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PAINTERS, PICTURES AND
THE PEOPLE

PAINTERS, PICTURES
AND THE PEOPLE

BY

EUGEN NEUHAUS

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF DECORATIVE DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LECTURER ON THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF ART
MILLS COLLEGE, CALIFORNIA

AUTHOR OF

THE ART OF THE EXPOSITION

THE GALLERIES OF THE EXPOSITION

THE SAN DIEGO GARDEN FAIR

WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS

SAN FRANCISCO

PHILOPOLIS PRESS

MCMXVIII

Copyright 191 8 by Eugen Neuhaus

PRINTED BY PHILOPOLIS PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO

THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS BOOK HAVE
BEEN SELECTED FROM THE FIELD OF CON-
TEMPORARY AMERICAN PAINTING AND
THE AUTHOR IS INDEBTED TO THE ARTISTS
FOR THEIR KIND PERMISSION TO
REPRODUCE THEIR WORK HERE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ....

The Significance of Art

The Artist's versus the Public's Point of View

On Composition.

Balance in Pictures

Rhythm and How it is Attained .

Harmony and Unity

What Color Means to an Artist .

The Technical Development

Changes in the Aesthetic Ideal .

The Nude in Art .

On Art Patronage

Hopes for American Art.

PAGE

i
10
34
56
65
78
92
105
120

l35
159
176
194

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece — Art and Nature . . facing title

Arthur F. Mathews, San Francisco, California

FACING PAGE

Plate II — Five O'clock June 4

Robert Spencer, A. N. A., New Hope, Pennsylvania

Plate III — Juan Domingo and the Bread Jar \i

Victor Higgins, Chicago, Illinois

Plate IV — The Grove 16

William Wendt, A. N. A., Los Angeles, California

Plate V — The Red Parasol 32

George Bellows, N. A., New York City, New York

Plate VI — Youth and Sunshine 36

Edward Dufner, A. N. A., New York City, New York

Plate VII — The Drinker 44

Randall Davey, New York City, New York

Plate VIII — The Broken Oak 48

Francis McComas, Monterey, California

Plate IX — A Memento of Old Madrid ... 64

Hovsep Pushman, Chicago, Illinois

Plate X — Wind on the Hills 68

Wilson H. Irvine, Chicago, Illinois

Plate XI — Tanis 76

Daniel Garber, N. A., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Plate XII — The Haymakers 80

Gottardo Piazzoni, San Francisco, California

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Plate XIII — Lydia 84

Giovanni Battista Troccoli, Newton Center, Massachusetts
Plate XIV — California Landscape .... 92
Carl Oscar Borg, San Francisco, California

Plate XV — The Family 96

Ivan Olinsky, A. N. A., New York City, New York

Plate XVI — The Sagebrush Trail .... 100

Oscar E. Berninghaus, St. Louis, Missouri

Plate XVII — Portrait 108

Clarence Hinkle, Los Angeles, California

Plate XVIII — Afternoon 112

Arthur F. Mathews, San Francisco, California

Plate XIX — Despair 116

Perham W. Nahl, Berkeley, California

Plate XX — At Sunrise 124

Jonas Lie, A. N. A., New York City, New York

Plate XXI — Landscape 128

Maurice Braun, Los Angeles, California

Plate XXII — At the Hippodrome 132

Gifford Beal, N. A., New York City, New York

Plate XXIII — Monterey Bay 140

Bruce Nelson, Palo Alto, California

Plate XXIV — In the Valley 144

Joseph T. Pearson, Jr., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Plate XXV — The Storm 148

Herman Dudley Murphy, East Lexington, Massachusetts

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Plate XXVI — Portrait of Elmer S. Hader . . 156
E. Spencer Macky, San Francisco, California

Plate XXVII — The Palace of Fine Arts, San

Francisco, California 160

Colin Campbell Cooper, N. A., New York City, New York

Plate XXVIII— Morning 164

Norwood H. MacGilvary, New York City, New York

Plate XXIX — Carmel Coast 172

William Ritschel, N. A., New York City, New York

Plate XXX — What an Indian Thinks . . . 176
Maynard Dixon, San Francisco, California

Plate XXXI — Lower Manhattan 184

Leon Kroll, New York City, New York

Plate XXXII — Sobrante Vista 200

Eugen Neuhaus, Berkeley, California

FOREWORD

Th

HESE chapters are addressed to those students
of art who form the great majority ordinarily over-
looked by writers on the arts. Far too often,
unfortunately, so-called higher aesthetic criticism is
attempted when simpler ways of approach would
be much more useful. Many books on art are over
the heads of the masses, and all readers forgotten
save those chosen few for whose favorable opinion
the author is most eager.

All the topics in this book have been developed
originally in speaking to classes of undergraduates in
the University of California, as an introduction to a
course in the general history of modern art, and in
public lectures before audiences of many different
types. Dealing constantly in a practical way with
many people of little technical knowledge, I have
found that it is a mistake to take too much for granted
a knowledge of the fundamental principles of
aesthetic appreciation. This book, therefore, is an
attempt to lay foundations for a general apprecia-
tion of art that may be further developed according
to individual ideals.

INTRODUCTION

IT may be asserted without fear of contradic-
tion that no art activity enlists so many zealous
admirers as the profession of the producer of
pictures. Many times we hear at art exhibitions
the ingenuous exclamations of enthusiastic ap-
preciators who think they would give much if
only they might know how to paint a picture.
This wistful attitude of the public we seldom
find extended to the other arts — music, poetry,
architecture, sculpture. No other art seems so
universally rated as the essential food for aesthetic
satisfaction as painting. Although the ability
to produce works of art is denied the average
mortal, it is considered a solace and delight to be
able to talk about pictures, particularly in studio
or technical terms. To own an oil painting —
even if of dubious quality — is more impressive to
the multitude than the possession of a grand
piano. This all seems very encouraging, and one
might almost believe that to be an artist is to be
bedded on roses. Unfortunately, the public has
some very positive views as to what a picture

2 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

should be, and the artist puts forth some others
— often very contrary to those of the public.

This incontrovertible condition at once places
a twofold responsibility upon the artist, for,
while working primarily to be respected in his
profession, he must please a sometimes very
fickle public besides. Take some other artistic
profession — that of the architect, for instance —
for contrast; the architect may ignore the
public, usually, and produce entirely for the
satisfaction of his single client and the relatively
small number of his fellow architects. It is dif-
ferent with the painter. It is very perplexing, to
the artist and public alike, that their two judg-
ments differ so widely — to the artist, who can-
not understand what he calls the whims of the
public, and much more to the public, which
finds only very few painters to its liking, and
then not always those the profession would put
on a pedestal.

But what is this public, and is it worth being
taken into account by the artist? Of the small
number of those who have been students all their
lives I am not thinking, nor of that small coterie
of those equipped with the same artistic in-
stincts as the producing artist, although without

INTRODUCTION 3

a power to express their emotions in any me-
dium. We speak of the latter as the people with
marked artistic perception; we speak of them as
connoisseurs. They do not themselves produce,
but their instinctive judgment has made them
most valuable studio aids and advisers of the
artist. When they are blessed with this world's
goods, they are angel visitants for the profes-
sion, and an artist's Utopia would not be possi-
ble without them. These people with artistic
perception are essentially of the same kind as the
producing artist, the sole difference between the
two existing merely in artistic productiveness or
unproductiveness. However, they are so few
and far between that as a class they neither need
nor invite any attention — they are an exception.
But let us pay attention to that rather large,
heterogeneous mass of those who make up our
exhibition crowds and who are said to constitute
the backbone of our civilization. I have no delu-
sions about the number of those who wish to be
able to respond sympathetically to the individ-
ual appeal of the painter. Since they will always
be in the majority, it is doubly necessary that
everything possible should be done to help train
their instincts into the channels which lead to

4 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

real appreciation and fullest enjoyment. That
this is fundamentally a problem of education
becomes evident when one discovers that dis-
cerning appreciation is a question of desire plus
knowledge of certain principles evolved by long
usage and common understanding.

Of all the many perplexing problems of educa-
tion none seems, however, more discouraging
than that of bringing artist and public together
upon a common basis of mutual understanding.
To allow the product of the painter — his pic-
ture— to be the sole and only means of commu-
nication— to depend upon it alone to produce
enlightenment, without any other previous
preparation on the part of the public, neither is
nor has been, to all appearances, productive of
the best results. The chasm still remains, and
even becomes wider, as one experimenting age of
art after another presents new problems which
the public seems utterly unprepared to receive
with interest, or even with respect.

The fact that among the well-to-do an under-
standing of artistic efforts is more widely found
than among the masses is not so much due to a
keener innate instinct or artistic perception or
inherited tendencies as it is to more frequent

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FIVE O CLOCK JUNE

PLATE 11

From the Oil Painting by
Robert Spencer, A. N. A.

INTRODUCTION 5

opportunities for study, and experience based on
more intimate acquaintance with art.

The great masses of the people continue to
nurse the fond belief that all that is necessary to
settle the question of aesthetic responsibility is
merely to express a personal choice.

It is a curious fact that many people who have
contributed conspicuously toward a more gen-
eral appreciation of pictures are often from out-
side the painter's realm, with sometimes no other
qualification than a capacity for literary expres-
sion, and possibly a generous or exuberant imag-
ination which enables them to endow a picture
with boundless qualities which the artist in his
most extravagant dreams never conceived.

The artist as a rule is so discouraged over the
literary exploitation of the children of his muse
that he has become resigned to his fate and with
grim humor accepts what he cannot change. On
the whole he deserves sympathy in a predica-
ment which he himself has not brought about,
but which, on the other hand, he generally does
not attempt to change. He feels that after all
his work is misinterpreted by people who are on
the whole more interested in the literary mean-
ing of pictures than in those artistic qualities of

6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

paintings, dear to his heart, which have to do
with line, form, colour, and their disposition in
an orderly and organized fashion on the basis of
certain artistic principles.

The application of these principles, rather
than a knowledge of historical events, of the
physical appearance of a country, of the charac-
teristics of a person, or of exterior facts, must be
the real test of the artistic merit of a picture.
Without some proper understanding of technical
procedures and an understanding of some of the
many laws of design, it seems to me very hard
to make any progress in the acquisition of what
we may term an ability to judge and enjoy.

Art in its traditional aspects, as represented
in painting, is dependent for its success largely,
I take it, upon demonstrable conditions which
in a great measure may be understood by any
studious person, without the necessity of much
technical knowledge.

Human nature prefers to be guided by stand-
ards in almost everything else, but not in the
consideration of pictures. It is true that many
of the working rules of the studio are very sub-
tle, and scarcely recognizable, but they are
present, nevertheless, in any good picture. The

INTRODUCTION 7

stubborn attitude of most painters in refusing to
take the public into their confidence does not
help very much. The minute a picture is exhib-
ited and has become the common property of
the multitude, the artist, on the other hand, is
kindly invited to retire to the seclusion of his
studio and allow the public to make of his pic-
ture whatever it pleases. In a measure that is
fair enough, since a picture can only mean to a
person whatever it conveys on the basis of what
the individual beholder is able to get out of it
or able to put into it.

If our artists would devote their energies,
now too often spasmodically applied toward edu-
cating the public along technical lines and in the
principles of composition, color theory, and de-
sign, they would doubtlessly be able to sell more
good pictures and moreover promote their own
artistic freedom and economic independence.

The talking artist is greatly and unjustly de-
spised, but after all he is as necessary as any
person who through educational endeavors takes
the public into the inner mysteries of the hows
and wherefores of any profession.

It is safe to say that the great mass of artists
do their work instinctively. They dispose of

8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

line and form, of areas and colour, according to
intuition, and they are rarely able to explain
the reasons any further than to say that theirs
is the right way. The most obscure, after all, is
the purely technical side of the painter's art,
which is often treated with a secrecy bordering
on mysteriousness; but it is no more subtle than
the many aesthetic principles which have been
evolved from the experience of the past and
which in their accumulation are alike bewilder-
ing and baffling. Our American interest in art
has certainly become phenomenal, and we can
no longer complain of lack of opportunities for
study at home. But so long as the interest is
focused exclusively upon the subject matter
and little concern manifested as to abstract
artistic qualities, it will never result in anything
else but pseudo-expertship.

Before examining the working principles of
art, it might be well to inquire into the aims of
art, and its objects as related to the life of men.
Since art is not based merely on individual
efforts, but on broader things expressed by col-
lective efforts of many people, its significance as
a part of civilization becomes evident. To lay a
liberal foundation for an appreciation of the

INTRODUCTION 9

aesthetic manifestations of a people, one has
first to recognize the true function of art within
a civilization, and its intimate connection with
the world at large.

While the creating of what we call the beauti-
ful will always remain the privilege of a chosen
few, only the understanding and enjoyment of
art by the masses can bring about an ideal
democracy.

io PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART

1 HAT the meaning of art is an enigma to
many people is probably due in part to its
boundless variety of occurrence, and in part to a
prevailing ambiguity in the use of the term. To
furnish a concise explanation of the word, other
than a dictionary definition, would be very
difficult, and one is reminded in this predica-
ment of the well-known query — what is a spiral?
and of the usual movement of the hands in an-
swer. That is to say, we all know what is under-
stood by art, we can give many examples to
illustrate what we mean, but we falter in at-
tempting any direct statement of its meaning.
To the artist, the thing is much less a puzzle
than to the layman, because he knows that if
he has a good day, whatever he may do is ipso
facto art, by reason of his possession of a God-
given talent for producing the thing we call art.
For the convenience of the public, and for
philosophic purposes, art has been defined in
many ways, all in the last analysis expressing
the same idea. Art is essentially the expressing

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART u

of something in such a way as to give aesthetic
pleasure. It is the significant way of doing a
thing, anything that might be ennobled by an
improved and dignified form of representation.
Or, as in the case of satirical or humorous expres-
sion, the primary purpose may be merely char-
acterization, or the heightening of some phase
of self-realization, rather than the achieving of
what is ordinarily thought of as the beautiful.

We have learned to recognize art in very
many forms through which human nature grati-
fies its aesthetic senses. Thus the arts are di-
vided into the aesthetic or fine arts — the free
and independent arts which exist entirely for
their own sake, to produce beautiful things —
embracing painting, poetry, the drama, sculp-
ture, music, the dance; the dependent arts,
which minister primarily to some utilitarian
purpose, like architecture, landscape gardening,
decoration, ceramics, the goldsmith's art, and
others. The so-called fine arts seem to offer the
favorite means of aesthetic satisfaction as com-
pared with the dependent or utilitarian arts,
which, curiously enough, are frequently rated as
inferior in their aesthetic appeal.

I seriously question the truth of this common

12 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

contention, because I do not believe that the
abstract artistic element in poetry, painting, or
a piece of sculpture is to most people the moving
force in their so-called enjoyment, but rather
the pleasure of intellectual satisfaction in con-
templating the subject matter involved. To the
great majority of people the pure abstract
beauty, the beauty of form, line, balance, spac-
ing, color, composition, and what not, is un-
fortunately of little or no consequence. Their
approval of a picture is almost entirely based on
the acceptability of the subject matter, which,
if intelligible, and better yet, of a moralizing,
preaching tone, is the decisive factor in causing
them to pronounce it a work of art. On the
other hand, the utilitarian art object — an orien-
tal rug for instance — does not necessarily pos-
sess the quality of moving our intellect, but it
may bear infinitely more of real art meaning
than the story-telling picture. But we shall have
to devote ourselves to this very important sub-
ject separately, later on, and return for a time
to a general discussion of the subject of art.

