International studio (60.1916/1917)

Provincetown in Art

tain early Japanese and Chinese drawings are
remarkably like, allowing for the different tool
employed; whilst the dowdy rose-garlands of the
Greek and Roman decadence and those of Europe
of the Victorian decadence are identical.
It follows that we may quite fairly conclude the
character of the art of a period which acts and
reacts on the popular medium of expression, to
be the result of the state of mind then prevalent.
It is therefore of very little use trying to revive
any medium unless the popular temper of the day
is able to appreciate that of the time of its inven-
tion. This is the case partly with tempera now.
The medium, though known to the Egyptians,
was only brought to its highest point of achieve-
ment at the time of Angelico in Italy. The Italian
Renaissance was a time of turmoil only less marked
than that of our own, consequently opinions suc-
ceeded each other at such a rate that no medium
had time to develop along its own lines undis-
turbed. The acceptance of perspective and of
cast shadows due to the intellectual curiosity of
the time more than to any artistic progress, was
hasty, and the results were ill-digested. They
quickly spoiled the beauty of colour that, coming
from the East, Giotto and the Siennese had be-
gun to explore, until by the time of Botticelli
Italian colour was already wilted and rapidly
blackening in exact ratio to the decrease of spiri-
tuality in the popular ideal.
The icy mannerism of the debased Byzantine
school which gave way before the audacities of
Giotto and his confreres, is not superficially simi-
lar to the loose Academism of to-day; but fun-
damentally it was equally void of thought,
equally lacking in aim or message for the time.
It is unlikely that any Giotto will be necessary
to the inception of our own renaissance; it being
in all probability dependent on a widespread and
democratic awakening to the need of beauty in
every-day life; but although its appearing may
be quite impersonal, it will surely demand a vivid
medium of expression, and there are pointers in-
dicating that in tempera it may find at any rate
one of its congenial methods. As regards domes-
tic furniture the time of small pictures is, no doubt,
coming once more. No one any longer builds
ancestral halls, at any rate no one that is likely
to have any influence on painting, and there is
no medium that is at once so charming as a decor-
ation and at the same time so intimately naive in
its characterization as is tempera.


DRY-POINT ETCHING

BY GEORGE SENSENEY

ROVINCETOWN IN ART
BY W. H. de B. NELSON
Provincetown is rapidly becoming a
painters’ paradise to such an alarming
extent that unless some freshly discovered terrain


swallows up some of the great army of canvas car-

riers, self-respecting artists will be forced to give
the little town a wide berth. When C. W. Haw-

thorne’s class march to a subject traffic is para-
lyzed. This at the East end. At the West under
the wing of George Elmer Browne, a steadily in-
creasing class threatens to create similar condi-
tions. The menace is further provoked at strate-
gic points in between by the schools of George
Senseney and Ambrose Webster. There are also
other schools, as well as crowds of independents
and a host of elderly ladies who have apparently
deserted the knitting needle for the palette. Be-
sides all these, numerous seasoned artists, who,
under ordinary circumstances would be in Europe,
are here in evidence, though most of them imbibe
salt air and artistic impressions, keeping their
paint boxes packed away in their trunks.
It used to be Gloucester and Lyme for the

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PUBLIC UBRAfii