International studio (35.1908)

Carnegie Institute


Medal, Second Class, Carnegie, 1908
GRAND CANAL, MOONLIGHT
artist—is manifested in all its perfection. On the
other hand, the vitality and resourcefulness of
his dramatic narrative ability are impressively
shown in such striking story-telling pictures as
The Wreck, belonging to the Carnegie Institute;
The Gulf Stream, belonging to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and Undertow. Among the innu-
merable pictures of shipwrecks and of rescues at
sea, Homer’s are easily the best. Other painters’
attempts to convey the thrill and sense of peril, the
realization of man’s heroic uphill struggle with the
forces of nature, are puerile in comparison with his
epics of the ocean.
He appeals as much to the man in the street as he
does to the artist and the connoisseur. This is be-
cause all minds instinctively recognize and do hom-
age to the genuine, essential, vital truth of his crea-
tions. When Emerson wrote, “ He is great who is
what he is from nature, and who never reminds us
of others,” he might well have had Winslow Homer
in his mind. Our belief in his absolute originality
and the unalloyed national quality of his art is
strongly confirmed by the loan exhibition at Pitts-
burgh, which is a fresh evidence of the intelligent
and enterprising management of Mr. Beatty, the
director of fine arts of the Carnegie Institute.
In an international art exhibition it is often diffi-
cult to avoid misjudging the relative merits of the

various national
schools of art
represented. The
usual predomi-
nance of the home
artists is apt to
bring about a false
perspective. The
just sense of pro-
portion is main-
tained with diffi-
culty in these in-
ternational com-
petitions, because
it is always likely
that one or the
other of the
foreign competing
nations is not ad-
equately repre-
sented. Taken at
its face value, the
collection of 344
BY HENRI LE SIDANER RCtUreS in the
Carnegie Institute
exhibition pre-
sents a striking demonstration of the superiority
of the American painters, but this apparent su-
periority must be qualified in our thoughts by
the cautionary considerations which have been
suggested. Although there are many eminent
artists among the European exhibitors—inclu-
ding such names as Alma-Tadema, Frank Bram-
ley, Alfred East, Stanhope Forbes, John Lav-
ery, Briton Riviere, John M. Swan, Gros-
venor Thomas, E. A. Walton, Arthur Wardle,
James Aumonier, Albert Baertsoen, Jean Beraud,
Rene Billotte, Jacque Emile Blanche, Charles Cot-
tet, Andre Dauchez, Albert Gosselin, Gaston La
Touche, Henri Eugene Le Sidaner, Albert Lynch,
Claude Monet, Frederic Montenard, Jules A.
Muenier, Rene Prinet, J. F. Raffaelli, P. A. Renoir,
A. P. Roll, Arnold Gorter, Arthur Kampf, Antonio
Mancini, H. W. Mesdag, Jose Villegas, Anders L.
Zorn and Ignacio Zuloaga—mv impression remains
quite distinct that the majority of them are not
represented by their best work; that, disregarding
names, many of the best of the foreign works in the
exhibition come from men who are totally unknown
on this side of the ocean.
Blanche’s Venetian Glass is a brilliant and showy
exhibition picture, a tableau d’effet, and a distinctly
superficial performance. Mancini impresses us
more by his singularity of style and of expression

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