Materially, then, painting, the less abstract
art, as contrasted with music and poetry, has
become recognized as momentous above all

JUAN DOMINGO AND THE BREAD JAR

PLATE 111

From the Oil Painting by
Victor Higgins

Owned by the

Cn \ OF t'HK AGO

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 13

other arts — at least in popular favor. One must
come to this conclusion when one hears of the
common classification of artist, sculptor, archi-
tect, and realizes what is meant by it. The Ger-
man language is more fortunate in having a col-
lective name indicating aesthetic responsibili-
ties— in the word "Kiinstler." The three repre-
sentative artists — painter, architect,..and sculp-
tor— are collectively "Kiinstler." An "artist"
in Germany is a vaudeville performer — one who
does stunts, turns somersaults, and juggles with
a variety of objects. In France we have the
"peintre artiste" as the supreme being of aes-
thetic ambitions, with the architect and sculptor
vying for a close second. I believe this sad con-
fusion of terms has no little to do with our com-
mon misunderstanding of the meaning of art.
Art in its real intent must mean an all-including
comprehensive unity of aesthetic expression
which cannot occur in isolation. It is the iso-
lated and over-specialized expressions of art
which in their very nature are artificial and
meaningless.

The greatest period of art we know of is that
of the Greeks. Their whole existence, their
various ways of thinking and of doing things,

14 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

their whole philosophy of life was guided by the
dictates of the laws of the beautiful. It was only
under such unified thought that they could pro-
duce the beautiful simultaneously in literature,
poetry, the drama, sculpture, and architecture.
Their every object of use was shaped and created
with the same thought of beautiful expression as
their more monumental artistic productions.
We have become so convinced of their super-
iority in expressing things in a beautiful way,
that nowadays the word classic has become the
highest praise we can bestow on any work of art.
It is fortunate that at so early a date in recorded
history we should have been furnished with ex-
pressions of art of many kinds fit to become
guiding examples for later civilization. We
possess today actual specimens of their art
which are the inspiration of all artists of the
present time and which bid fair not to be sur-
passed, nor even equalled, particularly in sculp-
ture and architecture. The Greeks have given
us the formula, the a, b, c, by which we could
attempt an expression of our own civilization in
artistic form. It is true enough that the formula
is often all that many so-called artists ever
recognize in Greek art, much to their own loss.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 15

Moreover, the Greeks gave us the fundamen-
tal principle of idealization — the means of ex-
pressing ordinary things in an ennobled way.
Their art was guided primarily by an under-
standing of the fitness of things. Their cos-
tumes, for instance, were practical and beautiful
alike, and conducive to a normal development of
their bodies. Their vases, urns, and vessels gen-
erally had proportions and shapes equally fit
for use and beauty. Their architecture, domes-
tic and monumental, never lost sight of the re-
quirements of simplicity and fitness, and became
aesthetically satisfactory by simplicity and
soundness of construction. Simplicity used to
stand for artistic quality — but how we have
changed nowadays! The over-ornate, is now
readily confused with the artistic.

All we seem to think necessary to an artistic
atmosphere nowadays is some thousands of pic-
tures. Though evanescent, marvelous was the
beauty of the architectural ensemble of our last
great exposition, in San Francisco. We could
not say enough about Jules Guerin's successful
chromatic treatment of the finely-textured tra-
vertine surfaces of the exhibition palaces, but
when it came to "real art," only pictures would

1 6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

do. Why everlastingly pictures, and why not
carpets, wall-papers, fountains, interior decora-
tion, and the thousand real things in need of
artistic formulation and expression? The great
artist of by-gone periods, whether architect or
sculptor, would smile at the topsy-turviness of
our modern world of art, which too often begins
at the top and works toward the bottom. Not
only is the public obsessed by this misguided
pursuit, nowadays, but very frequently artists
show condescension rather than pride in turning
their interest towards basic utilitarian art, after
having made a pathetic fizzle of so-called higher
aspirations. The artist nowadays is often a good
example of inverted methods of art, beginning
at the top and landing heavily at the bottom.

We may, whenever we tire of Greek examples,
turn our thought toward another great country
of artists — to Japan, where artistic attention to
utilitarian things is carried farther than any-
where else. The Japanese artist, while his archi-
tecture is not monumental, manifests a real
capacity for artistic expression in everything he
undertakes to enrich in form, with a persistent
regard for fitness and a wonderful individuality
in meeting the constructive necessities involved.

THE GROVE

PLATE IV

Kniiii the Oil Painting l>y
w ii 1 1 \m Wendt, a. n. a.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 17

Japanese sculpture seldom occurs detached, but
more often as an embellishment of the architec-
tural forms. And as for pictures, the Japanese
execute many important pictures on screens.
The so-called Japanese prints are produced semi-
mechanically to satisfy great numbers of people
at little cost. Japanese art, unfortunately, has
never impressed the great masses of the western
world, on account of its alleged plebeian scope —
its lack of exclusiveness. I venture to say that if
fuller understanding of the Japanese idea of art
could develop in our country, many of our aes-
thetic problems would solve themselves.

So far, art with us is in danger of becoming
the exclusive interest of the well-do-to by being
continually restricted to pictures which become
more and more the objects for speculative finan-
cial juggling in the hands of owners and certain
art dealers alike. The commercial exploitation
of art is really not of our own invention, and of
no significance so far as the artistic status of
this country is concerned. The fact that some-
body has the money to buy a Franz Hals for
half a million when somebody else is willing to
give four hundred and ninety-nine thousand
dollars is of no artistic significance. Only when

18 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

one thinks that the amount of money invested
that way, if it is an investment at all, would go
a long way toward supplying every museum in
the country with a comprehensive collection of
all good original pottery made in the year 191 8
in these United States, then the seriousness of
such waste becomes at once most apparent.
But who cares for pottery when pictures are
heralded as the paramount concern? That we
have a native instinct for the really beautiful is
evident enough in the many independent efforts
put forth with true creative self-reliance in the
field of the decorative arts.

Since the very early days of American art, it
has been paintings first, then sculpture and
architecture. The demand for purely sentimen-
tal reasons, for pictures of our distinguished
citizens called for the service of the portrait
painter, and many collections of so-called colon-
ial portraits shows that the prevailing lack of
appreciation of artistic quality in everything
else could not very well lead to anything better
than those wooden, stupid, front-parlor chromos.
There were exceptions, like Gilbert Stuart, and
possible a few lesser men. Gradually artistic
expression in utilitarian things, largely in archi-

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART

*9

tecture, brought about a more genuine native
artistic capacity, which in the meantime has be-
come applied to other artistic interests and
which at present promises far to outstrip the
progress of architecture in this country.

The use of the classic formula is the right
thing in the student atelier, but when it is per-
sisted in, and merely used as a lifeless rule, it
becomes distressing. The great architectural
performances at the Panama-Pacific Interna-
tional Exposition were all classic in formula,
but not always so in spirit. The difference be-
tween a mere receipt and an ability to build up
on a classic foundation new constructive forms
in architecture is ever recognized by the lay-
man. Bernard Maybeck's Fine Arts Palace and
Louis Mullgardt's Court of Abundance were im-
posing and uplifting to the multitude, although
very few could give any direct reasons for their
convictions. The great Court of the Universe, «
on the other hand, with all its immensity, was
like an arctic sea in its coldness.

Real art must be the expression of an original
experience, and not a repetition of an historical
style. In many ways the art of this country has
so far only just started to assert its native force,

20 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

only just dared to throw off the restraint under
which it has labored, unable to realize its own
impulses. The art of the Greek was based on a
noble civilization, a young and vigorous state.
When it was bodily transported to Italy, it did
not thrive as abundantly as at home, because it
was borrowed, and grafted on an alien root.
Secondly, the creative instinct was not present,
to carry on to higher individual Roman expres-
sion what had come from a people only slightly
related. It is true that the decorative element in
architecture and sculpture was much accen-
tuated during the Roman period, sacrificing,
however, that classic simplicity for ornateness,
and not always to the gain of the work.

We find in the Renaissance proof of the neces-
sity for individual creative genius in a people
for the production of true art. The artistic
a, b, c, so to speak, was very much the same
after it had once been laid down by the Greeks —
or possibly by the Egyptians. There is little
difference in the artistic formula of the Greek,
that of the old Romans, and that of the Renais-
sance. But the spirit, the enthusiasm, the tem-
perament of the great Greek masters is found
again in the leaders of the Renaissance. It was

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 21

not merely a physical revival of old forms, or a
direct transplanting of their artistic products,
as in the earlier days of Roman splendor. It was
something totally different. It was a desire to
realize an aesthetic ideal while dealing with
local conditions. The Renaissance artist could
not copy any palaces from Greek models to line
his canals. He could not absolutely shape his
sculpture after great patterns of the past. His
paintings were the first of their kind. But the
spirit which guided a Phidias must have lived
in Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. Is
there anywhere a more convincing example than
Leonardo of the all-comprising meaning of art,
when, in his letter to Ludovico Sforza, after
dwelling on his capacity as military engineer and
his ability to construct cannon and scaling-lad-
ders, and mortars and engines of beautiful and
useful shape, he concludes, "In time of peace I
believe I can equal anyone in architecture in
constructing public and private buildings and in
conducting water from one place to another. I
can execute sculpture, whether in marble, bronze
or terra cotta, and in painting I can do as much
as any other, be he who he may be. Further I
could engage to execute the bronze horse in

22 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

eternal memory of your father and the illus-
trious house of Sforza."

It was this ability to turn anything, like
magic, from something without meaning, with-
out form, into something beautiful, that charac-
terizes the true artist. It is the universality of
art which alone can transform a country from
pseudo-artistic into a civilization of true artistic
significance. The isolated artistic expressions
may exist by accident, but the feeling of artistic
unity will never spring from "the narrow chan-
nels of one-sided goodness." It has ever been so
when great things were done.

The Renaissance shines in the brilliance of its
many versatile men who were never too proud
to turn their hand to the beautification of utili-
tarian things. The foolish classification of fine
and — shall be say "unfine" artists, is the great
mistake of the age. Many so-called artists of the
Renaissance might be called artisans today, by
reason of the subject matter of their work, al-
. though their manner of work might be superior to
many modern so-called artists. One of the most
hopeful signs in our country is presented by the
constantly increasing employment of our so-
called artist sculptors in what they themselves

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 23

unfortunately often call commercial work. Pecu-
liarly it often is their best, because it is the kind
of work their instinct tells them is based on a
logical condition. Fortunately, also, our paint-
ers have come more and more into contact with
native necessities, particularly in the fields of
mural decoration and illustration.

Few people have any conception of the boon
that the desire for illustrated reading matter has
been to the painter-illustrator who has the gift,
unfortunately too rare, of creative instinct and
feeling for design. It is in this typical field of
art that we have so early developed a higher
quality recognized throughout the world as a
genuine American accomplishment. Such
names as Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, Jules
Guerin, are typical of our achievement in that
field. So many are content with the mere copy-
ing of nature that any arbitrary problem such
as illustrating throws them off their feet.

It is always a sign of improvement to have
artistic energies turned towards utilitarian prob-
lems. I remember very well the sensation of my
early student days in Berlin when Otto Eckman
arrived from Munich to take over his classes in
decorative painting, after having said a fond

24 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

farewell to picture-painting in Munich. His
announcement to the profession in those late
nineties created a sensation. Having become
utterly disgusted with painting innumerable —
but nevertheless excellent — pictures for pur-
poses always to be determined later on, he de-
cided to separate himself at once for good and
all from the last vestige of his easel painting,
and forthwith proceeded to design and paint
only directly useful things. His work as a
teacher of design, cut short as it was by an
early death, was surely more far-reaching than
his most interesting and successful pictures. The
whole movement in Europe erroneously labeled
"Art Nouveau" is based on a recognition of the
idea of the utilitarianism of art and the idea of
getting away from the classic formula and de-
veloping a classic spirit. It is this spirit that
must take hold of us before we can hope to have
a real American art.

The protest that William Morris voiced for
his time, should be doubly appreciated in our
own country — more so here than anywhere else.
His demand for an art which concerned itself
with the fundamental necessities was, I think,
well founded, and he started the snowball which

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 25

developed into the avalanche of modern art,
which bids fair to replace entirely the formalism
which has held the world since the Renaissance.
It is, of course, so tempting to go along in the
old way, so much more convenient, less strenu-
ous in every sense. To what silly conditions this
never-ending re-use of old artistic forms can go
is well illustrated in the case of the acanthus.
In an arid country like Greece, it was one of the
few indigenous naturalistic forms presenting
itself to the native architect-designer for deco-
rative purposes. And how they made use of it,
understanding fully its wonderful decorative and
organic constructive possibilities. The Romans
used it with even greater decorative force. On
its reappearance in the Renaissance — it is still
recognizable, though often merely copied as an
almost abstract ornament. Its use in northern
Europe became more and more imitative, and
eventually devoid of real character, until ulti-
mately one has the feeling, particularly during
the end of the last century, that many archi-
tects, sculptors, and decorative designers hardly
knew whether the acanthus was an animal or a
plant. They simply copied it in never-ending
monotony, having no chance of seeing it grow

26 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

since it is not indigenous to northern Europe.
And with the acanthus, other things became
similarly amorphous. Artistic expression must
be based on a personal emotion, experience, per-
sonal observation. No matter how clever the
physical form may be, it must possess the spirit
of the thing. Our period imitations all suffer
from the absence of real underlying experience.
No matter how well done, they are generally
devoid of that fitness of things which is essential
in art.

The Renaissance artist who rebelled, first
quietly, then openly, against a transplantation
of Gothic art into Italy, did so because, while he
may have been sensitive to its beauty, he must
have felt that such architecture, such steep
roofs, such fragile, lacy walls, were not well
adapted to southern European conditions. The
decorative forms of the Gothic were all foreign
to Italian eyes. The oak, the maple, were nor-
thern, and his sympathies were all with the
palm and the laurel and the olive. The classical
architecture persisted, however, even where
Gothic had gained its strongest foothold, and
still persists, particularly in this country, where
architecture as a national school has made little

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 27

advance. Who does not contemplate with mixed
feelings the innumerable St. Peter's domes
which have become the architectural pieces de
resistance in every state capitol and county seat
from the northeast to the southwest? This
sorry self-complacency in repetition is not by
any means from a lack of originality among our
leading architects. It is simply a strict adher-
ence to a recognized standard form. Although
some of these domes are very lofty, very noble,
none serve a practical purpose. There is never
anything housed inside them. They are purely
ornamental, and for that reason might have
been done just as well in some other form —
some new form sprung afresh from a new oppor-
tunity. Some, like the new San Francisco City
Hall, are beautiful in their fine-scaled, jewelry-
like ornamentation, and their successful per-
sonal note, the note which alone can save such
a building from commonplaceness. Their prac-
tical purpose is to serve as the physical emphasis
of the center of the city business. In some cities,
particularly abroad, this has been done with
much greater originality. I am afraid my hopes
of ever having an architect confer the honor
upon me of executing a mural painting will

28 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

dwindle away if T do not leave architecture
alone — a field I cheerfully abandoned in my early
days, on account of a very violent and healthy
antipathy for mechanical drawing. However,
architecture is, so to speak, the supreme factor
in artistic production. At least it ought to be
that, for one is constantly looking for relief in
that quarter rather than to the other arts. It is
true we have the skyscraper, as our original
architectural contribution — but what of its
artistic merit? The older type was seldom beau-
tiful in proportion. Some of the latter-day
towers, like the Woolworth Building, are inspir-
ing as masterpieces of rhythm. Collectively,
standing among them in lower New York, they
are very ineffective decoratively. They impress
one only after one hears of their cost and size.
Our engineers are doing a good deal better.
Many modern engineering feats of this country
are both artistic and original. The judicious use
of concrete and steel in dams, bridges, and
buildings, often entirely without any so-called
architectural embellishments, is astounding. A
bridge like the Lindenthal span over the East
river is a wonder of proportion, of rhythmic
space and line work, and it will bring us more

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 29

praise from competent art critics in Europe
than many thousands of our pictures. In
engineering we are really on the right track, in
a profession which was never before even
counted as an art, and which has existed only
as a necessary adjunct to architecture, losing its
identity under an architectural cover.

