International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

EW YORK
WATER-COLOR CLUB.
I have heard it remarked that the recent
Water-Color Club Exhibition was not very interest-
ing, which may be suspected to mean that it did
not present any very striking features. But is one
justified in expecting this in an exhibition of water-
coiors ? Is it not rather the sweet intimacy of the
medium which is its greatest fascination, and for
this one must look more closely and individually?
And, doing so, I think there can be little doubt
that, while the ensemble presented a high average
of technical skill, search discovered a great many
pictures of very distinct superiority of charm.
I shall not include among these the pastels which
made some of the most prominent spots upon the
walls, because, without disputing the propriety of
permitting them to intrude among the water-colors,
which is a matter for the Club to decide, I am
personally unable to enjoy the two mediums simul-
taneously. They are in a different category, dis-
similar in point of view and in manner. Nor shall
I more than mention the brilliant pictures by Hugh
H. Breckenridge, because I feel an old-fashioned
disinclination for the appearance of confusing the
effects of oil and water-colors.
No. 1 in the catalogue, .$<?%, by
William J. Kaula, struck at once the true note, hav-
ing in its silky atmosphere, dreamy tenderness of
light, and purity of color, some of the very special
virtues of the medium. These qualities reappeared
in the same artist's <?/* 7/L both these
pictures being conspicuous examples of strong draw-
ing in the ground and sky. Another exhibit very
memorable in this respect was William RitscheH's
N^r777, which represented a billowy sky
rolling over a Strip of sea, and a broad Stretch of
sand, feathered here and there with reedy grass.
It was a stirring picture, very real in its general
local truth and in its particular rendering of a
certain kind of light, and full of large and serious
intention.
This painter is a Student of the modern Dutch
School, and so is evidently Katherine Allmond
Hulbert, whose ^4 77^ has the feeling and the
quality also of a Mauve. Another picture, 27L
was more than ordinarily notable; very strong in
the foreground, with a Ane Suggestion of distance,
and a sky in which the light struggles through an
atmosphere stirred with storminess; the pond, a
centralized effect of placidity, surrounded by con-
ditions of disturbance, a little bit of restfulness in a

world of change. For such an evidence of mind
and of poetic thought in a picture one is grateful.
But the most distinguished, technically, at any rate,
of the artists who take their key from Holland, is
Charles P. Gruppe. Both in TViw AWAvYa?/; and
he reaches the highest
measure of excellence within that particular limit
of gray sky effects, which the modern Dutchmen
fancy most. One notes the limit, because, even with
the local conditions of their own country, this special
phase of nature is a partial one. But it is char-
acteristic of their way of seeing nature, and in
marked contrast to the bracier, more lightsome
point of view of that other very excellent school of
water-color, the English. This prepossession of the
Dutch for what one may call a meditative aspect of
nature, for its gray and brown moods, grays that
softly veil the sunshine or are clariAed with rain and
wind, very subtle in their tones and in the Suggestion
of the stir of atmosphere, has inßuenced a great many
of our painters who otherwise show no afAnity with
the school. It appeals to the preference for sobriety,
and to the searching interest in the phenomena of
nature, which is characteristic of American land-
scape painters as a body.
These chartns of reticence and quietude were
well illustrated in AThw; and
by Cullen Yates, both of them faithful renderings of
nature, impregnated with the sweet solemnity'of the
hour. They were visible again in Georgia Timken
Fry's and 7X<; CTay in
the former accompanied by a remarkable originality
of feeling. If there were some weakness in the
Agure of the shepherd leaning on his staff, there was
certainly none in the drawing of the hillside; and
its bold and desolate character, interrupted only by
the groups of browsing sheep, was full of the large
Suggestion of space and loneliness. It was a pict-
ure from which one could derive a very genuine
satisfaction.
7%<? c/* 70-^77^, by E. Irving Couse, — a
group of boats and Asherfolk, posed with discreet
propriety in a mauve-pink atmosphere, — was pleas-
ant enough pictorially, but surely lacking in real
out-of-door robustness. It was too conspicuously
feminine in manner and feeling. One missed the
bracy snap which F. K. M. Rehn, for example,
had put into his -<4/%773<7<77; a little marine
of especial virility and joy of truth; or the large,
wholesome breadth of pictorial expression to be
found in Henry B. Snell's or, again,
the frankly objective manner in which George
Wharton Edwards had cajoled a little Settlement of
cxcvii