International studio (32.1907)

INTERNATIONAL

STUDIO

VOL. XXXII. No. 127 Copyright, 1907, by John Lane Company SEPTEMBER, 1907

E

DMUND C. T ARB ELL
BY FREDERICK W. COBURN

Born at West Groton, Mass., in 1863,
trained in the art schools of Boston and
Paris, and devoted uninterruptedly since the end
of his student days to the practice of his profession
in the New England capital, Edmund C. Tarbell
has produced a series of remarkably competent
works. Among various groups and factions of
painters, and by the public at large, he has come
to be regarded as among the most able of living
painters; admirers do not hesitate to use a stronger
term. His art has involved important justifica-
tions—of his temperament, of the professional
influences amidst which a gifted youth has developed
into a consummate artist, of the civic and national
conditions in which he has painted. His work
throughout has been modern, catholic, thoroughly
interesting and universal. It has been free from
romantic affectation, from preoccupation with the
abnormal or exceptional. It has accepted naively
and skilfully interpreted the life of this age. For
the most part it is very beautiful; the worst of it
aims at beauty and at least attains distinction.
Regarding the painter himself I am to tell what I
can.

On the ball nine of the Tavern Club of Boston in
its annual contest with the rival St. Botolph Club,
a stocky third baseman hugely enjoys the putative
witticisms of coachers and crowd, the hooting and
tooting, the frequent misplays and the more in-
frequent recrudescence of student-day brilliance.
He plays fairly good ball—an indication of his
temperament. To relish, at forty-five, the tingle
of handling a hot liner argues inhibited hardening
of the arteries, persistent youthfulness. That
certainly is one of Mr. Tarbell’s qualifications to
paint. He is of the “young in heart,” to use
Arthur Pier’s phrase. He has alacrity, buoyancy,
vitality.

Admission secured to the studio in a frowsy
building over a saloon in a decadent part of Dart-
mouth Street—the door is usually locked and a
placard announces that the occupant has gone to
Haverhill for three weeks—one is in presence of a
technician who seems to paint with his eyes rather
than with the brush. His concentration has an
outward aspect of desultoriness. Ten minutes of
glancing at the canvas, occasionally, casually, as
it were, precede perhaps five or ten seconds of
spirited brushing-in. Then another period of
waiting and watching for a suggestion. Of intense
preoccupation there is no outward evidence. The
painter appears to seek detachment from his task.
He has the “ will to refrain ” by which alone uni-
versality is imparted to art. The things not done,
the eliminations, the inhibitions of original impulse
—-these, in his present philosophy of painting, out-
weigh facility and tricks of execution. Yet Mr.
Tarbell is, on occasion, one of the most facile of
draughtsmen.

The school connected with the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts has been, up to this time, small and
provincial. Its student body is drawn mostly
from the immediate neighborhood. Its member-
ship is less than one-tenth that of the largest of
American art schools; it is smaller than that of
many institutions in cities of second and even third
class. Yet it has high standards and a remarkable
record for efficiency—as was demonstrated when
at St. Louis it won the Grand Prize over all
American competitors. I recall that when I was
a member, some years ago, of the governing body
of the Art Students’ League of New York Mr.
John La Farge, then assisting us in an advisory
capacity, counseled sending a committee over to
Boston to see some of the painting done in Edmund
Tarbell’s classes. Two of our members went,
with, I think, some hope that the senior instructor
at the school in Boston might be persuaded to
move to New York. Their visit was at least pro-

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