International studio (60.1916/1917)

American Painters Pre-eminent

When Inness’ Lowery Day sold in the Thomas
B. Clarke sale for $10,150, the event was hailed
as a pre-eminent, epoch-making event in the
records of American painting. To-day the
Autumn Woods brings $45,000. Actions speak
louder than words, and having received repeatedly
the tangible indorsement of dollars and cents,
and a quarter of a century’s posthumous fame,
Inness is now called a great painter. Personally,
I believe his significance has not yet been ulti-
mately estimated. If two pictures of an obvious
value are painted, the one in Paris, the other in
-—well, let us say Perth Amboy, it is probable
that our innate prejudice against Perth Amboy
may detract from the validity of our decision.
It is possible, Inness, at his top notch, is the
equal of any painter of a like nature that the
world has so far seen. In just how does a picture
like Autumn Woods or the glorious Midsummer
Foliage, owned until recently by Mr. William
Macbeth (a picture that is to my taste far finer
and more precious than even the Autumn Woods),
fall short of the greatest landscape painting of
all time? There are those who will aver that
these pictures can hold their own in any com-
pany. But supposing one had proclaimed that
opinion twenty-five years ago!
But all this is ancient history, you may say.
Pardon me, I do not admit as much; art is a
thing of no past, no future. The experience that
was Inness’ a quarter of a century back was
J. Francis Murphy’s up to very few years ago,
and is in our immediate present (to a less extent)
the experience of several others. Crying out
for art, how many people fail, nevertheless, to
recognize it even when they have it! Mr. Mur-
phy is a case in point. Only a few short five or
six years ago his pictures could have been bought
for a third of what they are consistently selling
for to-day. Even to-day the overwhelming
majority do not realize that they are the con-
temporaries of a painter who will rank some
day as possessing the most original landscape
vision that this country has produced, and
as one of the significant landscape painters
of all time. This estimate of Mr. Murphy (an
estimate that I had the honour of proclaiming
some years ago in The International Studio)
is very gradually becoming common knowl-
edge. Mr. Daingerfield’s article in the January
Scribner's is a straw showing which way the

wind is blowing. True, Mr. Daingerfield’s point
of view is too diffident and tentative a one. It
is still in the “if,” “but” and “maybe” stage.
It avoids the responsibility of prophecy, a pre-
carious business to which we committed our-
selves a half-dozen years ago when our opinions
were unindorsed by recent auction-room records.
Still it is a step in the right direction.
In jotting down these few remarks I am ad-
mittedly attempting little more than to act as a
kind of press-agent for that kind of American
painting that I believe to be most representative,
permanent and substantial. I regret that I am
prevented from going into the matter at greater
length. This is not an adroit evasion; I should
like nothing better than to attempt, to the best
of my ability, a sheerly critical estimate of the
intrinsic artistic significance of the American
painter. The space at my disposal allows me
only to emphasize the salient externalities of
affairs. Perhaps my point of view is a fatuous
and negligible thing; on the other hand there
may be people who share my optimism and en-
thusiasm. I trust my sensibilities are as open as
any one else’s to alien manifestation; but I think
there are a dozen efficient critics to tell us why
we should admire Zuloaga, whereas I do not find
any one of them telling us why we should admire
George Bellows. Read Mr. Brinton’s superb and
authoritative article on Zuloaga in the December
Vanity Fair, but do not neglect Mr. Bellows’
masterly picture in the Winter Academy. Or let
us take the work of Mr. Childe Hassam as ex-
hibited during the last month at the Montross
Gallery. One may argue not unreasonably that
Mr. Hassam is neither a unique nor an indis-
pensable note in our painting; surely one cannot
gainsay the superior and delightful craftsman-
ship of the man. Allow me also to call your
attention to the work of Mr. Henry Golden
Dearth, work of a singular and enigmatical
charm, work that for all its rare and rec-
ondite quality is yet, I believe, on the
verge of that kind of recognition that is
accorded what is best in our painting. And I,
for my part, believe we have not yet touched a
true and final estimate of the collective and in-
dividual worth of this kind of painting, a paint-
ing that adheres to the ideals of the past without
patterning itself upon its methods or stultifying
its own measure of originality.

CXXVII