International studio (54.1914/1915)

FEBRUARY, 1915

Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company

VOL. LIV. No. 216

STUDIO

CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS
OF MODERN ART
BY W. H. de B. NELSON
i. The Corcoran Gallery, Washington

jects brightened the atrium and, possibly, were
party to our friend being “dazzled by the painty
effulgence.”
Of three Sargents only one is important, that
belonging to Mr. George Eastman, representing

It needed no lengthy survey of the
numerous galleries debouching into
the well-planned atrium to be con-
vinced of at least two factors which
count for so much to-day in the success
or non-success of an exhibition of paint-
ings—superb hanging and a general
advance in the modern spirit. The pic-
tures as a whole formed an alluring
array of bright subjects impression-
istically handled. A local writer ex-
pressed himself, with an abandon which
honoured him more than his actual
phraseology, as “dazzled by the painty
effulgence.” He probably wished to
convey the idea that the old-time bitu-
minous canvas was unplaced, that mere
transcripts from nature and wooden
portraits had given way to character
and design brightly and spontane-
ously rendered—in a word, that “live”
pictures only had the claim of admit-
tance.
Certain it is that the jury showed a
complacent generosity to many painters
who must be regarded as outside the
pale of ordinary academic recognition.
A liberal spirit in this direction is the
best if not the only harbinger of real
progress, and makes it possible for a
discerning public to develop a finer
catholicity of taste in art, and not to be
shocked or surprised by such painters
as, for instance, E. Ambrose Webster,
whose fine quartette of landscape sub-

At the Winter Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, 1914-1915
FAUNESQUE BY DOUGLAS VOLK


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