hiroshige - Dora Amsden +Impressions of Ukiyo-Ye - Dora Amsden +Biographical Sketches of American Artists - Michigan State Library +Is It Art? Post-Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism - J. Nilsen Laurvik + + + + +Periodicals + +Art and Progress +The Craftsman +The International Studio + + + +Index to Galleries + + + +Argentina - Gallery 112 +China - Gallery 94-97 +Cuba - Gallery 20 +France + - Gallery 13-18 + - Gallery 13 + - Gallery 14 + - Gallery 15 + - Gallery 16 + - Gallery 17 + - Gallery 18 +Germany - Gallery 108 +Italy + - Gallery 21-25 + - Gallery 21 + - Gallery 22 + - Gallery 23 + - Gallery 24 + - Gallery 25 +Japan - Gallery 1-10 +Holland - Gallery 113-116 +Norway - Gallery 144-150 (Annex) +Philippines - Gallery 98 +Portugal - Gallery 109-111 +Sweden - Gallery 99-107 +Uruguay - Gallery 19 +Retrospective Art: + - Gallery 61 + - Gallery 62 + - Gallery 63 + - Gallery 91 + - Gallery 92 +United States + - Gallery 26 + - Gallery 27 + - Gallery 28-29 (Whistler) + - Gallery 30, 31 + - Gallery 32, 33, 34, 36 + - Gallery 35 (Vestibule) + - Gallery 37, 38, 39 + - Gallery 40, 41, 42 + - Gallery 43, 44 + - Gallery 45 + - Gallery 46, 47 + - Gallery 48, 49 + - Gallery 50 + - Gallery 51 + - Gallery 52, 53 (Offices) + - Gallery 54 + - Gallery 55, 56 + - Gallery 57 + - Gallery 58 + - Gallery 59 + - Gallery 60 + - Gallery 61 + - Gallery 62 + - Gallery 63 + - Gallery 64 + - Gallery 65 + - Gallery 66 + - Gallery 67 + - Gallery 68, 69, 70 + - Gallery 71 + - Gallery 72 + - Gallery 73 + - Gallery 74 + - Gallery 75 (Sargent) + - Gallery 76 (Mathews and McComas) + - Gallery 77 (Melchers) + - Gallery 78 (Hassam) + - Gallery 79 (Chase) + - Gallery 80 + - Gallery 81, 82, 83, 84 (Offices) + - Gallery 85 + - Gallery 86 + - Gallery 87 (Duveneck) + - Gallery 88 (Redfield) + - Gallery 89 (Tarbell) + - Gallery 90 (Keith) + - Gallery 91 + - Gallery 92 + - Gallery 93 + - Gallery 117 + - Gallery 118, 119 + - Gallery 120 + + + +The Galleries of the Exposition, by Eugen Neuhaus, Published by Paul +Elder and Company, San Francisco, was printed at their Tomoye Press, +under the direction of H. A. Funke, in July Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Galleries of the Exposition +by Eugen Neuhaus +******This file should be named galex10.txt or galex10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, galex11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, galex10a.txt + +This etext was produced by David A. Schwan. + +*** + +More information about this book is at the top of this file. + + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. 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