DOI Heft:
Nr. 190 (January 1909)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: An American painter in Paris: George Elmer Browne
DOI Artikel:Designs for a country cottage
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20965#0315
Designs for Country Cottages
“WINTER AT ST. DENIS” BY GEORGE ELMER BROWNE
was conditional to its production. So that, for
instance, sea painted from the American coast
would seem like American sea, not because it was
different from the sea round England, but because
of the inexplicable influence of associations over
the mental attitude ; and the same, of course,
would apply to inland scenes. And, moreover, it
seems to me that only Americans, or one who had
a curious mental affinity with them, could paint
American landscape with this peculiar suggestive
power.
Those who affirm that art is national have
this in their favour, that the best paintings of the
Low countries have been done by the Dutch,
the best paintings of the English countryside by
Englishmen ; the best of Scotch scenery by Scot-
tish artists, and so forth. Against this, one is
sometimes prompted to ask oneself whether the
imaginative Anglo - Saxons who have gone to
Venice have not sometimes realised all that the
Queen of the Adriatic stands for in our imagi-
nations better than the Venetians, in regard to
landscape ; and yet I think they must defer to
the art of Canaletto. T. M. W.
D
ESIGNS FOR
COTTAGE.
A COUNTRY
The drawings submitted in a recent
competition under the above heading are, on the
whole, of a fairly high standard, though a protest
must be entered against certain ill-digested
examples of uneducated amateurism, to which it
were perhaps kinder not to refer by name.
It is curious how many competitors have appa-
rently disregarded the aspect of their house, or, at
all events, do not indicate clearly, by marking the
points of the compass on their plans, that they
have considered it. The successful scheming out
of a house and the disposition of its rooms of
course turn upon the consideration of this point.
As regards the elevational treatment, a majority
of the drawings sent in tend to confirm the
probable dictum of some future historian, that the
twentieth century found the country house of brick,
and left it—not the marble of the Roman Emperor,
but—rough-cast. There are some exteriors, how-
ever, which show' a rather welcome departure from
this apparently inevitable material. Cymro, for
292
“WINTER AT ST. DENIS” BY GEORGE ELMER BROWNE
was conditional to its production. So that, for
instance, sea painted from the American coast
would seem like American sea, not because it was
different from the sea round England, but because
of the inexplicable influence of associations over
the mental attitude ; and the same, of course,
would apply to inland scenes. And, moreover, it
seems to me that only Americans, or one who had
a curious mental affinity with them, could paint
American landscape with this peculiar suggestive
power.
Those who affirm that art is national have
this in their favour, that the best paintings of the
Low countries have been done by the Dutch,
the best paintings of the English countryside by
Englishmen ; the best of Scotch scenery by Scot-
tish artists, and so forth. Against this, one is
sometimes prompted to ask oneself whether the
imaginative Anglo - Saxons who have gone to
Venice have not sometimes realised all that the
Queen of the Adriatic stands for in our imagi-
nations better than the Venetians, in regard to
landscape ; and yet I think they must defer to
the art of Canaletto. T. M. W.
D
ESIGNS FOR
COTTAGE.
A COUNTRY
The drawings submitted in a recent
competition under the above heading are, on the
whole, of a fairly high standard, though a protest
must be entered against certain ill-digested
examples of uneducated amateurism, to which it
were perhaps kinder not to refer by name.
It is curious how many competitors have appa-
rently disregarded the aspect of their house, or, at
all events, do not indicate clearly, by marking the
points of the compass on their plans, that they
have considered it. The successful scheming out
of a house and the disposition of its rooms of
course turn upon the consideration of this point.
As regards the elevational treatment, a majority
of the drawings sent in tend to confirm the
probable dictum of some future historian, that the
twentieth century found the country house of brick,
and left it—not the marble of the Roman Emperor,
but—rough-cast. There are some exteriors, how-
ever, which show' a rather welcome departure from
this apparently inevitable material. Cymro, for
292