In our decorative arts we can hardly be ex-
pected to have done better than Europe up to
the beginning of the "art nouveau." Our jig-
saw-ornamented modern buildings are not a bit
more mid-victorian than similar monstrosities
of Europe up to the eighties. The triumph of
planing-mill machinery has had its day, and the
healthy growth of the new decorative art move-
ment abroad has already spread to us and taken
root here in America. We are beginning to recog-
nize art in the minor things. We are actually
holding exhibitions of the "useful arts," which
I believe is meant to denote the work of useful
artists in contradistinction to the "useless arts,"
by the useless artists. I admit the logic of this
classification, originated by the Chicago Insti-
tute of Art, which now holds annually an exhi-
bition of the useful decorative arts, followed by
the annual display of American fine arts, by

jo POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

which must be meant the work of the useless
artists. I admit I have been one of them, but
only by necessity, since I cannot get enough
people to buy my book plates and other useful
things, and I do occasionally sell an easel painting.
We are finding ourselves. Our native talent
is too genuine not to realize quickly our true
artistic necessities, and pictures may well be
the very last of them. This question of artistic
self-realization is just as important to a nation
as to the individual, and naturally can be ac-
complished only by the individual's beginning
— and very many are beginning, fortunately.
There is first of all the use of the native raw
materials of wood, stone, marble, the response
to the many new forms in nature available for
ornamental purposes. Then there is the develop-
ment of minor styles of constructive beauty, as,
for instance, the so-called Mission furniture.
Rightly, it is no decorative style at all. It re-
frains from using any period forms of European
origin. It is content to be plain and devoid of
any curlycues and dewjiggers and is just plain
American. It will always be in style, because it
was never out of style, possessing no decorative
ornamental feature of any kind. Its charm is

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART ji

entirely in its proportion and utility. But one
thing we can say for it, it did not come from
Paris or London. It is child of America by
reason of its rigid construction, simplicity, and
common sense, which an engineer might have
thought out.

The shrine of worship of things beautiful in
the average house undoubtedly will continue to
be the "front parlor," that mysterious museum
of miscellaneous monstrosities. I have a parlor
myself, but I call it a living-room, because I
spend all my time in it, and feel comfortable in
it besides. I have no "parlor" because I can
use all of the things in my living-room without
fear of destruction. Too often the parlor is the
sacred temple of art, of an art which is ludi-
crous, useless, and therefore pseudo. Why is
everything in the parlor so artistic just because
you generally can't use it? — Gold chairs you
can't sit on — vases you can't put flowers in be-
cause they tip over if you fill them with water —
chandeliers obscured by superfluous ornament
which will not give enough light but which are
crushing with their weight of hollow metal, and
many other things too numerous to mention.
We are often perfectly content to sacrifice the

32 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

front parlor to silly conventionality so long as
we are permitted to enjoy life in other parts of
the house. Besides, the pictures hang in the
parlor, and that is of some moment. I really
wanted to speak of these if it has not become
evident by this time that this book is merely a
disguised plea for something else but pictures.
I regret that I find myself spreading iconoclastic
ideas when I am producing pictures myself.
However, I am willing to suffer the conse-
quences of the betrayal of confidence of a de-
ceived reader.

Art, then, must exist, must express itself in
every conceivable part of our physical surround-
ings, before the easel picture has any claim upon
recognition. Sad and unprofessional as this may
seem, coming from one who has himself engaged
in the struggle for pictorial expression, it is
nevertheless true, and the development of our
own art will again show its logic. The funda-
mental requirement of all art is necessity. Art
is the expression of emotion or passion in many
mediums — not one alone — to appeal to our aes-
thetic senses. One cannot emphasize this too
much in the light of the modern predilection for
pictures, which almost amounts to passion, kept

THE RED PARASOL

PLATE V

From the Oil Painting by
George Hi i LOWS, N. A.
Owned by
1)K. W, C. WARD, New York.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 33

at fever heat by the fascination of the specula-
tive monetary value of paintings. The great
art of any day must offer clear insight into the
civilization upon which it is based. It must
become the truthful record by which future gen-
erations may judge the humaneness of their
forefathers. An art showing merely skill can
never be really alive — it will impress only as
a feat.

34 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

THE ARTIST'S VERSUS THE PUBLIC'S
POINT OF VIEW

WHAT is, after all, the criterion which guides
the painter in his endeavor to express himself in
his particular medium? Looking at large num-
bers of pictures, as any exhibition permits, one
feels that few painters themselves know what
they were about, but curiously enough the few
painters who, according to the profession, are
entirely in the wrong are frequently the pets of
the masses. The new lights in the profession are
seldom immediately recognized as such by the
public, and it is only after the trusted connois-
seur has spoken that the public, eager to be on
the safe side, dutifully adopts his opinion — and
the rest is easy. What the great mass of people
would do with an unexplained collection of pic-
tures can very easily be imagined — not least
from the results of the popular voting contests
often held throughout the country in art gal-
leries of miscellaneous character. The greatest
number of votes will go to some trivial picture,
while the real canvas, with a lasting message of

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW 35

beauty, is generally overlooked. This common
occurrence calls for immediate reference to a
contention which every one will ultimately
acknowledge as basic, namely, the artist's dis-
crimination between those paintings which agi-
tate only our temporary, our fleeting passions,
and those which engage our interest perma-
nently, by reason of their appeal to our more
constant emotions. The former, owing to their
nature, often enlist our attention more promptly
than the latter. It is a common experience
of many people on longer acquaintance with
large numbers of pictures, as at any long-term
Exposition, to change their affection from the
first to the second type and this is a most signifi-
cant and encouraging symptom. The artist has
relegated the lighter kind to the illustrator, who
cannot afford to interrupt the thread of the
story any longer than necessary to emphasize a
passing point. However, it does not follow that
illustration is not art, though in a certain sense
it is an inferior art owing to its restrictions. The
illustrative picture is generally the most suc-
cessful in capturing the attention of exhibition
visitors, but it will invariably be supplanted in
the affections of those capable of more serious

36 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

thoughts by the at first less appealing picture of
the latter type.

Beauty seems to be found by most people only
in the painting which most closely approximates
photographic truth. The popular fallacy that it
is difficult to attain this goal is stubbornly main-
tained. If that be right, then why not apply
this fixed belief to music and literature, for the
sake of consistency. If literal truthfulness is art,
then why does not a faithful repetition of the
sounds of the birds result in what we call music,
and why, on the other hand, does not a merely
painstakingly accurate account of some event in
itself most interesting, observed on the street
and reported by a newspaper man, count as
literature? It must be obvious, if consistency of
application of the same principle is helpful at
all in an attempt at analysis, that art as ex-
pressed in painting must consist of something
else.

Many paintings, and these are a goodly num-
ber, are scarcely art and merely imitation of a
fact, rendered correctly but without a fragment
of suggestive power, of those finer elements that
open avenues of beauty, and give the thrills of
aesthetic enjoyment which only an imaginative

Vi**$t*'«*»*<-,-«'»*<

i

■

■»_■=■* -

YOUTH AND SUNSHINE

PLATE VI

From the Oil Painting by
Edward Dufner, A. N. A.

Owned by

Mrs. J, Henry Dick, New Yi>rk

ARTISTS VS. PUBLIC'S POINT OF VIEW 37

and creative artist can give. Unfortunately
many painters, by reason of temperamental im-
potence, see the world as any ordinary person
would, which oftentimes accounts for their popu-
larity; while the susceptible painter leaves the
mere physical fact far behind him and soars
above the heads of the common herd in the
visual expression of his imaginative fancy. To
keep up with the former is not a hard task, but
the number of those privileged to accompany
the latter is unfortunately very limited. It does
not seem to be so impossible as many artists
think to add materially to the latter class if
people could be made more serious and studious
in their attitude toward pictures. The real
artist, then, endeavors to lead us into an atmos-
phere which is distinctively his own, and which
differs with every creative individuality. I feel
very strongly that only the creative artist, who
can bring to us things which are not an every-
day feature of the world at large, is at all worthy
of permanent consideration. The pathetic ex-
perience is all too frequent of the painter who
after much painstaking toil in an art school over
methods largely technical thinks that the worst
has now been conquered, and then comes face

j8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

to face with the necessity of saying something
in his acquired language. The number of those
who paint well, who can reproduce a fact clearly
in paint dexterously employed, is always large.
But the company of the real creative painter
will always be limited. The surface of this earth,
with all its many-sided aspects, its multi-colored
people, its illimitable fauna and flora, is open to
all painters on the same basis. Only a few, how-
ever, will tell what they have seen and felt in
such a way as to be vital, interesting, original,
and at the same time intelligible.

It is, however, necessary to learn that the
picturesque and the paintable ought to be recog-
nized as two totally different things. Many a
painter has contemplated the ideal state which
would result if the public were inclined to feel
in this matter as he does. People outdoors are
continually seeing marvelous pictures which to
their disappointment do not stir the artist at all.
Most often artists are painfully bored by the
jubilant descriptions by their friends of scenery
which the art-loving layman advises them to
paint.

The hunting-grounds of the landscape painter
are scarcely ever to be found on the highway of

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW jp

tourist travel. If they are, it is often the artist
and his product which has made the place at-
tractive to the public, and not the place itself.
The great western scenery in which we Cali-
fornians are so rich, the lofty mountains, the
deep gorges, the groves of enormous trees, do
not attract our serious painters half so much as
the quiet caves of our coasts, the flat marshes,
and the more placid phases of out-of-doors.

To be interesting and original without being
intelligent is of course very easy, as some of our
recent exploitations in Post Impressionism of so-
called Cubism and Futurism have successfully
demonstrated. If to be interesting means to
attract attention or curiosity, a certain type of
recent art leaves nothing to be wished for. If
originality means merely to be different, we have
produced of late masterpieces that it will be
hard to surpass.

It is interesting to bear this in mind, because
it proves the artist's contention that the spec-
tacular appeal of the emotional productions of
nature, her more violent architecture, makes no
such lasting imprint upon our mind as do as-
pects of nature more leisurely produced, more
quiet and more calm. Aside from that, the

4o PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

problem of scale representation the artist has
found almost impossible. Few people realize the
impossibility of preserving on a small canvas
that oppressive feeling of size which one experi-
ences at the base of a great mountain, or at the
bottom or the brink of a vast chasm. This has
been tried by many energetic and equally mis-
guided painters, over and over again, but never
with complete success. Some painters, like
Thomas Hill in a large canvas of the Yosemite
Valley, in the Crocker Art Gallery at Sacramento,
have come very near to it, and another western
veteran of the brush, C. D. Robinson, in his
earliest very spontaneous sketches of the same
region has gone further than any western
painter.

However, the average painter turns to quiet
things. Waterfalls which thunder into the pic-
ture at one corner and impetuously rush out of
the opposite appeal to few. The sketching
grounds for the landscape painter, here and else-
where, have never been brought to his attention
by the traveling public. His instinct for unadul-
terated nature, character, simplicity, and true
picturesqueness has led him there. St. Ives,
Concarneau, Etaples, Laren, Volendam, Worps-

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW 41

wede, Dachau — to name a few abroad — would
not be on the map if it were not for the artist.
They become known in spite of the lack of public
patronage. Here in America it has been the
same. The virile character of the Maine coast,
expressed so simply by Homer — Woodstock, to
whose beauties the eyes of the public have been
opened by Birge Harrison, John F. Carlson, and
their disciples — such nooks and corners are not
nourished by the automobile arteries of the
affluent traveler. In the west the discerning
artist turns away from the Canadian Rockies,
the great mountains of the Northwest, Yosem-
ite, Lake Tahoe, and other co-called beauty
spots, to retire to the placid beauty of Monterey
Bay, Laguna Beach, Bolinas Bay, the shore of
Marin county, or the marshes of Alameda. The
desert appeals to many strongly, no matter how
disagreeable are the associations psychologically
connected with it. How many really excellent
pictures are there at the art exhibits based on
subjects which are commonly spoken of as
"scenic wonders"? Very few that I can remem-
ber. On the other hand, some of the most capti-
vating of canvases are based on subjects which
no layman would stop to look at if he saw them

42 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

in reality. A most convincing example of this
sort is the small Le Sidaner canvas belonging to
the Luxembourg, that has been exhibited in
many places in the United States — an aban-
doned supper-table, in a backyard of a French
manor. A lamp is burning on the table, and the
whole picture is bathed in the atmosphere of a
warm summer evening. The picture was ac-
claimed a gem by the artists first, and later by
the public — by the artists because they realized
the daring and originality of the author in mak-
ing so big an appeal with a relatively insignifi-
cant motive, and by the public, eventually,
yielding at last to the convincing poetic atmos-
phere of a picture full of intimate charm. Aside
from that, it has other technical qualities and
charms of color, typical of Le Sidaner, of which
I want to speak later.

In the other fields of painting it is much the
same. In figure painting the richly and expen-
sively gowned woman often appears trivial and
uninteresting as compared with Duveneck's
ragged Whistling Boy in the Cincinnati Mu-
seum, who looks much more picturesque than a
polished and primped society portrait. Artists
have a way of turning toward the dilapidated,

ARTIST'S VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW 43

the ruined, the decayed, and it is no morbidness,
either, which deflects their attention to those
things. There is variety of form, of surface, of
color, in old weathered buildings, covered with
watermarks and many discolorations lacking to
a brand new house, as in Robert Spencer's Phila-
delphia Tenements.

We even find the artist engaged in painting
things which are repulsive to us on physical con-
tact. Slimy pools, emitting stenches and breed-
ing mosquitos, not infrequently make charming
subjects for canvases, and neglected cemeteries
appeal to the artist a good deal more than to the
layman. This realism, if we call it this, is not
a product of the modern age, either, and it cer-
tainly has brought into existence multitudes of
very enticing works of art. Velasquez's beggars,
reeking with filth and dilapidation, Franz Hals's
fishwomen, and a great number of modern things
are of that class, Randall Davey's Drinker, for
example.

By contrast, one is led into the examination
of the so-called idealized expression of a sub-
ject in a painting. Our innate sense of beauty
often moves us to idealize whatever we wish to
endow with increased artistic appeal. Idealiza-

44 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

tion is the method most frequently practiced of
giving a picture interest and charm. Goethe has
described it as a concentration upon the most
important, the most appealing elements in a
subject.

To single out, for instance, the height of a per-
son as a desirable artistic feature, we find that
in practically all great paintings of import-
ant personages the height has been made much
more than the original warrants. Such tenuous,
stately ladies as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Rom-
ney, and Hoppner painted never walked this
earth, but we seem quite willing to believe in
them. The laughable efforts of society photo-
graphers, putting their stumpy patrons on pedes-
tals, carefully disguised by flowing trains —
those touching absurdities will not leave my
memory. It discloses photography in one of its
most distressing handicaps. This enlargement
upon desirable qualities, proportion, color, etc.,
we find practised in all forms of painting, and
we might say that no picture ever was entirely
free from it. Whistler's witty retort to a lady
who contended she had never seen in the skies
sunsets of such superb gorgeousness as Turner
painted is very characteristic of the true artist.

THE DRINKER

I'LATK \ II

From tlie Oil Paimin . bj

Rami \i i. 1) \\ BY

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW 45

He answered the naive complaint by the whim-
sical question, "But don't you wish you could?"

In general, the artist recognizes two distinct
types of pictures, the naturalistic picture and
the decorative; if the public also understood the
distinction, much would, I think, be gained. The
first and the older one of the two is the natural-
istic picture, as it is called — that picture which
tries to create an illusion which will make you
forget there is such a thing as canvas and wall.
Pictures of this type may deal with any subject.
They are regarded by many as a bastard race, a
perversion of the real function of painting. The
type came about gradually, fostered by false
outlook and false ideals. Its most popular
achievements were the still-lifes and interiors of
the Seventeenth Century Dutch, and later on
the Munich and Diisseldorf school. The latter
kind could in most cases be much more sympa-
thetically rendered by literary means, and to
the layman became much more enjoyable in the
works of such men as Dickens than in painting.

