Studio: international art (13.1898)

Some American Artists in Paris

This can be selected of a very soft and interest-
ing <riven tint, and would harmonise effectively
enough with the grey green Tilberthwaite slates,
used also for the battered wall face on the north
elevation, for the towers and for the roof in
general. The terrace parapets might well be
of the greyish or more ordinary coloured stone
of the district.

"I am sending you an illustration of the
sundial which I propose shall be placed in the
centre of the upper terrace. The gnomon con-
sists of a figure of Time, wrhose scythe casts the
shadow that tells the hour, and the inscription
could be Austin Dobson's lines :

' Time goes, you say? Ah, no !
'Tis Time that stays ; we go.' "

C. Harrison Townsend.

OME AMERICAN ARTISTS
IN PARIS. BY FRANCES
KEYZER.

America is largely represented in the

Paris art world, but in three distinct classes.
Every steamer brings the American art student
to Paris and every steamer takes a number of
the genus home again. The majority come here
with the idea that it is only in the ville himicre
that they can study, that the atmosphere of the
French capital is necessary to the development
of the spark they feel within them. And what
happens ? This class of American arrives, installs
himself in the Latin Quarter, joins Julian's or
some such academy, has his or her work corrected
now and again by Bouguereau, Lefebvre, and
tutti quanti, dines at the same restaurant as his
compatriots, talks their language and lives in the
same atmosphere as he would in his native town.
If he visits an exhibition, he judges with the
academical eye of his professors, but as for art in
the broad sense of the word, he is no nearer to it
here than he was before he crossed the Atlantic.
But he is not aware of his deficiencies, nor does
he know that another world exists in this city of
Paris beyond the narrow circle of his acquaint-
ances. He lives in the most artistic centre of the
world and is not of it; has, perhaps, never heard
of 1 )egas, of Carriere, of Rodin. Incredible as it
may seem, I have met a man of this stamp who
went to his academy of painting in the early morn-
ing, and returned to dinner at seven, and had
never even seen the inside of the Louvre. He
stayed here two years, and boasted that he never
" lost " an hour.
246

STATUE OF COLUMBUS BY P. W. BARTLETT

In the course of two or three years the average
art student considers his education complete, and
returns to his native shore, to sell to his fond
relations and friends whatever he has produced,
satisfied to write B.T.P. after his name, and make a
fortune portrait painting when his studies from the
nude are exhausted. Or, he may be taken up by
some architect syndicate—if the plastic art has
been his bent—and perpetrate scores of ugly
monuments for an artless public.

Then we have a large section of American
painters domiciled in Paris, living in princely
mansions—men of undoubted skill, virtuosi of
the brush. But like all men of this order, no
matter the branch of the fine arts in which they
had chosen to become exponents, had it been in
music, in poetry, painting, or sculpture, they would
never have developed more than talent, in the