International studio (46.1912)

Eugene Speicher

less direct and sympathetic. He is still insistent-
ly American. A strong note of nationality in-
dicates strength in an artist. And an education
which extends his sphere of appreciation, if at the
same time it weakens his race quality, leaves him
perhaps more capable of enjoying the works of
others, but on the whole less creative and more
effete.
The other striking quality of this young artist is
his idealistic enthusiasm, or rather his enthusiasm
for his ideals. He has painting ideals and tre-
mendous enthusiasm to approach them. This is
the quality that has given circulation and vigor
to his conservatism. That he is not a revolution-
ist is, I think, proved by his career as a student
and by the fact that he is trying to carry out to a
very complete extent the representations of his
impressions. A young revolutionist would not
have taken the prizes which Mr. Speicher did
while he was at school. The first drawing which
he submitted in the antique class of the Buffalo
Art School brought him a scholarship for the life
class, and again by his work in that class he won
a scholarship which carried him to New York to
the Art Students’ League, where, still again, he
continued his course by means of a scholarship
gained for him by his first year’s work.
These facts are chiefly significant because they
show that he did not openly rebel at the grind of
the succeeding antique, life and portrait classes,
but he evidently felt the oppression of being too
directly under the rays that the light of a con-
ventional art school sheds on the occasional alive
students who come under its half-satisfying in-
fluence. For he also attended the life and com-
position classes of Mr. Henri and came into con-
tact with that brilliant artist’s fight to establish
the cause of fresh impressions. He not only came
into contact with it but he followed it excitedly.
And this fair investigation of new and intention-
ally rebellious ideas discounted the possibility of
hardening in academic ruts.
The enlightening stimulation of Mr. Henri’s
movement for originality and freshness of im-
pression was like a new broom sweeping away
rubbish. Mr. Speicher allowed it, so to speak, to
invigorate his attack but not to qualify his prin-
ciples, which were the old and tried ones that exact
representation must be learned before elimination
begins. Since, in the last analysis, it is the qual-
ity of the impression received by the painter that
establishes the standard of a picture, those who
maintain that an artist should protect the inno-
cence of his vision at all costs certainly have a

strong premise. The cry of the so-called revolu-
tionists is individuality and freshness, and yet
they are frequently guilty of the most barren
imitation. It is the same old conflict and it will
continue for the enlivenment and undoubtedly
the benefit of painting.
Two qualities must predominate if the artist is
to survive—taste and vitality. His vitality is
severely tested by that intense apprenticeship
which he must serve if he is ever to acquire
sufficient mastery of his medium to enable him
to paint without recourse to superficial tricks.
Such an apprenticeship Mr. Speicher has served
without diminishing the individuality and fineness
of his own viewpoint.
If it is clear that he is an enthusiastic, ideal-
istic American, thoroughly in sympathy with
American life and subjects, and entirely lacking in
esthetic snobbishness, that he has turned back to
the old masters to learn the abstract principles
of portrait painting while at the same time keep-
ing his mind awake to the invigorating effects of
contemporaneous movements, the plane is es-
tablished from which can best be seen the quality
of the impressions which he has tried to represent
and the promise and fulfillment of those represen-
tations.
The conception of the portrait of Mr. C. D.
Gibson is as distinctly American as the subject
itself. This quality so strikingly possessed both
by the artist and the “sitter” can be seen in the
choice of pose, in the expression of the eyes and
mouth, the turn of the head, the remarkably
characteristic set of the shoulders and, in fact, in
the whole design and organization of the picture.
The head is vigorously and freshly painted,
the artist’s first impression of it finely held, and
in the subtly broken background and the success-
ful attack on the illusive problem of envelop you
see the results of long and intelligent study of
abstract principles.
In the Appleton portrait you can see that Mr.
Speicher is able to treat a subject with great sub-
tlety of modeling and color. I cannot refrain
from drawing attention immediately to the delight-
fully witty handling of the eyebrows and the line
of the hair. The allurement of this picture is in-
stantaneous, but you feel after you have had your
first enjoyment of it a sense of disclosed methods,
and in spite of its charm it hasn’t the freshness of
the Gibson. But like the Gibson it shows that
Mr. Speicher has gone deep and scorned super-
ficiality and if he remains free from false success
he will be a real master.

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