We must not lose sight of the fact that paint-
ing is after all the art of ennobling and decorat-
ing a surface by means of form, area, color — and
an idea, of course; but the idea must not be in

V -

46 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

sole control of the problem, to the detriment of
the mere qualities of design. Themes like Hov-
enden's "Breaking Home Ties," in all its senti-
mentality, would be much more appealing in
literature. It is too "literatesque" a subject to
be justified in painting. If you were to turn the
painting upside down — let me say this to ex-
plain more radically what I want to say — it
would become uninteresting in the extreme. If
you treat a canvas by Abbey or Alexander in the
same way it would still exert a charm, because
of a certain arrangement of spaces and by reason
of the relation of these spaces, its coloring, and
its design generally, which give it interest no
matter from what distance it is viewed nor from
what view-point. If, irrespective of the signifi-
cance of the subject, this experiment is tried
once or twice, it will convince many people of its
reasonableness.

In modern times the naturalistic picture of the
older schools has had to yield to the convention-
alized expression of form and color we meet in
the decorative picture. The aims of these two
types of picture are almost opposite, and so con-
stantly confused that a lack of appreciation of
the principles involved in either one leads to

ARTISTS VS. PUBLIC'S POINT OF VIEW 47

more misunderstandings than almost any other
fundamental artistic contention. The decorative
picture, in which I group most conventionalized
art expression, has come to us from the Orient.
The Japanese screen picture, with its formal
linear treatment, its elimination of shadows and
lights, has caused a tendency in modern art
which meets with much hostility on the part of
the western public. The naturalistic picture, as
I remarked before, aims at a complete illusion.
In trying to destroy the surface on which it is
painted, it creates, so to speak, a hole in the
wall. The person looking at such a picture is led
far into the picture. The element of aerial per-
spective which involves the change of appear-
ance objects assume by loss of color as they are
removed farther from the eye is an important
element in such pictures. The decorative picture
is built up on entirely different principles. My
own contention is that the purely naturalistic
picture in a certain sense is really not good art
at all, since the art of painting aims primarily at
the decorating of surfaces, with a proper regard
for the preservation of such surfaces in the archi-
tectural ensemble. However, the naturalistic
imitative picture has come to stay, though a

48 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

great many pictures of that type on investiga-
tion are found to belong to the decorative con-
ventionalized group. The decorative picture is
the picture of the present day. Our exhibitions
are controlled by them, and the public is grow-
ing to appreciate them more and more. Pictures
like "Monterey Cypresses" by Mathews, at the
Metropolitan Museum, the "Monterey Bay" by
Bruce Nelson, and particularly Joseph T. Pear-
son's "In the Valley," in fact the canvases of all
our leading men are largely decorative, conven-
tional, rather than naturalistic, imitative. An
example of the other type, the naturalistic or
imitative, is Church's well known "Niagara,"
which aims at absolute fidelity to nature with-
out, however, giving it. The great painters of all
times have always been strongly imbued with
the principle of dealing arbitrarily with natural-
istic facts and still carrying the interesting mes-
sage of indoors or out-of-doors.

While there is an astonishing variety of artis-
tic expression, the laws on which production is
based are in most cases the same, used either in-
stinctively or with full knowledge. They are the
rules which the painter is taught in the schools,
or at least ought to have been taught, and which

THE BROKEN OAK.

PLATE VIII

From the Water Color Painting by

I'i: \m i- \I< Comas

Owned by

Mrs. C. B. Raymond, Santa Barbara, Cal

ARTISTS VS. PUBLIC'S POINT OF VIEW 49

should become a part of his artistic instinct while
at work. They are the laws we know as the laws
of composition, the art of putting things to-
gether for an agreeable artistic effect. The word
"design" covers the process more completely,
since it includes color, and it is the importance of
these laws of design, as applied to the making of
pictures, which I should like to impress upon the
public. A successful application of them will in-
variably culminate in certain artistic qualities
we have since time immemorial recognized as
desirable. They are Balance, Harmony and
Rhythm, and Color. The most important thing
to convince the public of is the fact of the arbi-
trary attitude of the trained painter toward his
subject. Whether it be a portrait, landscape,
interior, still-life, or what not, the thinking
painter will always arrange the subject for his
canvas to suit himself or he will arrange the ob-
ject in a way as nearly approaching what he calls
a good composition. Only the rank amateur, the
person of no experience, or too stupid to under-
stand, will attack any subject as it presents
itself. It is this that decides upon the success or
failure of a painting. Our great figure painters —
Whistler, Sargent, Chase, Tarbell, or any of

50 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

those whose work seems so obviously correct and
complete — show obedience to these laws with-
out any evident effort. Outdoor subjects are
even more affected, and the study of any land-
scape, cloud arrangement, foliage, shows, in spite
of its effect upon the observer of truthfulness,
that although these paintings may bear the
name of a locality, they are never accurate
copies of the spot. There are landscapes which
are attempted copies of nature, but they are
painful to the eye, they are devoid of everything
that makes a work of art interesting. The earli-
est attempts of the painters of the Hudson River
School are pathetic evidences of the futility of
copying nature. Nothing will enrage the artist
half so much as the well-meant, naive question
of the interested layman, "Where did you take
this picture?" It was probably, if at all a good
picture, not "taken" anywhere, probably not
even painted outdoors, but largely the accumu-
lated result of the artist's studies outdoors. Be-
sides, hardly any painting, no matter of what
subject, is true to nature. The very best we
should expect of it is an agreeable approxima-
tion. It is always a sad day for any enthusiast
when he finds out there is no such thing as imi-

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW 51

tation of nature in art. Already Reynolds, in his
most interesting discourses on art, points out
to his students that general copying is a delusive
kind of industry. "The student satisfies himself
with the appearance of doing something; he falls
into the dangerous habit of imitating without
selecting, and of laboring without any determi-
nate object. As it requires no effort of the mind,
he sleeps over his work; and those powers of in-
vention and disposition which ought particu-
larly to be called out and put into action lie tor-
pid and lose their energy for want of exercise.
How incapable of producing anything of their
own are those who have spent their time in mak-
ing finished copies, is an observation well known
to all who are conversant with art."

And why should anybody want to copy na-
ture? The many attempts I have seen were all
of the most unsatisfactory kind. First of all,
nature is not always beautiful, and when she is,
it is never with the fulness of beauty that a true
artist can give her in his work. Moreover, why
duplicate something that already exists unless
you can glorify it, visioning its most exalted pos-
sibilities?

Most pictures of the great masters of out-of-

52 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

doors look most decidedly as if they had been
done in the open though they rarely were. Wins-
low Homer's early paintings of ladies in ham-
mocks and boys eating watermelons are very
close to the "taken" picture, though a feeling
for design was never lacking in his work. Not a
single Corot, not one of his many "Ville d'Av-
rays," ever did exist, nor did any of our Ameri-
can Barbizon followers, such as Inness or Keith,
ever paint actual places in their riper works.
Keith's many "Sonoma Valleys" or "Berkeley
Oaks" are general types rather than facts.

It is this arbitrary arrangement of compo-
nent parts of any picture upon the canvas which
puzzles the public and which the artist recog-
nizes as the first important evidence of his fellow
artist's ability. Munkaczy, the great Hungarian
painter, painted even his very largest pictures,
like "Golgotha," so to speak, out of his sleeve.
His preliminary studies, his sketches, were not
within his reach during his final work, and the
popular fallacy that a large picture is merely an
enlargement of a small sketch is easily disproved
by the fact. Our own William Keith, to return
once more to him, was a most interesting ex-
ample of the ability to work independently and

ARTISTS VS. PUBLICS POINT OF VIEW S3

creatively without the presence of sketches or
studies.

Every painter has suffered untold agonies in
his contact with the public when sketching out-
doors, particularly when the unsophisticated
question is asked before his finished study, into
which everything has been carried that is essen-
tial, "Of course when you get home you will
finish this?" Generally and good-naturedly that
expectation is granted by the tormented painter,
who is ready more or less to grant anything
under the condition. As a matter of fact, what
the artist takes out of nature is only a limited
number of things, and these are the essential
things, things which carry the point. He knows
that if he should take everything there is, his
picture would be nothing but nature rendered on
a small scale, while the thing he is really after is
to maintain that feeling of the big scale that is
so uplifting in nature. Any layman who ever
watched a painter work is amazed as he sees how
many things that he puts on his canvas the lay-
man's untrained eye has not observed in nature
itself. So the first thing the man on the outside
should understand is the artist's necessity for
making whatever arbitrary changes he sees fit in

54 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

order to attain Balance, Harmony and Rhythm,
and in the end that feeling of unity, of oneness,
which is so essential in any great work of art.
What charms us in a picture is the artist's ability
to seize upon a single phase of something he has
observed and to present it to us in its most con-
vincing, most characteristic, and most beautiful
aspect. The entire range of human qualities
may be reflected in figural and portrait work,
while all the subtler shades of outdoor moods
may enter into the appeal of a landscape. It
must become clear, then, that the obviousness
of a picture as an accurate representation of a
fact is not an exhaustive test of its artistic
worth, and the artist can hardly be expected to
be very cheerful when he finds that most people
are never going beyond that point. However,
the qualities which the artist recognizes and
which give joy to his art are so demonstrable
that it will not be a lost labor to deal with them
more specifically. A picture, to whatever type it
belongs, portrait, figure, landscape, or genre, is
a complete unit, all by itself. Its relation to the
wall upon which it hangs forces restrictions upon
it of which we are not conscious in nature. A
picture is an arrangement, and that assumption

ARTIST'S FS. PUBLIC'S POINT OF VIEW 55

at once gives it freedom of expression. If it were
merely a slavish imitation, it would be lacking
in all the vital appeal which comes with the in-
telligent manifestations of rules. I see no neces-
sity for entering upon any discussion, even cas-
ually, of the meaning of the many subjects
found in pictorial art. I believe that they pre-
sent no such problems as the appreciation of the
purely abstract qualities of art in a picture.
Anybody will easily be able to learn to recognize
what a picture means in an intellectual way, al-
though I should like to qualify this statement
by excluding certain modern pictures which are
often enigmatic in their meaning.

j6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

ON COMPOSITION

A PICTURE undergoes manifold construc-
tive operations in its development from frag-
mentary sketches to the definite product. The
putting together of the various elements which
constitute a picture offers, naturally, boundless
opportunities for individual expression. To the
artist, therefore, it is a most engrossing process.
He begins with limitless possibilities for self-ex-
pression. How to divide the surface of the can-
vas on which he works in such a manner as to
give an unusual amount of aesthetic pleasure
and preserve, at the same time, the meaning of
the subject — here is a problem which, unques-
tionably, offers the one opportunity by which
the painter may always hope to attain a new
note. Composition has nevertheless a much
larger meaning than most terms emanating from
the studio. Of course I realize fully that here
again many will interject the thought that as
long as the artist reproduces a thing as he sees it,
as it is before him, he need not enlarge upon his
many difficulties and change things around to

ON COMPOSITION 57

satisfy his perverse whims of fact-juggling. It is
generally a commendable attitude to have such
implicit faith in nature, but her compositions
are not always arranged to suit the demands of
an artist. Nature as she exists is a big unending
unity of many things interrelated, and on a
little thought must appear quite different from
a small fragment of her confined in a picture
frame of rectangular proportions. Nature has
no frame. She is indefinite. Her effects melt into
one another in evanescent fashion. The thing
seen outdoors is altogether different from what
the painter must present within the physical
boundaries of a frame. It is sadly true that few
artists pay much attention to the frame, as such,
though one is at times highly gratified by indi-
vidual effects, as, for instance, the fine propor-
tion and colour in the frames of Herman Dudley
Murphy. Nevertheless, there exists the line, the
boundary of a picture, accentuated by the frame
which has given the raison d'etre for many com-
position laws.

What has so definitely settled the shape of our
frames is probably an attempt to standardize all
compositional laws upon the one shape. When
one contemplates the many shapes of frames

S8 POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

possible on the basis of geometrical potentialities,
one cannot but wonder at the very restricted
shapes in vogue. Is it, perhaps, that we feel a
lack of stability in differently shaped frames,
oval, for instance, or round?

Our compositional laws are all, naturally,
guided and shaped by the system of construc-
tion of the human body. First of all, our picture
must have feet, something to stand on, a base.
The horizontal lower side of the picture furnishes
this basis. In the round frame we do not get the
satisfaction of organic stability from the bot-
tom up, so to speak. The round or oval frame is
sideless. It is absolutely without beginning or
end. The treatment pictorially of that part of
the picture which borders upon the lower hori-
zontal line is often secondary, frequently a mere
nothingness of tone and meaningless form. As
we travel upward in a picture we have a gradual
development of energies, a loosening of form, a
certain attempt at gesticulation, which we may
liken to that of the human body. The seat of
expression with a human is decidedly above the
belt. The lower part of our body furnishes the
foundation, the support for the activities and
movements of expression which emanate from

ON COMPOSITION 59

the upper part. It is quite the same with pic-
tures, at least with good ones. When the picture
is divided into halves by a vertical line, it will
often reveal equal opposing forces; horizontally
divided, no such condition exists. Again, the
picture may be likened to a plant, a tree, in its
upward growth from basal stability as exem-
plified by the roots, and the increased flexibility
and life of the upper lateral limits and minor
branches. While we are vertically symmetrical,
horizontally divided in half we are not. In the
picture we often find, similarly, the expressive
movements and forms of composition above the
immobile and stationary region of the fore-
ground.

Our examination of a picture generally begins
with the bottom. We slide into the picture from
below, seldom from either side or from the top.
There may be exceptions to this rule, but cer-
tainly not among painters who do not lay out
their pictures for the sake of being analyzed in
some other way than the conventional. The
general scheme of distribution of force in most
compositions may be described as a horizontal
line supporting a vertical line. This is often the
disposition in pictures of greater height than

60 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

width and those which are square. The horizon-
tally inclined canvas will naturally have very
little of this building up. The shape of pictures
is of the utmost importance, and not merely
an accident, as many think. Most conscientious
artists have a stack of many canvases of many
proportions from which they select with great
discrimination. They realize fully that the rela-
tion of a subject in a picture to the four sides of
the canvas is the first and most important con-
sideration. How important this is and how diffi-
cult it is to gage absolutely the effect might be
demonstrated in the beginning by the fact that
some of our most able artists feel the necessity
for altering the shape of their pictures after hav-
ing proceeded with them pretty far. How many
pictures have been cut down after they were fin-
ished to adjust their composition we do not
know. Only an examination of the hidden edge
of the canvas would disclose that, but that some
had pieces added to them afterward some of the
work of our most competent painters discloses.
John Johansen's splendid "Rider" had at some
time during its production almost half a foot
added to the base and a smaller amount at the
right. A casual examination of the picture shows

ON COMPOSITION 61

the seam where the joining was made. Some
will argue that it might have been better techni-
cally to paint the whole thing over again but a
painter generally knows what he has already
accomplished, and to do a thing over is not
wholly within the power of the will. That ad-
mirable canvas was unquestionably much im-
proved by the addition of the two strips. It is
more satisfactory now to be able to see clear
under the horse, rather than to have the unsatis-
factory suggestion of the enormous bulk of the
animal run against the lower side of the frame.
The little strip at the right gives more freedom
to the head of the horse and also takes the girl
to the left, a little out of the exact physical cen-
ter of the picture. Gari Melcher's large canvas
"Maternity" acquired an addition to its base to
satisfy a compositional demand, and another by
him, "The Smithy," bears evidence of the alter-
ing of its shape. The size of a picture assumes in
pictorial art a much greater importance than
most people realize. Obviously it would be much
less troublesome to the artist to have certain
definite sizes used, agreed upon by everybody,
but the requirements of different subjects vary
so much that any such uniformity is manifestly

62 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

impossible. As it is with the size, so it is with
the proportions. Many a perfectly good motive
has been destroyed by adjusting it into a badly
proportioned frame. Certain pictures demand a
vertical emphasis — others a horizontal. The ver-
tical grandeur of a waterfall, of a group of
stately trees, is often enhanced in dignity by
emphasizing the natural expression of vertical-
ly. On the other hand, how stunted do arrange-
ments of that sort look if put into a square
frame, which nullifies all vertical growth in the
picture. Contrasted with this vertical develop-
ment we find the horizontal composition so
common in marines or paintings of marshes,
where a certain horizontal indefiniteness is ap-
propriate to the characterization of the subject.
Most marines do look more convincing in a hori-
zontal arrangement, unless an expansive sky
above the water is moreimportant than the ocean
itself, as it often is in Emil Carlsen's work.
Ritschel's marines, again, are often directly
opposite in composition to Carlsen's, displaying
hardly any sky, but a boldly patterned water
surface which by reason of its detached interest
is well confined in an almost square canvas. It
is one of the most fascinating of pleasures to

ON COMPOSITION 63

study the compositional growth of a picture
from its sketchy foundation to the finished pro-
duct. Hardly any canvas ever remained the same
through its evolutionary stages. To find a good
composition outright and bodily lift it upon a
canvas is scarcely possible, although we speak
of paintable subjects and those which are not.
By picturesqueness, we do not invariably mean
color and an interesting occurrence, but often
compositional opportunities. Holland has for
many years been the sketching ground for many
painters on account of the simple arrangement
of her out-of-doors, a quality so very useful in
the making of pictures. On the other hand, the
complex contortions of a tropical Amazon land-
scape will hold charms only to a deluded painter.
Simplicity is the one desirable feature which the
painter knows he cannot sacrifice, no matter
how spectacular the thing may be to the eye.
Simple contrasts of light and dark are often met
with in pictorial composition, and the silhouette
plays a very important part in much of our mod-
ern decorative art. It seems to me the art of the
present day pays a good deal more attention to
composition than that of any previous period,
which may be explained by the importance the

64 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

decorative picture has attained. The pure joy
of abstract beauty of line and form and color
seem to appeal to the artist more than ever —
though less to the layman, who does not know
what to do with therm, whether on account of a
lack of training in such matters or of inherent
artistic perception.

