DOI Heft:
No. 214 (December 1914)
DOI Artikel:The Vonnohs
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43457#0131
The ITonnohs
DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL
BY ROBERT VONNOH
HE VONNOHS
There has grown up in our time so
great a misunderstanding of what does
or does not constitute the artist and the
legitimate artistic attitude that a conscientious
reviewer of this subject is almost discouraged to
the point of abandoning any attempt at discrimi-
nation. Definitions have become so lax, bound-
ary lines so indeterminable, perceptions so
blunted, that the very fundamental of that thing
we call art is forgotten, misinterpreted or ignored.
We are confronted by a muddle of discrepancies
which we find very difficult to reconcile with that
kind of delicate and disciplined receptivity of the
senses which the present writer (however much he
may be ridiculed for it) has always emphasized as
a dominant factor in the making and appreciation
of beautiful things. Curiously enough, we rather
demand a nicety of judgments in the matter of
decoration; we do not feel ourselves or our neigh-
bour incriminated by evidence of a certain tact in
the shaping of a waistcoat, a sensitive response to
elegance of line in a dinner jacket; nor is it to be
doubted that a pretty taste for gauging the quality
of your remarkable sherry, the octogenarian dig-
nity of your port,can be looked upon as other than
a quite invaluable qualification. But apply the
same identical scales for weighing the aesthetic,
for or against (a sort of inarticulate intuition,
nothing more,nothing less), to the poem,the sym-
phony, the canvas, and you have founded an
indestructible reputation for old-fogeyism and a
downright lack of intelligence.
It is for this reason, because, so to speak, of a
prejudice which this generation is cultivating, that
the writer is confronted by a disheartening diffi-
culty in calling attention to the work of Robert
Vonnoh and his wife, Bessie Potter Vonnoh. Mr.
Vonnoh’s work is of a kind that (if one may have
resource to the questionable facility of paradox)
is commendable in this present time for what it is
not rather than for what it is. An honest consid-
eration of it will not make the mistake of throwing
it into competition with that which is most char-
acteristic and most definite in our contemporary
XLVIII
DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL
BY ROBERT VONNOH
HE VONNOHS
There has grown up in our time so
great a misunderstanding of what does
or does not constitute the artist and the
legitimate artistic attitude that a conscientious
reviewer of this subject is almost discouraged to
the point of abandoning any attempt at discrimi-
nation. Definitions have become so lax, bound-
ary lines so indeterminable, perceptions so
blunted, that the very fundamental of that thing
we call art is forgotten, misinterpreted or ignored.
We are confronted by a muddle of discrepancies
which we find very difficult to reconcile with that
kind of delicate and disciplined receptivity of the
senses which the present writer (however much he
may be ridiculed for it) has always emphasized as
a dominant factor in the making and appreciation
of beautiful things. Curiously enough, we rather
demand a nicety of judgments in the matter of
decoration; we do not feel ourselves or our neigh-
bour incriminated by evidence of a certain tact in
the shaping of a waistcoat, a sensitive response to
elegance of line in a dinner jacket; nor is it to be
doubted that a pretty taste for gauging the quality
of your remarkable sherry, the octogenarian dig-
nity of your port,can be looked upon as other than
a quite invaluable qualification. But apply the
same identical scales for weighing the aesthetic,
for or against (a sort of inarticulate intuition,
nothing more,nothing less), to the poem,the sym-
phony, the canvas, and you have founded an
indestructible reputation for old-fogeyism and a
downright lack of intelligence.
It is for this reason, because, so to speak, of a
prejudice which this generation is cultivating, that
the writer is confronted by a disheartening diffi-
culty in calling attention to the work of Robert
Vonnoh and his wife, Bessie Potter Vonnoh. Mr.
Vonnoh’s work is of a kind that (if one may have
resource to the questionable facility of paradox)
is commendable in this present time for what it is
not rather than for what it is. An honest consid-
eration of it will not make the mistake of throwing
it into competition with that which is most char-
acteristic and most definite in our contemporary
XLVIII