Studio: international art (52.1911)

CALIFORNIA AS A SKETCHING
GROUND. BY MABEL URMY
SEARES. ILLUSTRATED BY
THE PAINTINGS OF BENJAMIN
CHAMBERS BROWN.

The world-wide name which California as
a country has acquired rests largely upon just
those characteristics which go to make up an
ideal place for artists. Introduced by Cortcz
to the romantic fourteenth century as a realisa-
tion of that fabled, earthly paradise, Las Sergas
de Esplandian, this strip of sunny land along
the blue Pacific has already been the scene of
three successive eras in the world of pageantry.

When Spanish dons and frailes set forth in
galleon and caravan to win with sword and
cross a country for their king and converts for
the church, they found this " New Spain " so
much like the old, that all they planted, whether
of garden flowers or architectural style, ideals

of horsemanship or hospitality, took deep root
in the soil, and underneath the modern life still
flourishes along the pleasant path they trod.
Up from the conquered Mexico they marched
with banners waving, and thus were old-world
costumes, sumptuous panoplies, and churchly
robes added to the art and literature of Cali-
fornia. In the wake of their brief occupation
they left the Camino Real, which stretching
up the coast from Lower California past San
Francisco Bay is strung with Missions, waiting
but the painter's brush to make them live again.
The flat and sunlit spaces of their ruined walls,
the simple lines of Roman architecture built
of plastered brick, the pear and olive trees and
trellised grape vines planted in their gardens
long ago, provide a setting worthy as a record
of the history the Padres made.

Then, as the pageant of the Spanish Con-
quest doubled on its course, and back along its
southern way the sad procession of the Padres

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