Much could be done to help the cause of art
and the public at the same time through study of
the principles of composition, or of the desirable
conditions in a work of art, and the way they
are attained. A good deal has been written on
the subject of composition, and some of the
books are exhaustive in showing endless pos-
sibilities rather than in demonstrating artistic
reasons. The primary importance of the sub-
ject becomes manifest when one considers that
no attention can be paid by the artist to mere
painting until the location of each form within the
picture is definitely established. The partly fin-
nished works of many artists have shown us the
many experimental changes which pictures suffer
in their development toward the final form, and
it is this which gives to many sketches and stu-
dies a charm of which the finished picture, often
turned cold and inanimate, is devoid.

A MEMENTO OF OLD MADRID

PI. ATI l\

From t he Oil Painting by

HOVSE I' PUSHMAN

BALANCE IN PICTURES 65

BALANCE IN PICTURES

WHEN the varied elements of a picture are
arranged in such a way as to result in a condi-
tion of repose, we may well regard it as prop-
erly balanced. Obviously the constituents of a
picture which engage our attention may com-
prise a great variety of elements, disposed of in
an even larger variety of ways. In order to sim-
plify matters, I will attempt to classify the vari-
ous elements, so as to be able to deal with them
separately. In thinking of balance, the various
kinds of scales may readily come to our mind,
and to help illustrate and understand the prob-
lem, they serve the purpose well.

We cannot, of course, speak of physical bal-
ance in a work of art in two dimensions as we do
in sculpture or architecture, though the under-
lying idea is the same in all. A comparison with
a pair of scales will be found convincing in more
than one way, particularly in the fact that the
point of support is found in the center of both
the picture and the instrument. That is to say,
an ordinary scale, consisting of two arms of

66 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

equal length, supporting equal weights, will find
its counterpart in many pictures of similar ar-
rangement, such arrangement resulting in obvi-
ously absolute symmetry, On the other hand,
another kind of scale, with the supporting point
slightly removed from the center, and two arms
of different lengths, comes much closer to a more
usual system of balancing the various units of a
painting. The opposition of objects dissimilar
in appearance but of equal force of attraction
appears to be the aim of many artists striving for
originality and variety. Anything that conveys
to the eyes the impression of a greater weight will
naturally attract our eye more forcibly than an
object of lesser interest. Granting for the pres-
ent that this contention is correct, it will be
found subject to a great many interesting moid-
flcations and variations. Line, form, color, light,
and dark may all be set to play against each
other, in order to distribute the interest equally
within the frame, the natural boundary of the
picture. Next to the purely abstract agencies,
the powers or sentimental or even merely intel-
lectual appeal will have to be considered; every
conceivable kind of object in a picture which
exerts an attraction must be taken into account.

BALANCE IN PICTURES 67

The social rank, physiognomy, size, and action
of a person may all call for proper adjustment
of a pictorial composition, in order to insure bal-
ance. Distribution of similar objects in even or
uneven numbers often seriously engages a pain-
ter before he ever thinks of their detailed ex-
pression.

The easiest way of creating balance in a pic-
ture, as already pointed out, is, of course, to
make it perfectly symmetrical. But it will read-
ily be seen that balance of that kind is apt to be
uninteresting in the extreme, and therefore
hardly ever artistic. Recognizing this necessity
for variety, the painter's ingenuity, in order to
meet the requirements of artistic quality, is put
to a singularly hard task. Beginning with the
simplest graphic expression, the line, the artist
through observation knows that shapes bounded
by perfectly straight lines will very easily be
outweighed in interest by those held together by
a curved line, for the very simple reason that
straight lines in their lack of character, their
meaningless form, do not excite our interest as
does a curved or animated line. This difference
of character in the two forms of line we shall
have to deal with again while investigating the

68 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

element of rhythm. In fact, the conditions of
animation due to an excessive employment of
curved lines in one part of the picture may easily
lead to a lopsidedness that may be hard to coun-
terbalance by other means. This must not be
taken too literally, but in a broader sense it will
be found true in many otherwise worthy pic-
tures. The "Andromeda" by George de Forest
Brush may be used as an illustration. The left
side of the figure is animated by a variety of
curved lines, while the right has little animation,
particularly along the torso. In consequence,
the balance of interest is not very well main-
tained. The figure, of course, is physically so
well balanced on her feet that her standing posi-
tion is not affected.

An effort is made in many pictorial composi-
tions to assemble the more important elements
into a small compass. Within it is found the
physical pivoting point around which all these
many forces are located. This point is easily
established in a physical sense. By drawing the
two diagonals, it will be found invariably that
the most engrossing notes of interest are found
not exactly at this point of intersection, to avoid
the obvious, but grouped somewhere very near.

WIND ON THE HILLS

PLATE X

From the Oil fainting by

\\ ii son Ii;\ INE

Owned by

Percy Eckhakt. Esq.. Chicago. 111.

BALANCE IN PICTURES 69

These two diagonal lines are occasionally found
to be very emphatically marked, or where this
has not been done, one strong line from one cor-
ner of the picture to the diagonal opposite is
opposed by a number of less obvious parallel
lines of interest, running in the opposite direc-
tion. Ettore Tito's well known "Centaur and
Nymphs" is obviously composed in that plan.
The picture is divided into light and dark by a
strong line running from the upper left to the
lower right, largely caused by the dark mass of
foliage; opposed to it are the pursuing centaurs,
the distant shore, the foreground, the line con-
necting the heads, the bodies of the nymphs — all
these many minor forms run counter and create
a balance of forces which being of equal strength
cannot destroy the equilibrium of the picture.
Thus balance is well maintained without being
too obvious.

Another interesting means of balance of no
less importance is that two apparently different
things may easily balance if placed on about the
same spot on either side of the center of a pic-
ture, provided the pull they exert is equally
strong, though based on different details. The
"Sistine Madonna," for instance, reveals per-

yo PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

feet balance — to be sure of the almost symmetri-
cal kind — in the divided curtain above, continu-
ing downward. The Christ Child is opposed by
the arm and the headdress falling on the left
shoulder. The figures of Pope Sixtus on the left
and of St. Barbara on the right attract equally,
while the cupids at the base are so near sym-
metry as scarcely to be interesting. This picture
is so splendid an example of artistic balance
easily recognized that we must always admire it
for its daring simplicity — if one could get away
from the suspicion that it represents no great
effort along any line. Then, also, the purely in-
tellectual significance of the persons in a picture
must be taken into account. We always find the
king, the president, or the mayor in the middle
of the composition, because in the ensemble in
their respective atmospheres they are the most
commanding figures. Single out the socially
most prominent person in a figure picture, and
never in any well-balanced picture is he far away
from the center of the canvas. This may seem
like a very commonplace observation, but a vio-
lation of this rule would be disastrous to balance.
In Hovenden's "Breaking Home Ties" there are
two groups of people at similar opposing points

BALANCE IN PICTURES 71

in the picture — the lamenting mother and her
son on the left, and the father and somebody
else of equal interest on the right. It would be
tiresome to enumerate any but the best-known
pictures, but to single out a few more from the
different fields of painting is too tempting. Luca
Signorelli's "Education of Pan" at the Berlin
Museum is another very telling example of bal-
ance achieved by the almost symmetrical ar-
rangement of different figures of equal interest,
and Titian's " Entombment," in the Louvre, and
also his so-called "Sacred and Profane Love,"
are distinguished for the same simplicity of ar-
rangement and well-weighed balance. The
"Origin of the Milky Way," by Tintoretto, at
the National Gallery, London, is much more
daring in its two opposing strong diagonal lines,
easily recognized. While frequently obscured,
this method of achieving balance is strongly
felt. The "Descent from the Cross," by Rubens,
at Antwerp, and his "Rape of the Daughters
of Leucippus," in the Pinakothek at Munich, are
all similar in principle. To the well-trained artist
who comprehends the rules this is so easily
achieved that examples of bad composition in
the matter of balance are relatively rare.

72 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

In dealing with forms or areas of tone, with
the addition of color, the thing becomes more
complicated, and more difficult in consequence,
the general rule being that a form of animated
outline and of light tone will attract more atten-
tion and have more weight than a form of quieter
outline and dark tone. The analysis of any pic-
ture will disclose this fact very quickly. Light
faces, hands, the extremities generally, will
much more quickly draw attention than the
larger, quieter masses of dress and background.
For that reason do we find those parts of figure
pictures always assembled near the center. The
lighter and more animated any part of a picture
is, the more likely are we to find it in the center.
The exceptions to that rule are rare and diffi-
cult to find, since badly composed pictures
rarely find their way into those collections from
which examples for illustration are apt to be
taken.

In regard to the distribution of the quantities
of light and dark and the balance maintained
with them, it will be observed that darker
masses of a picture generally exceed the lighter
in quantity, since a very much larger amount of
dark is necessary to balance a lighter and ani-

BALANCE IN PICTURES 73

mated speck in a picture. It is a bit of common
knowledge that a white dress is dangerous for
any woman inclined toward stoutness and that
a dark dress is often almost fatal to the thin
girl, since the former tends toward larger and
the latter toward smaller appearance; a fact
which many misguided people still refuse to take
into account in planning their dress — otherwise
it is hard to explain why people with large feet
always insist upon wearing white shoes. What
is true on the street is true in the picture. The
optical effect there is precisely the same. In a
crowd on the street half a dozen people . in dark
ocnventional garb will seldom offer as much in-
terest as one person brightly and gayly clad.
This question of light and dark is intimately con-
nected with color, naturally, and where dark
tones are associated with dull colors, nobody's
attention will be stirred, while light tones and
brilliant colors will most pronouncedly hold us
in a tight grip. Pictures are constructed entirely
on those principles.

The preliminary sketch for any ambitious
composition is the first and most important vis-
ual step, in which the distribution of masses of
light and dark must be settled, without any

74 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

thought of the detailed delineation of the indi-
vidual elements. The greatest animation of
form commonly is observed somewhere near the
center, or equally distributed around it. The
bright and cheery colors are found in similar
positions, while those parts of a canvas approach-
ing near to the frame are mostly negligible in
color and interest.

A Corot landscape will seldom have the man
with the red bonnet far from the middle. A
Keith landscape usually has its strongest color
emphasis in the middle. The poetic moonlights
by Peters present the illuminated window al-
ways near the physical center — and so on.
Caser's very delightful "The Fire" consists of a
harmonic form of design of dark blue accen-
tuated by the complementary orange of the fire
in the middle. The bright blue, orange red, or
any brilliant note, is seldom found far away
from the center of a picture, no matter whether
the spot represents a light, a bonnet, the sun, a
curtain, a door, or what not. The picture de-
mands this to maintain its equilibrium, its bal-
ance, and the well-trained painter knows it. It
is for this reason that the painter speaks of a
pattern in a picture, by which he means a

BALANCE IN PICTURES 75

systematically constructed arrangement based
rather on laws than on external nature. Only
the beginner will put the brightest cow in his
herd near the outside of the group, and all his
lamentation that the cow was actually there will
not help him a bit with his intelligent critic, who
knows that unless there is another equally at-
tractive element on the other side, making a
similar spot, there will be no balance. In a still-
life by Carlsen, Chase or Breckenridge, the em-
phatic color, the lively, stirring movement, is
found near the center. In figure pictures, par-
ticularly in the case of drapery, much interest
can be given to a picture by the opposition of
colors of differing kind, but of the same interest.
For instance, it is quite conceivable and of
everyday occurrence that a blue is outweighed
on the opposite side by a similar quantity of red,
of the same strength or interest, and this exam-
ple must be sufficient to suggest the endless
artistic possibilities along this line. Since I want
to deal with color all by itself later on, I shall
refrain from adding complications to a subject
already rather involved.

We find, then, that balance in a picture can
be best maintained in two ways, first, by the

7<5 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

opposition of attractions as represented by
purely abstract elements, either line, form, or
color, or by intellectual elements of equal impor-
tance; and second, by opposition of unequal
quantities, when a large quantity of a quieter
kind will be outweighed by a small quantity of a
more animated character, or by small equal por-
tions of very emphatic note amidst larger, quiet
masses.

Of course the possibilities, as in any artistic
field, are endless, but I find that it is interesting
and profitable to examine pictures from this
point of view. The peculiarly restricted extent of
a picture is the immediate cause of the necessity
for balance. The psychology of the picture is
identical with that of any object. Without bal-
ance, an unhappy feeling of disturbed equili-
brium will result. It is no small surprise, then,
to find how the preliminary assembling of the
facts may entail for the artist long study, care-
ful analysis, and all the consideration that even-
tuates in a state of complete satisfaction.

Long after the intellectual significance and the
spiritual appeal of the picture has ceased to give
concern to the artist, he may find himself shift-
ing his material from one side to the other,

TAM.s

PLATK XI

From tin- oil Painting by

I) SMF I Gakbek, N. A.

Owned by

U ALT! i S. Davis. Eso.. Reading. Pa.

BALANCE IN PICTURES 77

accentuating here, and there adding an element,
with the desire to achieve repose. Obviously
nature only in a limited way offers any assistance
in this process, which is largely dependent upon
scientific reasoning. It is no wonder, then, that
the attempt at analysis of these artistic prin-
ciples opens new avenues of aesthetic pleasure
to the lover of pictures.

78 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED

1 HE element at once the most elusive and
most pleasurable in a picture discloses itself in
the aesthetic manifestation we call rhythm. It
furnishes, next to color, the most stirring quality
in art. While balance is a purely constructive
necessity in a work of art, yielding pleasure that
comes with the contemplation of good order and
proper opposition of weight, and while harmony
may produce emotional effects, neither one in
results is to be compared to the intense delight
which springs from the rhythmic charm of a
masterly canvas. A picture endowed with
rhythm reverberates in the soul of the beholder,
giving him the utmost sensation of life which can
pulsate in a picture. While balance and har-
mony must be found in any picture, if it is to be
worthy, rhythm is not essentially necessary,
however frequent a quality we may find it to be.
The term may be said to cover two distinct
elements recognized in a picture by the painter:
First, a certain clarity of arrangement of the
subject matter, which will enable one to find his

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 79

way through the many parts fluently, uninter-
ruptedly, and without interference. The second
and larger meaning of the term, as mostly used,
is a sustained movement, leading the eye from
one part of the painting to certain others, and
from them again to others, and so on, and back
to thestarting point. As to the first meaningof the
term, naturally any pictorial composition must
be so arranged as to result in an orderly arrange-
ment which will permit an inspection of the
various parts in a systematic way, free from con-
fusion and physical involvedness. Owing to the
emphasis of the middle of some pictures and the
subordination of the remaining parts, the in-
spection will begin in most cases with objects
near the center, whence certain parts will be
taken up invariably in the same order by all
people.

