International studio (27.1905/1906(1906))

The Whipple School of Art

THE WHIPPLE SCHOOL OF ART
Art Schools as a rule are referable
in their origin to one of three soufees:
the public, the master and the Student.
It happens in some instances that a body of people
interested in the pursuit of art, still too young in
their careers to boast their own Studios and fniding
themselves in a community too young in its art life
to afford adequate schools, will group themselves
together, and after renting rooms and hiring models
from the common purse will invite voluntary
criticism, appoint themselves critics in rotation or
work ahead toward better days with no other guid-
ance than their mutual Inspiration. This is in
brief the history of some of our schools which we
have already had occasion to mention, or at least
the history of their beginnings. The element of
spirit in such a school goes without saying. If it
succeeds at all it is likely to make itself a brilliant
monument to its esprit de corps. The danger that
faces it in its development is an emphasis on the
academic. An artist may be as individual as he
pleases in his teaching. Several score pupils, grow-
ing in time to several hundred, can procure instruc-
tion of a sort only that is agreeable to all. For a
crowd despite its irresponsibility has a great regard
for tradition. A mob, for instance, will respect
even the conventions of its primaeval savagery,
which the citizen in his law-abiding moments has
been radical enough to discard and forget. But the
theory of the power of a democracy over itself may
be pushed too far. The members of a Student
association cannot act as the Greek Areopagus, as
one big jury, called to pass upon instructors sum-
moned before it like prisoners at the bar. It must
act through a Committee; and usually, as the school
adds to itself with its years a group of practising
alumni, this committee will contrive to lean some-

what upon the riper experience of the older men.
The committee may, if anything, be more conserva-
tive than the Student body. Bizarre, erratic, ex-
perimental tendencies will be successfully avoided.
All things will not be proved but the good will be
clung to. For safety and for spirit the self-govern-
ing association in art study is as praiseworthy as it is
exceptional.
If the public finds itself the headmaster it has
usually come to the position through the doorways
of an art museum or by the seals of the Surrogate’s
office. When the city has established or been
graciously moved to accept the museum, some one
before long points out that its treasures should be
made to propagate. To house within the city


limits the triumphs of sculptors and painters deacl
and gone is good. To become the birthplace of a
new Laocoon and a later Night IVatch is a riper

FIRST PRIZE, LIFE CLASS
WHIPPLE SCHOOL OF ART
DRAWING BY ASAO HABU

LXXIII