International studio (51.1913/1914)

Wilmington Fine Arts Exhibition

for the two before the fountain are merely acting a
conventional part, and all the others are steeped
in the expressionless gentility of courtiers. That
this is purposely done by the artist who composed
the cartoon for this tapestry does not admit of
doubt. There stand the two lovers, wrapped in
the intensity of their dream, yet carrying them-
selves with the utmost propriety in the thick of
the retinue of the prince; but Fate, in the person
of the king, looks down on them, and in his low-
ering, baffled gaze we foresee the coming peril.
There are many stories of the Middle Ages
which fit this composition; to decide which, it is
best at first to choose the oldest and most widely
spread. There are no inwoven names to guide
us, so that we may fairly suppose the artist, could
not have guessed that a time might come when
the story of King Arthur, Guinevere and Launce-
lot would be no longer recognized. And yet he
might have thought to himself: There are also
King Mark, Tristan and Yseult—will anybody
ask which of these two love tales do I mean?
Many tapestries are mere patterns of green forest
trees and flowery meads. In this
case we have, indeed, an extraordi-
nary wealth of human figures dis-
tributed with the science of a master-
artist into groups which slowly de-
tach themselves. Without regard
to what these figures mean, they
are decorative in themselves. More
than that—whatever may have
been the colour-scheme of this tap-
estry when first woven, it is now
beautiful in its yellow, red and dark
portions, as few of the old pieces
which have survived. Singular in
it, also, is the ease and even the
elegance of many of the figures.
But what is most unusual of all is

succeeded so well in weaving into their lays that
the afterworld has dubbed it the Age of Chivalry,
glad to forget the seamy underside of the tapestry.

WILMINGTON FINE ARTS EX-
HIBITION
A salutary instance of esthetic

decentralization is offered by the
Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, under whose
auspices has just been held the second annual ex-
hibition by pupils of the late Howard Pyle. It
is the fashion for those who reside in the larger
eastern cities, such as New York, Philadelphia,
and Boston, to presume that little of consequence
takes place outside their own particular civic peri-
phery. This really provincial self-complacency
now and then, however, receives a shock, and the
Wilmington exhibition affords a case in point.
Around the sturdy personality and under the
sage and stimulating guidance of Mr. Pyle, there
gathered during the last few years of his lifetime
a group of young men who to-day produce about

the presence in a tapestry of this
period of something in a face that
expresses a passion, and expresses
it with a moderation and reserve
that one scarcely looks for in paint-
ing itself. The scene breathes the
solemn pomp, the naif caste feel-
ing, the ideals of deportment and
conduct which, existed in Europe
during the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries among the ruling
classes, ideals up to which they
lived with more or less fidelity,
ideals which the poets of the age

THE INVADERS

BY N. C. WYETH

First Prize for Illustration at the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, 1913


CLXI