International studio (80.1925)

inceRDAEionAL

Early AMERICAN PRIMITIVE8

rhat a nation to lead The itinerant Limner was a from native soil and flow-
a healthy art life must head hunter seeking patrons ered uninfluenced by for-

know itself artistically who wished their features eign dimf ■ PerhT there

is axiomatic, but America— i i i , i • i i r are to be iound in this com-

, r v- r„i i • f added to his stock tiqures .• t , r ,,

exhibiting little desire lor J & paratively unknown held no
self knowledge—has ever MRS. H. G. ]\[ E LS 0 iSf products as fine in some re-
turned to foreign influences spects as the market varie-
in her effort to grow. Artistically speaking, Amer- ties, but the flavor is inimitable, for they arc
icans habitually graft foreign strains on the home home grown.

tree, producing exotic fruit. We seem literally to During a street fair last summer in the little
have plunged ahead without taking time or trouble Connecticut village of Kent, in the southern foot-
to find out if there was ever born an American art hills of the Berkshires, there was held an exhibi-
with our own land for a setting, or if what truly tion of portraits in oils, and of water colors,
native art we may painted in Kent and

have had in our early |^^^mmmmmmmmgmmBMMmmiBWmmsmMMll™ 11........111 nearby towns in the

days was worthy. BlllS .. v . early part of the last

Should the latter not century and borrowed

be the truth then our by us from families

painters are justified still residing in the

in continuing to follow neighborhood. This

the tendency to study Sk' group, though not ex-

abroad, and come _JEflpJBBr ceedingly early, was

home working in the |lW Jk£ made up largely of

manner of some for- works which are unde-

eign master. Copley HE niably American prim-

and Stuart followed ■ ^^^^BJ itives. Kent, in the

the eighteenth-cen- I Bk raj days when the pictures

tury Englishmen. Rt were painted, was an

Later the Diisseldorf ML obscure corner of the

school, and then the state with no railroad

Munich, were the Bk,. to bring easy commu-

Meccas for aspiring i M f*\'^'J^^veffi$lt I »»'ljwP^' • iBff-i nication with the out-

young Americans of WSBU^^MB^SSS^S^BBS^^sS^ JEE side world, yet shelter-
artistic trend. Then ing a number of pros-
Paris drew them and -^mm perous families who
today that city is at- ■flHBL. _T3hhbBbIbHbH enthusiastically took
tracting ever increas- "rufus fuller, esq." property of miss mart hopson advantage of the ad-
ing numbers. In fact, vent of an itinerant
it appears that we have quite lacked those hardy artist or "limner," as such a man was called, and
minds which, inheriting something of the spirit of sat to him for their portraits. To further their
the colonists, might have built up an art upon the esthetic leanings such families also had their
primitive efforts toward portraiture and other young ladies take water-color lessons from a local
branches of painting practiced in our villages and teacher or sent them to boarding school at Pough-
towns after the wilderness had been conquered keepsie or some other large town where boarding
and there came into being those charming Colonial schools were available and where painting in
homes with bare walls to be covered and mantle- "water paints" was part of the schedule. Also,
pieces calling for a portrait or landscape to adorn it was not unusual for a gentleman to take up
them. painting as a pastime, adhering to much the same
Today the art world, hungry for something manner affected by whatever of local talent there
"different," might get a very real thrill out of might be. And it is undoubtedly true that in our
bringing to light for inspection and consideration own countryside there sprang up to no little
material pertaining to the initial florescence of height an art receiving virtually no direct inffu-
purely American painting, that art which sprang ence from the outside. Had Kent been granted

four fifty-four

march 1925