International studio (81.1925)

inceRnAoonAL

time of the annual exhibition at Doll and Richards, nese potteries, and various objects of art abound

Today his yearly shows present the extraor- here, it is the Macknight display in all its glory

dinary spectacle of a band of eager buyers lined that commands the attention. These watercolors

up at the foot of the winding stairs leading to the have been carefully chosen over a long course of

main gallery, waiting with as much patience as it years, and show the painter at his very best; for,

may possess until the stroke of ten from the like many another artist, Macknight does not

neighboring steeple gives the signal for the drop- always strike ten by any means, although he

ping of the cord, whereupon ensues a scene of invariably turns out a well-considered, vibrant

frenzied buying that has no equal in the annals watercolor.

of art, that makes the devoted and intensive The Edward J. Holmes collection, while much

patronage of the Medicis and Hapsburgs pale smaller, is another example of early and careful

before it. It takes on something of the thrill and buying, and here are some of his finest canyon

intensity of a Yale Tap Day or the breathless pictures. This started back in the days when

sport of other days called musical chairs. Anyhow Macknight's work was pretty much anethema in

these opening Macknight mornings on Newbury the camp of the conventionally minded, and the

Street are very serious affairs, and Mr. Fitzgerald first water color purchased was kept discretely

vouches for last year's figures which show eleven upstairs out of sight for some time as a thing

paintings snatched up in the first five minutes and decidedly worth having but still a bit outre per-

sixteen by the time the clock had got to ten forty- haps for the Back Bay. It proved to be a seed

five! It is much to Boston's credit that no Sena- well sown, however, and today the score or more

torial clinches have yet been recorded at any of Macknights in the Holmes collection are proudly

these Monday meetings, although it is easy to ranged in the drawing room as the piece de resist-

imagine some bitter moments when some favorite ance.

picture is being bagged. This is the story of Dodge Macknight briefly

To really know Macknight's work in its en- told. He goes his pictorial way, little concerned

tirety, one must go to Brooklinc to the Fitzgerald with the outside world, producing each year a new

collection. Flere are more than three hundred set of watercolors for his eager Boston public,

examples of his watercoloring, beginning with Mr. admirably surviving ah contaminating influences

Fitzgerald's first purchase of 1888 and ranging of having become a cult. The Copley Society sent

through all the various periods up to the present him to Pans m company with Sargent and Homer

time. This huge collection rambles all through to show the French how far the gentle art of water

the Fitzgerald home on Washington Street, up coloring had gone in the new world, and two years

stairs and down, but principally in the large gal- ago, just thirty-five years after his first exhibition

Iery which extends from the main house. While in the Hub, he held his first one-man show in New

splendid Monets, Sisleys, Renoirs, Sargents, Chi- York at the Rehn Galleries.

"CRATER LAKE" Courlcsy oj Frank K. M. Rehn BY DODGE MACKNIGHT

Jour hundred ten

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