Studio: international art (79.1920)

STUDIO-TALK

“THE GATE OF THE HIGH-
LANDS.” BY GIFFORD BEAL

(Pennsylvania Academy)

PHILADELPHIA.—Comparisons are
sometimes invidious, but one is
obliged to observe that the One Hundred
and Fifteenth Annual Exhibition, held in
the galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts during February and
March, did not seem to be quite up to the
standard of last year’s show. There were
many good pictures, it is true, in the col-
lection of three hundred and sixty oil paint-
ings, and many attractive small bronzes and
portrait busts among the one hundred and
fifty-eight pieces of sculpture on view,
but there was also quite a number of
works of only mediocre merit, surprising
to find in a show that has hitherto kept
up the level of achievement in American
contemporary art. The hanging was par-
ticularly bad. To find, for instance, the
late J. Alden Weir’s delicate and refined
double portrait. The Sisters, hung in the
place of honour in Gallery F., flanked on
one side by Mr. Gifford Beal’s strong
green landscape, The Gate of the High-
lands, and on the other by Mr. Jonas Lie’s
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sunlit harbour scene Beyond, gave a
decidedly incongruous air to the group.

A notable exhibit was Mr. Leopold
Seyffert’s portrait of Colonel Richard H.
Harte, C.M.G., as also his bold and
vigorous painting of The Hunter. The
same gallery contained Mr. Eugene
Speicher’s Portrait of a Russian Woman,
awarded the Carol H. Beck Gold Medal;
The Red Kimono, by Mr. Joseph De Gamp,
awarded the Walter Lippincott Prize ; and
Mr. Hugh H. Breckenridge’s Edge of the
Woods, awarded the Jennie Sesnan Medal.
Mr. Ernest Laws received the Temple
Gold Medal for his landscape Ice Bound
Falls, Miss Mildred B. Miller the Mary
Smith Prize for In the Window, and Miss
Malvina Hoffmann the Widener Gold
Medal for her bronze group, The Offering.

There were well executed portraits of
Benjamin Rush, Esq., by Mr. Edward C.
Tarbell; of Wm. P. Gest, Esq., by Mr.
Wm. M. Paxton; of Dr Morris Jastrow, Jr.,
Professor of Semitics in the University of
Pennsylvania, by Mr. Wayman Adams ; of