International studio (26.1905)

I have lately discovered
such a canvas—or, rather,
canvases. They have a
strong accent; they are
more than frank, they are
brutal and uncouth, but
they are the expression of
virile and individual emo-
tions. And they possess
local charm.

men with oar and Ashing tackle, and his Portuguese
Asher boys, we feel a whiff of the ocean, and their
environment is actually dripping with brine.

Hawthorne is in his art a direct descendant of
Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, who went
their way independent, audacious ; who tried to
paint life as they knew it—their own inspirations
and their own delights in what they discovered as
being beautiful. Hawthorne's art has not yet that
expression of joy in expansive life which clings to
Winslow Homer's Agures, nor has it that anatomical
grasp in character which is Eakins' strength. But
it is just as vital, natural, and wholesome.

Technically, Hawthorne is very strong. Origin-
ally a pupil of Chase and a searcher for individual
brushwork (as still noticeable in 71%^ .%7rM, 1898),

Their author is Charles
W. Hawthorne. He is
essentially a Agure painter,
a painter of "types," sur-
rounded by a jumble of still
life. The Ashing folk of
Cape Cod are his speciality.
He paints them impassion-
ately, without poetry or
analytical reAection, with
scarcely a stint of that sensi-
tive compassion which
modern Agure painters are
prone to put into their
work. He sees things and
—paints them. But in his

' FISHER BOY

BY CHARLES W. HAWTHORNE
26t

IV JEW YORK.-—American art-culture is
largely mechanical and imitative ; the
} " tricks of trade " of European studios
^ ^ have substituted, in only too many
cases, veneer for reality, sterile process for vital
spark. There is only too much truth, I fear,
in the charges of the best French, German, and
English artists, that our students affect too much
their manners, instead of divining their artistic
sensibilities. " We foreigners like you for what is
distinctly jtWTV, not second-hand naw," wrote a
French critic, astonished at our vast accumulation
of promiscuous borrowed plumes.

Where are the American artists whose work
smacks of the native soil, as does the poetry of
Whitman, our greatest poet, largely because he
was a true expression of his country and time?
One walks through exhibi-
tion afterexhibition, but only
in the rare "blue moons"
does one discover a canvas
which is in the way of being
vital art, and behind which
—mark this—there lurks a
personality.