To bring this subject more closely to the un-
derstanding of the average person, an excursion
into nature might be made, to see how the god
mother of all art in many ways discloses rhythm.
Her ways are not always aesthetically satisfac-
tory, but from a purely theoretical point of view
they illuminate the subject. In order to com-
prehend rhythm, even in nature, it is first of all

So PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

necessary to know what brings it about and how
it is attained. The most widely recognized fac-
tor is perspective, both linear and aerial. We all
know that things seen from an angle seem to be-
come gradually smaller as they are farther away
from us. Objects of the same kind, size, and
dimension, like a row of trees looked at from an
angle, seem to diminish gradually with a most
charming regularity and consistency. The
wooden posts and wire fence paralleling the row
of trees follow the same law, as does the road
which seems to narrow down systematically to-
ward a common point of confluence on the hori-
zon opposite the spectator. To complete the
picture, the equidistant telegraph poles on the
opposite side, the car-tracks in the middle of the
road, all tend to take possession of one's interest,
all with the sole aim of forcing one to travel to a
certain point. It is most'convincing to surrender
one's self to the overpowering control of con-
verging lines, whether in nature or in a picture.
In the many architectural pictures of the Re-
naissance this confluence of lines is a very com-
mon means of leading the beholder's eye toward
the point reserved for the Madonna and the
Christ Child. It worked then very nicely, but

THE HAY MAKERS

PLATE MI

From the oil Painting by

COTTARDO PlAZ/ONt

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 81

also very obviously, and therefore seems often
like a crude device. Moreover, in the huge archi-
tectural ceiling decorations of the late Renais-
sance and Baroque, and wherever linear per-
spective is in evidence, it has always been used
as a simple working device. It is unquestionably
much more interesting to see great numbers of
the same things, like windows in a facade, in
gradually decreasing sizes, than to have them all
appear of the same size. This rhythm of the per-
spective of lines is best expressed by the differ-
ence of the appeal of the architectural drawing
of the so-called front elevation type, with its
stiff and monotonous regularity, and the some-
times deceptive charms of rhythmically disap-
pearing apertures in a perspective drawing. The
architect knows that the former makes no im-
pression, and the latter has been forced upon
him by the public, which seems to have a vague
feeling for the charm of rhythmic beauty.

The systematic increase or decrease of the size
of objects, as they are affected by perspective,
contains a wonderful amount of beauty which
most people hardly sense, though many similar
forms written on the face of nature are popularly
considered most fascinating. The reasons for

82 PAINTERS \ PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

their appeal are seldom given, but they are often
based on rhythm. The clouds in the sky, par-
ticularly the small cumulus, often referred to by
children as little lambs, are most engrossing in
their subtle gradation of decreasing volume.
Many of the skies of the painter seem less primi-
tive when one studies the carefully carried out
formula of rhythmic cloud formation. Again,
the sea, with its unceasing motion, has more of
rhythmic movement than any other of nature's
protean expressions. The gradual collapse of the
high waves, spending their last energies away
up on the sand in faint ripples, have the irre-
sistible fascination of movement that as soon as
spent is recreated by a never-ceasing force.
There is something typical in the manifold sug-
gestion of movement disclosed in the activities
of the waters rolling up the shore. It runs
through every part of the immediate shoreland,
not alone through the water itself. The charm-
ing decrease in volume which leads one from the
far-out breakers gradually into the lapping
shore-waves is very pleasurable, and the mean-
ing of its charm of systematic change is recog-
nizable in many other things. The sands on the
beach, with their indentations remaining from

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 83

the eddying tide, become much more interesting
when one once recognizes their linear and form
alignment, which will always be found to con-
tain that element we know as rhythm. Further
up the beach, even debris of often hygienically
repulsive composition has formed itself into
curving and roaming linear arrangements of un-
mistakable rhythmic charm. The pebble beaches
of our California coast are enchanting, with
their gradually increasing and decreasing multi-
colored pebbles, which seem to have been ar-
ranged with due regard for gradual increase or
decrease in size. The bigger ones are near the
water, the smaller ones higher up, as if assorted
and arranged by some skilled hand. One could
give many more examples of this sort of thing
from nature, but these will be enough to show
that the gradual increase or decrease of an ob-
ject, whether produced by perspective or by
actual physical difference of size, will set the
attention into motion to travel from the smallest
toward the bigger, and yet bigger, or vice versa.
One must understand this to appreciate the
peculiar charms which are brought about in pic-
tures by an application of that law.
Theoretically speaking, the commonest

84 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

method of creating a feeling of movement is
merely to alternate a large space in a design
with a small, and to repeat this indefinitely.
One travels from the large to the small with
accelerated motions, to be caught, possibly, by
some other rhythmic device which will lead one
back. The undulating line, therefore, is the
artistic line. It has life. The straight line is life-
less. It is the undulating rhythm of the female
form that has for all time settled the greater
artistic value of Venus over Apollo. There is no
doubt that the practice observed in most pain-
ters of the academic schools, of drawing in
curved lines to round out and fill out corners has
much relation to this difference in the artistic
significance of the straight and the curved line.
Rhythm gives that element to a picture which
we may call swing, that verve of motion which
agitates us pleasantly, and which gives a work
of art dynamic force. Most commonly, the un-
dulating lines of rhythm are produced by the in-
troduction of intervals, that is to say, a regu-
larly repeated change of certain forms. Then
again, our attention is set in motion by the sim-
ple device of increasing the interest of a picture
in a certain direction, by intensifying drawing,

I.VDIA

PI.A'I I Mil

From the Oil Painting hv
Giovanni Battista Tro( coli

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 8s

and particularly color. It stands to reason that
a more or less different pattern, gradually length-
ened and intensified in its design and color, will
draw the eye from the lightly developed part
towards the more expressive. Any sunset will
demonstrate this — and some other points as
well. The converging lines of the rays, assisted
by the increase of intensity of color toward the
point of convergence, culminating in the red,
fiery ball, is so tremendous that the sun seems
almost like a bloody symbol of the crash of
mighty forces which culminate in it. After you
once get to the sun, you can't get out of it. The
sunset illustrates again not only the dominate
quality of the converging lines, assisted by the
increase in color intensity in the direction of
their convergence, but also shows that it is very
easy to take the beholder of a picture into one
corner or to any point from which there is no
escape. Since a picture is something different
from a piece cut out from nature, it must pro-
vide an intelligent means of allowing the eye to
travel through all the parts. No "cul de sac" is
possible, as in the sunset picture. Every part
must be accessible, in a way to produce in the
beholder the pleasures of contrast — light and

86 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

dark, important and unimportant, or other
pleasurable effects might occur.

It is this element of line movement, of space
division and color and variety, which the true
artist utilizes to express his mood. It was woe-
fully lacking in many men of the Diisseldorf
School, who were so absorbed in the faces their
people were making that the pure abstract
beauty of a canvas never could mature. How
much more rhythmic are the pictures of the
Pre-Raphaelites! What a wonderful play of
swinging lines is there in Moore's goddesses or
in the ephemeral figures of Dante Gabriel Ros-
setti ! In fact, all of the followers of the brother-
hood, like Walter Crane, had the instinctive
feeling for the swinging, singing line. The most
acutely interesting examples are the purely deco-
rative figural studies of Whistler. Nobody who
has any conception of the meaning of rhythm
could help succumbing to the charm of his most
tenuous sketches and studies. These slightly
indicated figures may have no faces — merely
heads without features to express joy, grief,
concern, fright; they need tell no story: their
hands may be undivided masses and their feet
similarly undeveloped. But a wonderful charm

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 87

comes from them. Their poses make them
reach out for each other. They speak to one
another without visible means of communica-
tion. It is all rhythmic movement, suggesting
invisible forces tying together the simple figures
of these charming studies.

Take another example, say the "Forge of
Vulcan," by Velasquez, at Madrid, where the
eyes are carried in an elliptical path from head
to head, passing over the anvil and back again.
The line is indefinite, always aiming to lead the
attention within the picture over a well-defined
road. Often the artist does not succeed in mov-
ing the eye over a certain road of attraction,
and it may easily happen that the interest is
violently thrown out of the picture, much to the
detriment of the effect. Any good picture will
meet this test, though it must not be used too
obviously. In figure painting it is particularly
Rembrandt as in his "Lesson in Anatomy," at
Amsterdam, who shows how to manipulate
many heads in a picture in such a way as to avoid
confusion and to enable one to travel from head
to head and back to the starting-point with re-
markable ease. Rembrandt's method was
largely that of making his pictures simple and

88 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

pushing everything back into the obscurity of
his luminous background.

Many of our modern painters either do not
possess the knowledge of these laws, or if they
do, do not use them, since in many modern pic-
tures an attempt at orderly arrangement is too
seldom visible. Rhythm in the second meaning,
that of suggested movement, to carry the eye
through a picture composed of sympathetic
areas and along beautiful lines, is very much
more difficult to attain. A picture may be very
beautiful merely as a rhythmic design, irrespec-
tive of an intellectual meaning. John W. Alex-
ander's "Pot of Basil" at Boston, or his "Phyl-
lis" at St. Louis, are typical. The folds of the
gown, while perfectly natural, are so wonder-
fully arranged as to give one pleasure merely as
spaces and as lines. Here the artist adds his
knowledge to nature as only such a designer as
Alexander could do.

It will easily be seen that the methods of pro-
ducing rhythm in a picture are numerous. One
device frequently employed is the gradual re-
duction of tone in a picture, whereby the eye
begins with either the darkest or the highest
color in a picture, gradually following the scale

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 89

of increasing or decreasing tones. It is a com-
mon expression that one will travel through a
picture, following the increase or decrease of
color, which in most cases is, of course, toward
the important point in the picture, commonly
located in the center. With this increase or de-
crease in tones, one must think of the assistance
given to that suggested movement by perspec-
tive, or the change in the appearance of things
that corresponds to their distance from the eye.

Any normal eye will naturally, either owing
to habit or to optical necessity, look first at
those parts in a picture which are represented as
being closest to the eye. For instance, in a row
of houses or trees or a fence or a row of people in
a military parade or a procession, the eye will
travel from the tallest in the foreground to the
smallest in the distance. This progress of study
is accelerated by the reduction in color, giving
those things in the foreground the most brilliant
colors, and those farthest away little or no color,
the loss being very gradual. The decrease in size
of things, owing to perspective, is so gradual as
to be subject to a fixed law; an artist, having
recognized this, makes use of it in many ways.

To draw the attention to the central figure in

go PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

a composition, a device often employed is grad-
ual increase or decrease in size and also in inten-
sity of color. Some of the most trivial and ordi-
nary objects are often appealing to the artist for
reason of their artistic quality of rhythm, that
wonderfully interesting relation of size which
leads the eye pleasantly through the arrange-
ment. Water, of all the elements, is more en-
dowed with rhythmic motion than any other.
From the highest motion to the faintest ripple
on the beach, there is the rhythmic decrease in
distance; if it is slighted, the picture is common-
place. Artists like Hokusai, in his picture of
the wave, with the great Fuji in the distance,
have demonstrated the beauty of it to perfec-
tion. All good marine painters know this and
utilize it, as the works of Alexander Harrison,
Emil Carlsen, and Dougherty, Waugh, and
Ritschel show.

The recent work of Woodbury, in some
respects the master painter of the open sea,
depends upon rhythm for much of its compel-
ling artistic quality.

The skies of every season show in themselves
the evidence of rhythm, owing to the influence
of perspective over form and color. In any well-

RHYTHM AND HOW IT IS ATTAINED 91

composed sky we are led from the bigger clouds
above us to the smaller, near the horizon, par-
ticularly on a moonlight night, with cirrus
clouds above which seem gradually to dwindle
away into the dark horizon. It is in things like
these that the painter ordinarily makes his work
more appealing than nature herself, for nature's
rhythm occurs only at times, while the artist
can produce it whenever he will.

92 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

HARMONY AND UNITY

r\FTER Balance in a picture, Harmony may
be taken up as the next problem of the artist.
How to achieve it very few can explain, since, as
said before, most artists work by instinct and
not by rule — which of course is well enough for
the artist, but all the more intricate for the lay-
man who wants to know why certain things are
done in one way and not in some other way.

Harmony is generally understood as the qual-
ity in a picture which makes it appear that the
many component parts have something in com-
mon. Harmony, therefore, must necessarily re-
sult in an expression of interior accord probably
more easily recognizable than any other qual-
ity, though the public at large readily falls a
victim to loud sensations aroused by the battle
of elements opposed to each other. I begin
again with the outlines of a picture. Every
artist has a certain characteristic method of
using lines which is different from that of his
fellow artists. Botticelli's outlines are elegant,
reposeful, and unmistakably different from

CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE

PLATE XIV

From the Oil Paintinj; by
Carl Oscar Borg

HARMONY AND UNITY 93

Rubens's most animated but often agitated lines.

This quality of Botticelli is found persistently
through all of his pictures, and the same is rela-
tively true of any peculiar style of line, whether
it be angular, emotional, impassioned, like
Rubens, or cool, calm, serene, and distinguished,
as in the early Italian, or, again, restrained line,
in a Whistler design. To copy a figure of Rubens
into a Botticelli would naturally be out of har-
mony and contrary to artistic effect, relatively
fascinating as the figure might be in its place in
the master's own pictures. Hundreds of inter-
esting experiments could be made among old
masters as well as new. I am thinking now
merely of a picture aside from its color, with no
regard for anything else but the quality of line,
which is different in the picture of every indi-
vidual painter. A casual review of the chief ex-
ponents of the greatest schools of painting will
disclose the truth of this law of harmony. Every
part, even the most secondary, in the great
work of all the great masters is in harmony with
every other part of the picture in the peculiarly
individual manner in which it is done. The one
thing which gives away so many unoriginal pic-
tures is their lack of harmony. They are com-

94 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

posed, frequently, of details borrowed from a
number of other painters, and owing to their
different origin, these elements are not in in-
terior accord. Imagine a landscape with a
Rousseau tree in the distance, sharply patterned
against a clear sky, and a feathery Corot tree in
the middle distance. No matter how pleasing
the landscape might be to the uninitiated, it
would never ring true, because it has not a har-
mony of conception. The world is full of patch-
work landscapes of that type. The same is true
of figure-painting where two or three types are
thrown together, and though compelled to ap-
pear together, refuse to live in the same atmos-
phere. Harmony of expression is highly typical
of the great men. The Frenchmen, Gaston La
Touche, Eugene Carriere, and Puvis de Chav-
annes, are excellent examples of pronounced
harmony. While the three are totally different,
each one's own method of drawing and painting
is most consistent throughout, and to imagine
one collaborating on the work of another is
almost comical. While harmony of line and
form is less easily observed, harmony of color is
more obvious when present, and more disturb-
ing when overlooked. The strongly pronounced

HARMONY AND UNITY 95

talents will furnish, again, the best example.
While most pictures of the older school excel in
a harmony of brown, many modern painters
have demonstrated the possibilities of other
color harmonies. Twachtman as a landscape
painter made use of a grey tonality in his
work which he seldom lost. The 'artist feels
that a picture is held together by this element of
harmony, and he feels it falls to pieces if not re-
garded in that light. That contention, of course,
is not necessarily based on an observation of
nature, but on an aesthetic consideration.

