International studio (49.1913)

Contemporary Art and the Carnegie Institute

Medal of the Second Class, Carnegie Institute, 1913
AUTUMN BY HENRI MARTIN


trace of Sargent in its fluency of draughtsman-
ship and vigor of modelling, but, despite its
imposing size and breadth, its spirit is really
that of British neo-Classicism, not far removed
from the school of Leighton and Alma Tadema.
One may be pardoned in this connection for
preferring the downright force and pictur-
esqueness of Ernest Josephson’s Spanish Smiths,
dating from a generation or more ago and now
hanging in the National Gallery of Norway.
Without question there are beautiful and appeal-
ing passages in Henri Martin’s group under the
vine-covered pergola of a cream-white upland
villa—-hints of Italian serenity seen through the
subdued brilliancy of Gallic neo-Impressionism—
yet it is scarcely a great or compelling canvas,
while Mr. Beal’s Manor House is merely a paint-
er’s performance, not the work of a man who has
seen and transfigured reality with the touch of a
true nature poet. To conclude with the official
aspects of the exhibition, it is not without satisfac-
tion that, in addition to Mr. Davies, one notes that
Honorable Mentions have been voted Leopold G.
Seyffert for his characteristic and richly colored
sketch of an old woman in Dutch costume en-
titled Tired Out, and George Bellows for his The
Circus, recently seen at the Armory.
In spite of certain isolated instances, there is no
denying the fact that the foreign work is in general
more refreshing than that which has been con-
tributed by our native-born artists. We have no
portrait painter to compare with Orpen, though
the racy Irishman is on this occasion less addicted

to whimsey than usual. De-
votees of snow we surely do
not lack, yet not one of them
seems to possess the crisp,
perceptive grasp of winter’s
subtle vesture which may
be found in the small can-
vas from the brush of the
German, Max Clarenbach.
It is obvious that he has
caught something of Raf-
faelli’s sprightliness of view-
point and vivacity of treat-
ment, and still there is more
veracious individuality to
this little impromptu scene
than to most of the decept-
ively impressive output of
Redfield, Schofield, Symons,
and Rosen. Clarenbach
studies and interprets na¬
ture; these men as a rule are content to pitch
their pictures in a single key and substitute effect-
ive brush work for first-hand observation.
There are, in continuation, too many artists in
our midst who paint according to a preconceived
formula, who fit nature into the same mold and
steep her in the same violet or purple ambience.
It is one thing to evolve a congenial and charac-
teristic style; it is quite another to concoct a stock
picture year after year and seek to give it cur-
rency as a new production, and from this imputa-
tion few of our men are absolutely free. Even
such a personal and exclusive temperament as
Le Sidaner shifts scene and setting with commend-
able frequency, a fact which makes it all the more
disappointing when one happens to discover a
comparative newcomer like Garber using substan-
tially the same motive over and over again.
Directly a certain effect has been achieved to one’s
satisfaction, it is time to look farther afield, for it
is almost as sterile and stultifying to copy one’s
self as to imitate another. Among our contempo-
rary talents, Weir alone has steadily refused to
become stereotyped. Ever young and buoyant at
heart, he resolutely avoids duplication. His
brothers of brush and palette, especially certain
of those within the sacred precincts of “The Ten,”
may well envy him an esthetic flexibility which
enables him to turn so readily from the figure to
landscape, or from portraiture to the purple and
gold mystery of night, as seen in his glimpse of The
Plaza. Less a picture than an experiment, this
canvas is all the more creditable to one whose life

LXXIV