International studio (22.1904)

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with itself as it might be ; as, indeed, it wiii have to
be, if it is to make any serious progress. Within
the past twenty-five years the trick of good painting
has been passed around, so that the average of
craftsmanship is pretty high. But, unfortunately, it
is at the service of littie creative brain-power; and
remains, to a iarge extent, only a useful tool in the
hands of men without ideas, and without that close
touch with the worid of their feliows which might
give their work some vital importance. I anticipate
the abrupt question : "What do you mean by ideas?
Is it something translatable into words which
you are advocating; that old bogy of the literary
subject which we have spent so much time and
energy and temper in laying ?" To which my
reply is "Yes " and "No." " If you are capable,
my protesting friend, of taking some human theme,
such as poets, fiction-writers, dramatists, and
musicians have used in their respective ways, and
are capable of treating it in your own way, as a
painter, we shall welcome it. It will be grateful
alike to our intelligence and our love of the beauti-
ful. But if you have not in you this ability to
sound the human note which all the arts in their
diverse ways and in their highest forms reecho, we
will be satisfied with less, for we are not seeking
grapes from thistles. On the other hand, we are
looking in the thistle for such virtue as it may
reasonably be expected to possess. We will fall
into line even with your working-formula of "art
for art's sake," but not with the feckless apprecia-
tion of it that too many of you adopt. We agree
with you that line and form, color, lighting, texture,
values, and so on, independently of all associated
ideas, are capable of producing enjoyment; but,
since you limit your motive to exciting this purely
abstract aesthetic satisfaction, we shall be weary of
you if you fail to do it. And is it not a fact that
such failure is very rife ; the reason being that for
the most part you have not a feeling for beauty so
absorbing as to be a motive sufficient in itself; no
passion for form or color, or for the infinite mani-
festations of light and movement; only some trickster
facility, more or*less, in manipulating brush and pig-
ment, so that you trifle merely upon the edge of an
ocean of possibility ? Such barrenness is not lack-
ing in our landscape painting; it is conspicuously
prevalent in our figure painting.
The present Exhibition, outside of portraits, which
are numerous, offers a notable dearth even of
examples of this branch. The Carnegie prize, " for
the most meritorious painting in the Exhibition by
an American artist, portraits only excepted," was
awarded to Charles C. Curran's .42 2%<? Y%z7w. For

my own part, I prefer his other example, Y%<? CM-
47^7/^, in which tiny fairies are weaving a dance
upon the blossoms of lilies. It is painted with
more ease and assurance, and reveals a very gracious
imagination in the choice of composition, tonal
arrangement, and lighting ; much delicacy of inven-
tion and artistic feeling. There is a hint of the
pursuit of similar qualities in the picture of three
ladies seated at a mahogany table, in somewhat
violent perspective, Y/h? Y^r Yh-7-2y, by Edward A.
Bell. It is very difficult to escape the notion that
this scene has been viewed through the medium of
T. W. Dewing's eyes; if so, it is a pity that the
conscious, or unconscious, plagiarist had not assimi-
lated also a portion of his skill. As it is, the picture
suggests only that painter's mannerisms. Refresh-
ingly attractive amid the dearth of interesting figure-
subjects is John C. Johansen's Y%<? Y%fM7-g Aw.%,—
clear, pure light pouring down upon the fair head of
a little child, who, in a slaty blue dress, is curled
upon a bluish-green sofa, intent upon a book. The
painter is not long arrived from Denmark, and his
work shows that intimate and affectionate study of
lighting and the sweet wholesome sentiment that
are to be found in so many pictures of the modern
Danish school. This one, in excellence of crafts-
manship and in its charming union of subtlety and
vigor, strikes a welcome note of individuality.
Before the two pictures by Sergeant Kendall, .4
2Yry2M7'22/7777 4W. 4 Zb422;y7v, and 4Y7. ^
Y2 YDAswwv, circular decorative compositions, each
including two children and the head and shoulders
of a lady, it is possible to experience a conflict
between enjoyment and distress. They have a
charm, resulting from pleasing composition, good
drawing and a tender sprightliness of sentiment; on
the other hand, they repel by their crude, garish
color and dry, brittle manner of brushwork. They
seem, indeed, to be without the painter-like quality;
suggesting a lack of color sense and of any feeling
for the unction of oil pigments. Translated into
black and white, I can imagine them altogether
agreeable. Another subject, possessed of certain
merits, which yet may disappoint one, is the nude
study, Y^A2//^?, by Warren B. Davis. The figure,
very charmingly drawn, as usual with this painter,
occupies too inconsiderable a portion of the canvas,
the rest being filled up with a tree trunk and mossy
bank. The latter are ineffective both in themselves
and as ingredients of the composition ; having an
indiscriminateness of treatment, as if neither con-
struction nor character had been grasped. It is not
the first time that the natural setting in which Davis
places his nude figures seems not to have been
cclxvii