DOI Heft:
No. 270 (September 1915)
DOI Artikel:Cournos, John: Three painters of the New York School
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21213#0259
Three Painters of the New York School
Three painters of the
NEW YORK SCHOOL. BY
JOHN COURNOS.
Character, rather than “ charm ” and “ pretti-
ness,” as the chief condition of art, gave rise to the
so called “ New York School ” of painting, more
than a decade ago. Not that this was a new thing
in American art. Winslow Homer had already
been painting for many years his rugged canvases
of fishermen and the sea, and these have been
acknowledged to be more purely native in spirit than
anything that had been done up to his time. The
comparatively early appreciation of Millet, and his
introduction to America by such worthy pioneers as
Inness, Hunt and La Farge had also no little effect
in turning certain minds towards characterisation.
Moreover, the principles formulated by Millet,
which are in spirit the principles of the New York
group, took on an American flavour, a process
encouraged no little by the
democratic, anti-feudal doc-
trines of Walt Whitman.
The real importance of
the group was that painters
who delineated character
and chose their subjects at
home ceased to be isolated
phenomena; they strove to
impart a national signifi-
cance to their productions.
The movement, in one
sense, was a revolt against
academic art, which had as
strong a following in
America as elsewhere.
While its principles were
sufficiently elastic to admit
into its kingdom men of
individual imagination like
Arthur B. Davies with his
genius for strange abstract
beauty, and A. P. Ryder
with his powers of “lyrical
macabre,” its objections
have been directed in the
main against that host of
painters whose slavish
imitations of classical and
traditional art are an
anachronism in a new
country like America. So
much for the causes that
gave rise to the New York
School. This article will treat briefly of three of its
representative members.
Mr. Robert Henri is the intellectual and the
spokesman of the group, and therefore in a sense
its leader, though by no means the most expressive
of its principles. Having won recognition before
the others, he has used his position to champion
his fellows, and aside from this he has established a
school in which he has inspired some of the younger
energies with the same spirit.
Mr. Henri regards emotion as the starting-point
of art. Then there is the intellect to organise this
emotion. But the mind, he says, should always be
the tool and servant of the heart, never its master.
To Mr. Henri art is organisation. It is the organ-
isation of emotion, the organisation of ideas, the
organisation of the palette. And organisation
produces what Mr. Henri chooses to call the
integrity of a work of art. His preference for the
word “ integrity ” to the more universally used
“THE BLIND SINGER” by ROBERT HENRI
239
Three painters of the
NEW YORK SCHOOL. BY
JOHN COURNOS.
Character, rather than “ charm ” and “ pretti-
ness,” as the chief condition of art, gave rise to the
so called “ New York School ” of painting, more
than a decade ago. Not that this was a new thing
in American art. Winslow Homer had already
been painting for many years his rugged canvases
of fishermen and the sea, and these have been
acknowledged to be more purely native in spirit than
anything that had been done up to his time. The
comparatively early appreciation of Millet, and his
introduction to America by such worthy pioneers as
Inness, Hunt and La Farge had also no little effect
in turning certain minds towards characterisation.
Moreover, the principles formulated by Millet,
which are in spirit the principles of the New York
group, took on an American flavour, a process
encouraged no little by the
democratic, anti-feudal doc-
trines of Walt Whitman.
The real importance of
the group was that painters
who delineated character
and chose their subjects at
home ceased to be isolated
phenomena; they strove to
impart a national signifi-
cance to their productions.
The movement, in one
sense, was a revolt against
academic art, which had as
strong a following in
America as elsewhere.
While its principles were
sufficiently elastic to admit
into its kingdom men of
individual imagination like
Arthur B. Davies with his
genius for strange abstract
beauty, and A. P. Ryder
with his powers of “lyrical
macabre,” its objections
have been directed in the
main against that host of
painters whose slavish
imitations of classical and
traditional art are an
anachronism in a new
country like America. So
much for the causes that
gave rise to the New York
School. This article will treat briefly of three of its
representative members.
Mr. Robert Henri is the intellectual and the
spokesman of the group, and therefore in a sense
its leader, though by no means the most expressive
of its principles. Having won recognition before
the others, he has used his position to champion
his fellows, and aside from this he has established a
school in which he has inspired some of the younger
energies with the same spirit.
Mr. Henri regards emotion as the starting-point
of art. Then there is the intellect to organise this
emotion. But the mind, he says, should always be
the tool and servant of the heart, never its master.
To Mr. Henri art is organisation. It is the organ-
isation of emotion, the organisation of ideas, the
organisation of the palette. And organisation
produces what Mr. Henri chooses to call the
integrity of a work of art. His preference for the
word “ integrity ” to the more universally used
“THE BLIND SINGER” by ROBERT HENRI
239