DOI Heft:
No. 218 (May, 1911)
DOI Artikel:Taylor, Ernest Archibald: The American colony of artists in Paris, [1]
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20972#0285
American Artists in Paris
THE AMERICAN COLONY OF
ARTISTS IN PARIS. BY E. A.
TAYLOR. (FIRST ARTICLE.)
The name of Paris to the struggling art student
over the seas—what a world of romance it conjures
up ! There he can hope and be free to realise his
mocked-at dreams, though I have been told " It is
death to the art student." For the weak-willed
but questionable art student, yes. And after all
is it not better that it should be so, and to let
him find it quickly, rather than suffer him to fail
and fill our exhibitions with mediocre productions ?
—his student days will at least be interesting. Ah,
no ! Paris is generous and I do not think there is
any other city in the world so open-handed or that
for so little gives so much freedon of study. One
cannot deny finding it the cranium of the universe
and in it colonies of the brain-workers of all
nations, but among them the English language
certainly predominates and is shared with an
average population of some five thousand Americans,
the greater majority of whom are either artists or
art students—in name at all events.
Their vast mingling may be the reason for the
assertion often put forward that America has no
national art; yet after all is there such a thing as a
national art—at least in painting ? Each nation has
certain characteristics peculiar to itself and which are
easily recognised, but those that one would associate
with the American artist are perhaps less apparent
than any other. It is still a new world made up of
many heterogeneous elements, and as much will
count from their generations of blood as from their
early associations, although those of the commercial
spirit predominate and smother for the time the
Celtic strain that lies dormant, and may be the little
cry that discovers its echo in Paris. The real few
who have heard the song are never lured back to
their homeland unless it be to conquer the Golden
God and make it possible for their poorer kin to
find the longed-for within their reach.
The lacking quality that one feels in the artistic
education of Paris—and regrettably, not Paris only
—is composition. The model is worshipped to the
exclusion of greater selection and self-expression.
That composition cannot be taught may be true;
still it can be helped and the average student made
' LE MARCHAND DE JOUETS " (Musi'e dzi Petit Paiais, Paris) BY RICHARD MILLER
263
THE AMERICAN COLONY OF
ARTISTS IN PARIS. BY E. A.
TAYLOR. (FIRST ARTICLE.)
The name of Paris to the struggling art student
over the seas—what a world of romance it conjures
up ! There he can hope and be free to realise his
mocked-at dreams, though I have been told " It is
death to the art student." For the weak-willed
but questionable art student, yes. And after all
is it not better that it should be so, and to let
him find it quickly, rather than suffer him to fail
and fill our exhibitions with mediocre productions ?
—his student days will at least be interesting. Ah,
no ! Paris is generous and I do not think there is
any other city in the world so open-handed or that
for so little gives so much freedon of study. One
cannot deny finding it the cranium of the universe
and in it colonies of the brain-workers of all
nations, but among them the English language
certainly predominates and is shared with an
average population of some five thousand Americans,
the greater majority of whom are either artists or
art students—in name at all events.
Their vast mingling may be the reason for the
assertion often put forward that America has no
national art; yet after all is there such a thing as a
national art—at least in painting ? Each nation has
certain characteristics peculiar to itself and which are
easily recognised, but those that one would associate
with the American artist are perhaps less apparent
than any other. It is still a new world made up of
many heterogeneous elements, and as much will
count from their generations of blood as from their
early associations, although those of the commercial
spirit predominate and smother for the time the
Celtic strain that lies dormant, and may be the little
cry that discovers its echo in Paris. The real few
who have heard the song are never lured back to
their homeland unless it be to conquer the Golden
God and make it possible for their poorer kin to
find the longed-for within their reach.
The lacking quality that one feels in the artistic
education of Paris—and regrettably, not Paris only
—is composition. The model is worshipped to the
exclusion of greater selection and self-expression.
That composition cannot be taught may be true;
still it can be helped and the average student made
' LE MARCHAND DE JOUETS " (Musi'e dzi Petit Paiais, Paris) BY RICHARD MILLER
263