DOI Heft:
American section
DOI Artikel:Lloyd, David: The exhibition of the ten American painters
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28251#0439
The Exhibition of the Ten American Painters
as -Stevenson said. The exhibits at the Montross
Gallery this year just missed a total of thirty. The
collection is in point of size like the suspenders Lin-
coln used to compare his opponent’s platform to in
political debate, neither too large nor too small.
The visitor can look at it with some self-possession.
The walls of the exhibitions that number their hun-
dreds of entries stare the visitor out of countenance.
If we were not thoroughly accustomed to large exhi-
bitions by this time, we should never put up with
them, except for special purposes supplementary to
a first view. Imagine reading over a couple of hun-
dred poems at a sitting or sitting through as many
solos at the opera house! On Franklin’s theory,
apparently, that we must all hang together or all
separately, the usual alternative is the one-man
show, which has its obvious sanction and its positive
welcome, but which has its disadvantages also. For
in the aggregate it is cumbersome and dissipates the
effect of personality. Moreover, this aggregate, the
recollection of a season’s train of one-man shows,
falls readily of itself into distinctive groups. Can it
be that there are not another dozen men painting
to-day who would be mutually agreeable ? The
Ten, so far from being conspicuous for an amiable
assertiveness in banding together, as many people
even to this moment continue to regard them, have
merely pointed the way to the only satisfactory
method for being seen and not heard in unseemly
institutional wrangling. They deserve to be emu-
lated in their adoption of the motto of the Trolls in
“Peer Gynt”—to yourselves be enough.
The larger exhibition this year has had prece-
dence in including two of the striking canvases of
this group. At the Corcoran Gallery, indeed, they
carried away the first and second prizes. Mr. Met-
calf’s May Night was reproduced in our March
issue. It was hung to better advantage in the smaller
gallery. It gives the aspect of moonlight that fills
the chinks and spaces of the country with a cool
quiet, or in the terms of the standing formula, an
unaccustomed sun with the wicks turned low and
the heat left out and a corresponding inability to
bring the ether up to the required number of vibra-
FISH STILL LIFE
PROPERTY OF COTTIER & CO.
BY WILLIAM M. CHASE
LXXXIX
as -Stevenson said. The exhibits at the Montross
Gallery this year just missed a total of thirty. The
collection is in point of size like the suspenders Lin-
coln used to compare his opponent’s platform to in
political debate, neither too large nor too small.
The visitor can look at it with some self-possession.
The walls of the exhibitions that number their hun-
dreds of entries stare the visitor out of countenance.
If we were not thoroughly accustomed to large exhi-
bitions by this time, we should never put up with
them, except for special purposes supplementary to
a first view. Imagine reading over a couple of hun-
dred poems at a sitting or sitting through as many
solos at the opera house! On Franklin’s theory,
apparently, that we must all hang together or all
separately, the usual alternative is the one-man
show, which has its obvious sanction and its positive
welcome, but which has its disadvantages also. For
in the aggregate it is cumbersome and dissipates the
effect of personality. Moreover, this aggregate, the
recollection of a season’s train of one-man shows,
falls readily of itself into distinctive groups. Can it
be that there are not another dozen men painting
to-day who would be mutually agreeable ? The
Ten, so far from being conspicuous for an amiable
assertiveness in banding together, as many people
even to this moment continue to regard them, have
merely pointed the way to the only satisfactory
method for being seen and not heard in unseemly
institutional wrangling. They deserve to be emu-
lated in their adoption of the motto of the Trolls in
“Peer Gynt”—to yourselves be enough.
The larger exhibition this year has had prece-
dence in including two of the striking canvases of
this group. At the Corcoran Gallery, indeed, they
carried away the first and second prizes. Mr. Met-
calf’s May Night was reproduced in our March
issue. It was hung to better advantage in the smaller
gallery. It gives the aspect of moonlight that fills
the chinks and spaces of the country with a cool
quiet, or in the terms of the standing formula, an
unaccustomed sun with the wicks turned low and
the heat left out and a corresponding inability to
bring the ether up to the required number of vibra-
FISH STILL LIFE
PROPERTY OF COTTIER & CO.
BY WILLIAM M. CHASE
LXXXIX