Naturally a harmony can exist among ugly
elements, as some of our newest productions so
successfully demonstrate. Cubist pictures pos-
sess harmony in a marked degree, since every
part of them has something in common with
every other part. But the question arises, is the
result aesthetically pleasing? Is it gratifying to
the eye? Does it convey a meaning? However,
one point must be borne in mind — that abso-
lute harmony in itself cannot be recognized un-
less emphasized by a slight element of some-
thing out of harmony. In every part of a pic-
ture where in character of line, in color, in style,
like every other part, the result might be mono-

g6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

tony, and in order to avoid monotony a distinct
note of contrast is introduced. To take again
the delightful pictures of such a master as Corot
as an illustration, the woman in the center with
the red bonnet is not there merely by accident.
She was put there with a purpose. The general
tonality of the picture is blue-grey-green. It is
bathed in silvery tones, which for emphasis are
contrasted with the little spot of vermillion so
effective in the picture. Leave out this red note
and the picture will be dull and dreary. Many
boutonnieres in well-known portraits, small bits
of colorful jewelry, bright scarfs, give life to
pictures which without them would be dreary
in spite of their harmony. Naturally the effects
of these things in a picture are in principle the
same as in nature, where they are used the same
way, although sometimes with distressing effect,
at the wrong place. But color, I say again, is so
important that I shall have to deal with the
subject by itself. Every picture will disclose to
the student a concession to this law, which de-
mands that the larger masses of harmonious
color of one type must be enlivened, even if only
slightly, by a contrasting note of opposite or
complementary color. It is its characteristic

THE FAMILY

PLATE XV

From the Oil Painting by
[VAN OLINSKY, A. N. A.

HARMONY AND UNITY 97

kind of harmony more than anything else that
makes a student, seeing a picture at a distance,
know its painter, recognizing certain character-
istics persistently running through his whole
work. Moreover, what is true of one work is
found in practically all the works of one man.

The painter who has found himself gives to
all of his work a certain uniform quality which
in unmistakable in all of his work, no matter
where we meet him. It is this quality by which
we can often detect fraud in a picture, or assign
certain works to certain artists. Going into a
gallery of Fritz Thaulow's, as we did at the
Exposition in San Francisco, we could see at a
glance that a very small number of the pictures
in the room were evidently not by this Norwe-
gian but must be by somebody else, since in
their very nature they were out of harmony
with the rest. It is harmony which made the
Duveneck gallery so enjoyable, continuity of
style in Tarbell, Redfield, Hassam, or any other
strong man that unites in a very marked degree
the same expression of interior accord. It is a
quality seldom attained by beginners, and in-
variably found 'in a master, and it has a great
deal to do with what we recognize as style. We

p8 POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

are probably more susceptible to harmony than
to any other quality in a painting, but strange
to say the artist finds very little evidence that
the public pays any attention to is as repre-
sented in art or painting, though in many other
practical affairs the absence of it would be
keenly felt. We should see the humorous note
when a woman buys a dress consisting of sixteen
different kinds of goods, but people often do not
hesitate a moment to purchase a painting that
the painter has heaped magpie-like together from
half a dozen different sources. As in everything
else, parts of a painting must appear to belong
together. They must express that affinity which
is one of the greatest qualities in a work of art,
contributing more than anything else to the one-
ness of expression we call unity.

While, Balance, Rhythm, Harmony, may
occur by themselves, the culmination of all de-
sirable artistic elements is possible only from
their unification. A work of art which has the
expression of unity, of oneness of each and every
desirable element, is bound to become a classic
in due time. We have great works of art, but
very few which seem to have been so inspired
in every particular phase as to give you that

HARMONY AND UNITY gg

complete satisfaction which one is more apt to
feel than to be able to explain. Such works make
us breathless. They seem to command an atti-
tude of respect and reverence. They do not
readily yield to analysis, and the only thing we
can do with such inspired examples is to give
ourselves over to the peculiar spell they cast
upon us. If we run down the entire gamut of
the acknowledged classics in painting, all breathe
that perfection typical of their kind. Perfection
seems to exist in every element, and their appar-
ent ease of production seems to be equal to their
other superior qualities.

It is true that the monumental in painting has
never been the fashion since the days of Michael
Angelo or Titian, Velasquez or Rembrandt, but
the .monumental style does not insure the
feeling of unity; we sometimes observe it, even
in paintings of small proportions. It must be-
come obvious that size has little or nothing to
do with unity; indeed it is more difficult to con-
trol large surfaces than smaller ones.

My first feeling before any truly great paint-
ing, as, for instance, Whistler's "Mother," in
the Luxembourg, or Chase's "Woman with the
Shawl," at the Pennsylvania Academy, is that it

ioo PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

holds together; that is to say, that every detail
seems to play its part in the concert without dis-
turbing any other parts. There is no wrangling,
no agitation nor fuss; everything seems content
in its place and satisfied with its aesthetic re-
sponsibilities. We feel about such paintings just
as we feel about great minds, that they are per-
fectly at ease. They say what they have to say
simply, they tell their message candidly, with-
out stuttering and fuss. They are primarily clear
in enunciation and articulation. No matter
what their subject may be, no matter what their
intellectual appeal, the truly great ones are all
of that kind. Gari Melcher's well-known
"Mother and Child" in the possession of Mr.
James Deering is full of that oneness of expres-
sion. It seems to have been seen clearly before
it was started, and we shall always regard it
highly for its artistic unity. Inness's "Georgia
Pines," and the "Medfield Meadows" are dis-
tinctly his greatest works for unity of expression.
We easily remember them all by their com-
manding qualities. They need no explanations.
They are outside the pale of artistic criticism.
Most often they are simple in the extreme, even
to a point of sternness, but always endowed

THE SAGEBRUSH TRAIL

PI.ATKXVl

From the Oil Painting by
OSCAK E. BBKNINGHAUS

HARMONY AND UNITY 101

with the telling beauty of a big and simple mes-
sage. Titian's "Man with the Glove" at the
Louvre, or Rembrandt's "Man with the Hel-
met" at Berlin, or to name a few more, Alex-
ander's "Portrait of Walt Whitman," at the
Metropolitan in New York, and Tarbell's
"Mending Girl," while produced at different
times, all seem inspired in similar ways. Their
appeal is inherent in the same qualities. They
defy analysis, but, as already indicated, their
chief asset is simplicity in every element. Sim-
plicity of expression, then, has apparently a
great deal to do with their artistic powers, and
I firmly believe that the agitated fussiness of the
small-calibered painting mitigates against its
lasting effect upon our senses.

All declining periods of art have been marked
by a loss of simplicity, and by substituting for
the candid presentation of one single phase the
irritating and scattered expression of many con-
tributing elements. The calm serenity of a
Leonardo is essentially present in a marine by
Homer. We feel the same quality in two totally
different subjects. It is a certain bigness that
cannot be accomplished where there is not sub-
ordination of every detail to a single predomi-

W2 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

nant expression of greater appeal. The thrill we
get from a Velasquez is one that springs from
the bold characterization of the outstanding
qualities of his personages. We call it style, but
it is the big style, the influence of grandeur, that
is the element that appeals to us. Moreover, it
is the quality which permits us to grasp the full
meaning of a painting at once. Only when we
can include the entire significance of a painting
in one visual attack do we seem to feel the qual-
ity of oneness.

The size of a painting has little or nothing to
do with this; it is entirely a question of principle.
The problem of painting our great western
scenic assets is of acute interest in the task of
preserving their unity, a quality which we feel
in them in nature and which we rarely observe
in their pictorial representation. What has be-
come of the enthralling feeling of overpowering
magnitude of the Grand Canon in the petty de-
pictions of some of our popular painters? It has
not been achieved and never will be, until some
modern Michael Angelo solves the problem of
artistic unity that presents itself in the great
mountain architecture of our incomparable coun-
try. The great scenic wonders of our country

HARMONY AND UNITY ioj

still await the day when their message will be
carried through artistic means into the world to
everybody, not only to those who have actually
enjoyed them in reality and can furnish the
thrill that is lacking in the picture by a spiritual
revival of their own memory, their own experi-
ence. Difficult as it is to get unity into a work
of art — so certain are we of its commanding
quality whenever it exists in a painting. The
imitation of even the simplest expression of na-
ture will not insure its presence in a painting,
as we may readily observe in many paintings
which, while they may be simple, are neverthe-
less lacking in unity because the painter has
treated them without concentration upon the
spirit of things, of which he has merely painted
the shell. The power to paint the spirit of the
thing is a gift; it is what we call talent, and when
it is superlatively well done, we recognize genius.
Modern art is less concerned about the spiritual
than were the old masters, whose calm unity of
beauty deteriorated into much sentimentality.
It was logical, then, that art should become en-
gaged in the representation of externals without
paying much tribute to the soul of a subject.
In external representation I think we are as

W4 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

efficient as any, but I doubt whether we asso-
ciate with it a valid psychology of the subject
such as the old masters achieved, and therefore
unity has ceased to be so potent a factor in our
days. It has become the tendency of the age
to pick out a single element in a painting and
dwell upon it, omitting whatever other quality
might demand recognition in a subject. Some-
times it is rhythm, or color harmony, or vibra-
tion, or again, light, or what not, that is the sole
moving force in a picture, and we are given to
understand that we must not look for anything
else. That sort of painting can be only sympa-
thetic in demonstrating principles, but rarely will
we get a complete all-round thrill of utmost satis-
faction such as we get from Terborch's "Musi-
cian" at the British Museum, or Rembrandt's
portrait of a Polish Nobleman at the Hermitage
at Petrograd. They are complete in every de-
tail. They are positive, and still they leave room
for suggestive interpretation.

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 105

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST

ESSENTIALLY, color is the one element in a
painting which ought to furnish the raison d'etre
for its existence. It is the one element in art
which decides whether architecture, sculpture,
music, or poetry shall be the affinity of the ar-
tistically producing. Of all visible features in a
painting, color should hold most attraction to
most people, artist and public alike. It is the
color element in a painting which lures people
into the painting profession, a lure which must
be very enticing when one considers the vast
hordes of painters as compared with architec-
tects and sculptors. The very earliest known
use of paint, by the Egyptians and Assyrians,
was a genuine demonstration of their love of
color for itself. Color has a very wide range of
effect upon different people, and we are just
now treated to the spectacle of some very recent
artists, cubists and futurists, post-impression-
ists in general, who are trying to dish up to us
as a new thing, the symbolism of color, which
has existed since time immemorial. The use of

io6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

color to symbolize human emotion, passion, or
sorrow is no new thing, merely a primitive thing
which has nothing to do with painting directly,
though often brought into play, as I will try to
point out later on. The relation of color to music
is closely akin to the visual rhythm element and
an attempt to represent color by a color code.
These experiments belong scarcely in the studio,
but rather in the laboratory of the professor of
psychology, who will probably be much more
sympathetically inclined toward all this new
movement than the painter's profession.

The color problem of the artist is different
with every painter, and while some painters
manage to get along with very little color, having
more pleasure in form and neutral values, the
great majority consider color a most essential
element in their work, whether they are easel
painters, or concerned with decoration or any
other artistic problem involving adornment of
flat surfaces. With the modern development of
chemistry, no known hue is denied the profes-
sion in their striving for original expression of
color. It would be impossible here to go into the
technical side of painting, as based on the pro-
duction and behavior of paints, but it can safely

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 107

be said that no color of the spectrum but could
be produced in permanent quality for the use of
the painter. Whether this is a blessing or a dis-
advantage is hard to tell, as it is yet too soon to
come to any definite conclusion in regard to the
comparative lasting qualities of the picture of
the schools since the beginning of Impression-
ism, and the gay and vivid color schemes of
recent schools.

The grudge that many sympathizers of the
modern school have against the old school is that
they get tired of the brown pictures, the endless
rows of brown pictures, with the occasional re-
lief afforded by the few pictures of the greatest —
such as Titian, Tiepolo, Rubens, Van Dyck, the
great Englishman of the eighteenth century, and
others. Even then while there is an occasional
flaring up of color passion, it is always on the
brown foundation, the brown background. The
use of color in those days was a formula, as com-
pared with the freedom practiced in our day.
The many things that may be said against the
brown picture will, however, not set aside the
great truth that brown as the controlling hue in
a picture is far more agreeable than blue.

In order to explain this contention, one has

io8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

to go into the psychology of color, which is one
of the most interesting of subjects to study and
a source of never-ending pleasure. We all learn
early in life, almost in our kindergarten days,
symbolic meanings of color as closely associated
with psychial experiences and conditions. Red
and hate, yellow and envy, blue and purity,
green and hope, purple and depression, and so
on, are so closely associated in our minds that
one is tempted to ask whether certain of our
newest and most ardent color experimentalists
ever went to kindergarten, or whether they
thought that the public never did.

One very important element in color appre-
ciation and enjoyment is the difference between
warm and cold colors. We find the explanation
of this difference in our physical experience,
which is to the effect that those natural ele-
mental forces which produce comfort and warmth
are associated with red — a certain red closely
resembling a reddish orange. The first thing we
think of in that relation is the fire, then also the
setting sun, possibly also the color of blood, as
the life element in our body. Our whole inclina-
tion is to look for red, and anything related to
red or with a preponderance of that kind of red

r,

PORTRAIT

PLATE XV 11

From the Oil Painting by
Clarence Hinkle
Owned by

K. \Y. Hoi 1 man. Sun Francisco, Cal.

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 109

is described as a source of physical pleasure.
On the other hand, a certain sense of coldness
overcomes us in the presence of large quantities
of a certain blue — the blue of the glacier, of ice,
of night — and we have learned to associate that
color with physically discomforting sensations.
Carried into art as almost a law, we have be-
come so used to it that it was the chief cause of
the opposition of the old school to the new, with
the introduction of Impressionistic painting.
Constable is generally spoken of as the first one
to break away from the brown "sauce," when
he had the then preposterous idea of wanting to
paint a landscape out-of-doors. To us nowadays
the idea of wanting to paint at least the prelimi-
nary studies outdoors is a sacred law. Constable
is credited with having first had the courage to
paint blue shadows. It really matters little
whether Constable was the first man or not, but
one thing seems certain — that he created a com-
motion in 1823 by the first exhibited work
representing his new venture.

The brown picture, to return to it once more,
was really little in danger of offending by its
relative lack of color since the many warm gra-
dations were invariably pleasing. What sym-

no PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

phonies of rich and luscious browns some men
achieved is best indicated by the work of Rem-
brandt, who surpassed any painter of his day
and who has never since been equalled in lumi-
nosity. I have spoken in another chapter of the
"frotte" and its generally brown or reddish
tone. The nuance of brown varies with the
artist, but as an undertone it seems still to be
cherished even by many very modern painters.
Not only the idea of warm and cold colors, but
the whole question of color resolves itself into
an absolutely demonstrable science, of which the
average talented painter gets control as a pres-
ent at birth, and which scientists, regard as a
series of simple facts, demonstrable in many
ways. We hear a great deal of complementary
colors and their use in artistic expression, and to
most people this term is another one of the stu-
dio mysteries which the artist himself rarely
bothers to explain. He knows he would not be a
painter if he did not have a sense of color, in-
cluding the use of complementary color, so why
bother about the why and wherefore? However,
people are curious. Beginning with the spec-
trum, the basis of all color themes, we find that
the twelve colors running from red to violet are

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST in

all very beautiful in their own way, but that the
effect of any one can be much enhanced by the
close proximity of some other color than the one
immediately preceding or following in the spec-
trum. We know that a physical experience is
the basis for the grouping of colors as comple-
mentary colors. If we look with a fixed stare for
a short time at a vivid red, and at the first feel-
ing of exhaustion turn to a blank space of neu-
tral or white tone, we behold a spot of green.
If the first color looked at was violet, it will be a
certain yellow; if red — violet; yellow — green; if
orange — yellow; violet — blue, and so on. In
other words, the directly opposite color seems to
be the one which will afford the greatest amount
of relief. The skilled artist gives constant pleas-
ure by his intelligent application of this law, and
to examine pictures for this point alone is inter-
esting in the extreme. The most common exam-
ple is that of the combination of blue-green and
red, the two colors most frequently used as
complementary. That large red areas are op-
posed by green or blue-green areas in all of the
Renaissance Madonnas is too well known to
need to be dealt with at length.

