International studio (14.1901)

American Studio Talk

red veil. One might justly remark upon the rank
realism of these figures, that they are the merest
abstracts of the effects of tight lacing and of the
stilted attitudinizing of a form accustomed to the
controlling influences of clothing; but let that pass.
The painter has narrowed himself down to simply
the study of light and color, and within this range
he is partially successful. If you will remove your-
self to the farthest end of the gallery, you will get
an unmistakable suggestion of sunshine and of its
varied effects of direct glow and reflected light upon
these figures; but the higher artistic ability that
would suggest those phenomena at varying dis-
tances of vision is entirely absent. At any but the
farthest point they are insufferably crude.

In very marked contrast is the refined reserve of
John W. Alexander’s pictures. His Autumn might
be described as a tapestried decoration, but in A
Child with Doll he has represented the freshness
of pure white light, and in A Ray of Sunlight the
subtlety of a shaft of light, playing drowsily upon
a girl’s figure and upon the ’cello which she is
playing. In all this painter’s work, irrespective of
the special impressions aroused by each picture,
there is an individuality that is thoroughly artistic.
I hate this much abused word, but how else is one
to express that quality which arises from an artist’s
way of seeing and feeling his subject? And it is
just this quality that distinguishes Mr. Alexander’s
work ; and in his case takes on its own individual
attributes of refined seriousness, of decorative char-
acter, and, often, of penetrating subtlety.

Somewhat the same might be written of the work
by J. Humphreys Johnston, only with him the mood
seems to count for more. His painting seems to be
more the result of feeling than of deliberate design,
— of a feeling that instinctively embraces the artis-
tic possibilities of the subject and remains content
therewith, seldom, if ever, caring to penetrate the
inner qualities. For example, in the Light Nights
in Norway, a lady in a white dress standing by a
pool of blue water flecked with pink, what an ex-
quisite placidity pervades the scene and suggestion
of the unreal reality of the mock daylight, even the
figure having its share of unsubstantial substance, —
a very shrewd and subtle rendering of the phenome-
non ! Again in his Portrait of Mrs. L., lent by
Mrs. C. Grant La Farge, the flood of brilliant light
upon the soft white hair and on the gray silk dress,
to which a black lace shawl supplies a handsome
foil, suggests a similar delight in the exterior of the
subject, with little apparent concern for the per-
sonality within. The great charm of both is the

degree of artistic sensibility and expression, far
above the average, to which they attain.

William T. Dannat is represented by one of his
very clever Spanish subjects of characteristic genre,
painted apparently about the same time as The
Quartette, in the Metropolitan Museum of New
York, — that is to say, in the early eighties. That
period would seem to represent the maturity of his
brush ; for later portraits, such as those exhibited
at the recent Paris Exposition, were manifestly
slighter work. One can but regret that such ripe
ability should have produced so brief a harvest.

I do not remember any picture by Edwin Lord
Weeks that has seemed so agreeable as Loading the
Caravan — early morning in Persia. His work is
always clever and full of the characteristics of the
scene, but often misses the actual character, — being,
indeed, an elaborate kind of illustration in which
the externals have been vividly noted. But in this
scene amongst the hills, in the cool mist of early
morning, where a group of merchants are saddling
their pack-horses, there is an intimacy of study and
feeling which is very charming. There is charm
also in the big genre subject by Dana Marsh, In the
Boudoir. It is a frankly realistic study of a woman
on a sofa in a handsomely bold scheme of color, —
olive, mahogany, peacock blue, drab, and gold.

In his Daniel in the Lions’ Den, H. O. Tanner
is scarcely represented at his best. The picture
reveals his individual way of conceiving a subject,
and, so far as the lighting is concerned, his reliance
upon painters’ means; but the coloring is heavy
and rather uninteresting, which detracts from the
impressiveness of the picture, and makes the ren-
dering seem more than a little crude. Amongst the
painters temporarily absent from the country is
Henry Mosler, whose Awakening of Love one would
not mention but that its utter mushiness seems to
demand a protest. Mr. Mosler has shown him-
self before now very “ pleeable,” as a Scotchman
would say, in catering for what he supposes to be
the susceptibilities of the public, but on this occa-
sion has reached a depth of foolishness that one
had hoped the painters, if not all the public, had
outlived. It may please him to know that sundry
visitors, the kind one would meet at a country fair,
were evidently “tickled to death ” by his subject —
a namby-pamby maiden standing in a cottage door-
way, while two naked loves sharpen their arrows on
a grindstone ; but these homely connoisseurs were
not of those who buy pictures, and to most people
such stuff will seem to be drivel. The rendering is
on a par with the subject.

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