DOI issue:
No. 184 (June, 1912)
DOI article:Brinton, Christian: International art at Pittsburgh
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43449#0440
International Art at Pittsburgh
MRS. LAVERY
BY JOHN LAVERY
It is consonant with the seasonal significance
as well as the general aims of the Sixteenth An-
nual Exhibition of the Carnegie Institute that
the first canvas to greet the eye on entering the
galleries should be John Lavery’s Springtime,
showing a young woman in simple muslin frock
and straw hat, bearing in her arms a branch of
flowering hawthorn. Together with the ad-
jacent Father and Daughter, that tender epitome of
paternal protection and solicitude, the picture
came from the Luxembourg to figure in the im-
portant collective display of the painter’s works
which occupies the room customarily devoted to
individual artists. Numbering in all thirty-six
canvases, the Lavery group is second only in im-
portance to the exhibition seen two years since
at the Venice International in which several of
the same pictures found place. The dexterous,
gracious talent of the new recruit to the ranks of
the Royal Academy has rarely appeared to better
advantage than on these walls. Every phase of
his flexible observation and fluent technique here
finds full play. There are sparkling bits of Afri-
can coast, sedate London interiors, glimpses of
sun-brightened piazza or balcony, and
portraits revealing the essential sig-
nificance of Anglo-Saxon character,
or the sultry beauty of Moorish
maiden in native headdress. Mr.
Lavery covers a wide range. He
turns adroitly from cabinet picture
to the heroic dimensions of The
Amazon, an ambitious and spirited
equestrian composition showing his
daughter on her favorite Berber
pony. Yet he is seldom found un-
equal to the task in hand. It is
fruitful to note the gradual clarify-
ing of a palette which formerly be-
trayed not a little of Whistlerian
sobriety of tone and Scottish grey-
ness. One cannot demand more than
that an artist may continue to grow,
to respond to fresh ideas and new in-
fluences, and this Mr. Lavery accom-
plishes without in the least degree
sacrificing his proper artistic person-
ality.
Just as it is an Associate of the
Royal Academy who is paid the com-
pliment of extended individual repre-
sentation, so it is a member of the
same institution to whom primary
honors fall in the matter of prize
giving. It seems to be an established fact that
prize pictures are usually found less convincing
and inevitable than one would naturally expect
them to be, yet this is largely due to the cir-
cumstance that they are thrust into fictitious
prominence. In any event the general consensus
of opinion either popular or critical is seldom
unanimous, and this year offers no exception.
The recipient of initial honors at the current
Carnegie Institute Exhibition is Charles Sims,
the picture being a small, ethereally conceived
canvas entitled Pastorella. The second prize
has been awarded Paul Dougherty on the
strength of a vigorous, decoratively handled
marine called A Freshening Gale, and the third
goes to Henri Martin’s Portrait of My Son, a
brilliant, stimulating piece of impressionism full
of robust sanity and steeped in the sun-flecked
glory of the out-of-doors.
While it would be ungracious if not, indeed,
an act of positive lese-majeste to dispute the in-
fallibility of any jury, there are nevertheless those
possessing sufficient temerity to favor, at least in
theory, a flat reversal of the first and third of
LXXXVI
MRS. LAVERY
BY JOHN LAVERY
It is consonant with the seasonal significance
as well as the general aims of the Sixteenth An-
nual Exhibition of the Carnegie Institute that
the first canvas to greet the eye on entering the
galleries should be John Lavery’s Springtime,
showing a young woman in simple muslin frock
and straw hat, bearing in her arms a branch of
flowering hawthorn. Together with the ad-
jacent Father and Daughter, that tender epitome of
paternal protection and solicitude, the picture
came from the Luxembourg to figure in the im-
portant collective display of the painter’s works
which occupies the room customarily devoted to
individual artists. Numbering in all thirty-six
canvases, the Lavery group is second only in im-
portance to the exhibition seen two years since
at the Venice International in which several of
the same pictures found place. The dexterous,
gracious talent of the new recruit to the ranks of
the Royal Academy has rarely appeared to better
advantage than on these walls. Every phase of
his flexible observation and fluent technique here
finds full play. There are sparkling bits of Afri-
can coast, sedate London interiors, glimpses of
sun-brightened piazza or balcony, and
portraits revealing the essential sig-
nificance of Anglo-Saxon character,
or the sultry beauty of Moorish
maiden in native headdress. Mr.
Lavery covers a wide range. He
turns adroitly from cabinet picture
to the heroic dimensions of The
Amazon, an ambitious and spirited
equestrian composition showing his
daughter on her favorite Berber
pony. Yet he is seldom found un-
equal to the task in hand. It is
fruitful to note the gradual clarify-
ing of a palette which formerly be-
trayed not a little of Whistlerian
sobriety of tone and Scottish grey-
ness. One cannot demand more than
that an artist may continue to grow,
to respond to fresh ideas and new in-
fluences, and this Mr. Lavery accom-
plishes without in the least degree
sacrificing his proper artistic person-
ality.
Just as it is an Associate of the
Royal Academy who is paid the com-
pliment of extended individual repre-
sentation, so it is a member of the
same institution to whom primary
honors fall in the matter of prize
giving. It seems to be an established fact that
prize pictures are usually found less convincing
and inevitable than one would naturally expect
them to be, yet this is largely due to the cir-
cumstance that they are thrust into fictitious
prominence. In any event the general consensus
of opinion either popular or critical is seldom
unanimous, and this year offers no exception.
The recipient of initial honors at the current
Carnegie Institute Exhibition is Charles Sims,
the picture being a small, ethereally conceived
canvas entitled Pastorella. The second prize
has been awarded Paul Dougherty on the
strength of a vigorous, decoratively handled
marine called A Freshening Gale, and the third
goes to Henri Martin’s Portrait of My Son, a
brilliant, stimulating piece of impressionism full
of robust sanity and steeped in the sun-flecked
glory of the out-of-doors.
While it would be ungracious if not, indeed,
an act of positive lese-majeste to dispute the in-
fallibility of any jury, there are nevertheless those
possessing sufficient temerity to favor, at least in
theory, a flat reversal of the first and third of
LXXXVI