In landscape painting we have the delightful

ii2 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

examples of Corot, who very cunningly and
effectively introduced his red-bonneted peasant
to give life to the pleasant greens in his land-
scape. Omit the red nuance, and how dreary and
lifeless those otherwise refreshing landscapes
would be. With all due regard to the old mas-
ters, our appreciation of color has become much
more subjective in our own time than during
the so-called great periods of art. The clever
use of two complementary colors against large
masses of neutral tones is Whistler's chief con-
tribution to modern art. His refined, sensitive
color-arrangements of flesh color and black,
green and violet, and the many' other possible
combinations were never thought of before his
day. He carried his aesthetic appreciation of the
abstract relation of colors into less pictorial rep-
resentations, to the astonishment of his contem-
poraries. Whistler invariably encourages and
incites comparison, and he represents one pole
as much as Rubens represents another, not only
in color but in general style — as well as in every-
thing else.

What remarkable changes have taken place
in the color aspect of the painter's art! First we
had for a long time the vigorous contrasts of

AFTERNOON

PLATK .Will

From the Oil Painting by
Arthur F. Mathews

Owned by the

Metropolitan Museum, New York

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 113

the brown based picture, then the remarkable
change to the cool grey of the pleinairist and the
impressionist, and now again the demand for
vigorous, lively color, as stirring and stimulating
as it ever has been. The exhibitions of the
eighties and nineties, with their acres of grey
and silvery canvases, are still in our memories,
and now we have the evidences on our exhibi-
tion walls that pure primary colors are not at all
too striking if properly handled. Such canvases
as Raymond P. R. Neilson's have attracted
much attention of artists and public alike, and as
color pattern they surpass anything done here-
tofore. Neilson's art is typical of the age, which
is an age of contrasts highly seasoned but not
devoid of a wonderful charm of personal style.
Frieseke's art, while not possessed of the placid
surfaces one admires in Neilson, has color un-
bounded, and this element is a special charm in his
always carefully considered compositions. Ran-
dall Davey, Gifford Beal, and Robert Henri have
gone beyond anything ever attempted in the use
of almost pure colors with often singular success.
The tone picture in this age of color has no
chance at all. It isn't even looked at. It does
not seem that ours is the period of the tonal

ii4 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

picture at all. The aristocratic tonal dignity of
a Mathews is sometimes interpreted as weak-
ness, and many other tonal compositions find a
like reception. It is scarcely to be expected that
the large public should at once appreciate the
noble restraint and enduring quality of the low-
toned "Art and Nature" by Mathews, but the
greatest of all low-toned painters, Whistler, even
in a period of the grey tonality of the French-
man Bastien-Lepage, did not arouse any more
popular interest than the man of restrained color
schemes today. The tonal picture has always to
contend with the accusation of being anaemic
and arbitrary and remote from nature, and the
whole thing resolves itself again into the ques-
tion of imitation or translation of nature.
Doubtless nowadays many ambitious young
painters imagine their work is full of color when
it is merely full of different paints, and this dif-
ference of meaning is surely worthy of more
recognition than many modern artists care to
give it. To use a great many different paints on
a canvas is hardly more than a sign-painter's
performance, but to intelligently gauge a num-
ber of colors so as to produce a harmony is
another thing.

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 115

Harmony has been said to be a condition where-
in a number of things have something in common,
where an invisible inner accord exists. How
many pictures really give one this feeling of an
inner accord, of having something in common
among themselves? This harmony — this being
of the same kind, so to speak — is the strength of
the low-toned tonal picture, and it is a very
enduring quality. It is largely the harmony of
analogous colors, as opposed to the color scheme
of opposing colors held together by other quali-
ties of relationship. The amount of color which
an artist sees in nature differs with every artist,
and it is this divergence which makes paintings
so interesting. Many pictures look very much
better in black and white, while others seem to
lose without their color. Is this largely a matter
of deception ? Often a picture with very vigorous
color, but of poor tone values that mean a bad
relation of light and dark in its many grada-
tions, deceives one regarding this lack of values,
and reproduced in black and white seems like
a different work, unpleasing and of no conse-
quence. On the other hand, some of those very
fascinating modern decorative canvases are
never lacking in interest even if seen in black

u6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

and white. This is particularly true of the
smaller outdoor Friesekes and of his big toilette
scenes in ivory and greys and greens. Bellows's
" Polo Players " in the original does not satisfy so
well as in black and white. The red in the man's
coat is metallic and of no moment in a canvas
which holds by its dynamic, forceful painting.

A closer examination of many paintings dis-
closes in a general way two types of color expres-
sion— the complementary opposition of different
colors and the combination of analogous colors.
The first, and chronologically older type, pre-
vails in almost all of the work of the older schools
up to the middle of the last century, when there
appeared the arbitrary tonal arrangement,
which finds its highest expression in Carriere,
Puvis, and Whistler. The brown undertone of
the Renaissance masters, supporting rich areas
of opposing blues and reds — such they mostly
were — is a common feature of many pictures.
We meet with this in Raphael as well as in
Murillo, and later on in the Hollanders and
Englishmen. Most of these older works were
decidedly dark in tone, and often obscure. But
from their dark foundation the opposing notes
of red and blue would often rise to strike a sym-

DESPAIR

Pl.ATi: XIX

From the Oil Painting by

PERHAM W . N AIM.

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 117

pathetic chord. The pictures absolutely devoid
of color and expressed merely in the meaningless
contrasts of light and dark that we see in some
of the galleries of Europe are unique in demon-
strating the superiority of sculpture as a means
for plastic representation. These "grisaille" pic-
tures, as they are called, painted in many greys,
seem lamentably uninteresting for their abso-
lute lack of color. The analogous color schemes
of certain modern masters are so removed from
the pictures of the earlier schools that it would
be futile to look for any relation between them.
Carriere's low-toned scales of a certain purplish
brown, almost monochromatic in their elimina-
tion of any strong note, suggest this type better
than the work of any other master. It may have
been the influence of the greys of the modern
schools which produced such charming ranges of
color gradation. The chief difference between
the old and the modern is largely explained by
the substitution of a cool grey for a warm
brown. If we were to take a Tiepolo or Titian
and substitute for the brownish middle tones
the same range of dark and light blue violet
greys, the color, as represented by blue-greens,
red-purples, and yellows, would remain un-

u8 POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

changed. The bath of golden browns in which
we see the many colors swimming, has in modern
art given room to the neutral grey of the outdoor
atmosphere of the student of nature. Often the
effect is less appealing because, as indicated
above, the golden brown of the old canvases is
psychologically more sympathetic than the blue-
grey of the modern school. How great were the
possibilities of using many hues or color nuances
was first demonstrated by Monet, who painted
a series of pictures of the same subject, identical
in composition and facts, but each in a different
hue. His scenes of the Seine in Paris run from
the pale blue-grey of the early morning through
the yellowish light of midday into the purplish
hazes of the late afternoon and the dark blue-
green of the night. All the pictures are identical
in subject, but different in that each is based
upon a different prevailing color. Such color con-
ceptions were unknown before his time, and
eventually they opened the eyes of the artist to
a better perception of color, until now we live in
an age of art where color has first rank in the ex-
pression of the artistic individuality. No matter
what may be one's quarrel with modern art, one
thing must impress itself upon even the most re-

WHAT COLOR MEANS TO AN ARTIST 119

actionary admirer of the studio brown of by-gone
periods — that in daring opposition of intense
colors and vigor of contrast many of our modern
painters are achieving vital expressions which are
bound to command respect and admiration.

Color may be said to epitomize the spirit of
modern art, and whatever of the trivial we may
observe, no matter how lax in technical execu-
tion many of our moderns may be in their vital
color, they express both daring and joy. Never
before has painting been so independent in
accentuating the one feature which none of the
other arts can equal — the element of color.
Arthur Carles's nudes and Breckenridge's recent
still-lifes, are excellent examples of the clarifica-
tion of color in our art. The decorative and
highly imaginative art of Bertram Hartmann
vibrates with color such as we have seen only
suggested before, and the virile art of Brangwyn
discloses a daring juxtaposition of colors which
disarms all efforts at comparison with any art
past and present. We are living in an age of
color, and the life which modern art owes to this
element will not be least in fixing, ultimately,
the position of present-day art in the history of
the evolution of aesthetic expression.

120 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT

UF ALL the many phases of painting none is
regarded by the public with so little interest as
the purely technical. The public naturally finds
it distasteful to admit profound ignorance on
the subject of technique, and prefers to leave
that part of painting to be enjoyed exclusively
by the artist. The often-charged capriciousness
of the painter has a good deal to do with this
intricate question. Very, very seldom do artist
and layman agree upon the best picture in a
show, because the painter persistently, before
any other phase is taken up, wants to satisfy
himself that the paint is put on the canvas in
such a way as to earn his professional approval.
The layman immediately, on the other hand,
proceeds to look for the intellectual appeal of
the canvas, and the war is started. If we were
to be as logical with painting as we are with
other things when it comes to the question of
technical production, we should quickly remove
a great stumbling block in the path of the appre-
ciative, willing layman, who is often inclined to

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT 121

give it all up, so to speak, from sheer desperation
over the question of technique. We can scarcely
blame the painter, as I shall endeavor to point
out, and the layman deserves sympathy for the
reason that perception of technical excellence is
in a measure dependent upon technical experi-
ence. My friends those art critics who have
entered the field from the purely aesthetic and
literary side will heartily disagree, but the fact
remains that all painters look with grave sus-
picion upon the average art critic's innocence of
technical experience.

Since painting is a most individual exercise,
it is no wonder that the method of disposing the
pigment upon the canvas presents another in-
stance where a stereotyped method must not be
expected. Even in the various periods of tech-
nique, if we can speak of them so, we find a
variety of technical usages which add much to
the involved character of painting. In the ear-
lier days, when painting was largely an imitative
effort, the technique was concealed, care being
invariably taken by the artist not to disclose his
technical procedures at all, for fear of spoiling
the illusion of his purely imitative handiwork.
That attitude certainly still prevails with a very

122 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

large part of the public, and even with some
very few painters of the present day who are
inclined, like their predecessors, to let their
work be carried by the sober fact, without any
expression of a man's own skill in the handling
of his material. As the possibilities of painting
were discovered, painters gradually grew to ap-
preciate the difference between the skillful and
the unskillful, the easy and the difficult. This
question of skill offers to the artist a much
larger field of enjoyment than the public gen-
erally is aware of. The painter, having had prac-
tical experience, knows full well what is difficult
and what is easy to do, and he has formed his
technical ideal accordingly — and I might say
that essentially this does not differ with different
painters. The public — not to lose sight of its
attitude — is on the whole convinced that so to
execute a painting as to destroy all evidences of
how it is done is most difficult, and accordingly
admires immensely paintings resembling in
smoothness of finish a colored photograph. It
is this naive enthusiasm which drives the aver-
age painter into frenzies of fury and agonies of
despair, and which often turns his interest per-
manently away from even hoping to find any

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT 123

sympathy from the public for his technical point
of view. The public fortifies itself behind the
belief that all the great masters "did it that
way," pointing with great pride at Raphael's
Madonnas and Leonardo's smiling lady, beside
these any number of painters of polished
doll faces now long since surpassed in freshness
of execution, finish of appearance, and spon-
taneity of method. It is true that nothing like
Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" has ever since been
painted, but we ought not to forget that it is her
subtle smile, her calm serenity, which is so com-
pelling, and not the very cautious method of
painting. We have vastly improved since then
in representing texture — the differing qualities
of different surfaces. The faces of the Madonnas
of Gari Melchers are just as exhaustive individ-
ual studies as any of the old papery kind, but
possess a certain added charm of life, of vitality,
which the older painters seldom attained. The
old methods of painting were generally speak-
ing thin, though not invariably so, as certain
exceptional painters like Tintoretto or Velasquez
will instance. It was not necessary to resort to
any heavy or opaque painting to represent the
indoor subjects, generally dark in tones. The

124 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

necessity for a technical change did not develop
until the problem of outdoor painting forced the
painters before they were quite aware of it into
a heavier application of paint, which on the
whole seems to most laymen a technically in-
ferior method indicating the less accomplished
painter. When Constable and his French fol-
lowers, the Barbizon men, went outdoors, the
necessity of rapid work did not allow the careful
gauging of the quantity of paint, to the detri-
ment in the popular eye of the appearance of
their canvases.

This laid the foundation for what was to come
in the seventies, what is known as Impressionis-
tic painting, an art which has as much sound
technical basis as it has aesthetic interest. Be-
fore the days of Monet the generally adopted
method of painting was to lay paint upon the
canvas with the same tools as today but by
means of brushings in downward strokes, mostly
executed in a slightly slanting way from the
upper right toward the lower left. This practice
became almost an academic law. It had to be
done that way, and to do anything else meant
an infraction of the rules of the studio. That
rule was based on the human custom of using

AT SUNRISE

IM V! E XX

From tlie Oil Painting by
Jonas Lie, A. N. A.
Owned by

Mrs. Henry J. Ckocker
San Francisco. Cal.

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT 125

the right hand to work with and on regard for
the law of gravity, and also it was for the con-
venience of the painter, that he might see what
he was doing. It is just as arbitrary as the
rule that the light in a picture must fall into it
from the upper left-hand corner, because the
light falls that way upon the canvas of the
painter, who, working with his right hand, must
have his light from the left in order to see what
he is about. How arbitrary this rule is, thought
of the left-handed painter will immediately point
out. To say that this is the way and no other
way is right could hardly lead to progress. The
impressionistic painter threw these studio con-
ventions to the wind. He began to put his paint
on very heavily, in order to get body, and in his
search for light and expression of texture vio-
lated all the sacred old rules. Working in a high
key, large quantities of white lead had to be
used. He was at first promptly disqualified but
now, after some thirty years, we acknowledge
that the impressionistic technical method is the
most important artistic gift of the last century.
The greatest change yet to come, however,
arrived with the Neo-Impressionistic painter at
a time when the public had scarcely recuperated

126 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

from the first shocks of impressionistic painting.
None the less our modern exhibitions owe much
of their appeal to the very general use of this
latest method, although in its application often
much disguised. The old method of painting was
one of unbroken surface, though an undertone
was often permitted to make itself felt through-
out the canvas. This method of employing an
undertone is still in vogue, and probably always
will be, since it is the foundation of individual
expression, through the great varieties of tone
possible, and also by reason of the technical
durability it gives to a picture. It is interesting
to look at pictures and see what the undertone
used is. The French call it "frotte," or a rub-in
of some color, generally warm, very thinly ap-
plied, upon which, while it is still wet, the final
color is put. To start and finish a canvas painted
into the frotte has always been considered a
technical accomplishment of the first order,
only the elect can achieve it, and the paintings
produced that way are few and far between, but
they unquestionably include many of the great-
est paintings of the world. A little canvas of a
Dutch girl by a Munich man, Max Thedy,
shown at the Carnegie Institute and elsewhere

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT 127

was the admiration of the profession for its
unique qualities of painting. Into a brown, sym-
pathetic undertone, a few lighter and darker
tones had been set, with surety of touch and
keenness of perception. There was really little
effort about it, on close examination, but every-
thing was there, wonderfully suggested in the
picture's clear restrictions to a few simple facts.
Most of Duveneck's canvases have that same
directness and simplicity. It is the result of
putting the final painting immediately and
broadly into a wet and sympathetic technically
warm under-painting. Duveneck's "Whistling
Boy," among others, is a good example of this
method, though all of his work is easily recog-
nizable by the same quality. Even in landscape,
some of the very greatest paintings are interest-
ing for the same manner, as Inness' "Coming
Storm" in the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy must
easily prove even to a laymen. Such directness,
such swiftness and energetic method, is enjoy-
able in the extreme. In spite of its apparent
completeness, this was perhaps the work of forty
minutes, and technically, to the initiated, it
looks the part. That he afterwards put in that
dry tree and artificial foreground, including the

128 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

stump, was more a concession to an old-time
formula than anything else. To carry that won-
derful green middle distance through the entire
length of the picture would have been too much
to expect of a man who, after all, was uncon-
sciously working in the Barbizon tradition, in
spite of the very daring courage he possessed.
This indirect method of painting a picture first
in a neutral color in different values, or express-
ing it in light and dark irrespective of the actual
color, had many advantages and many draw-
backs. But the best things produced in this
method are as fine as any other methods, past
or present. One should, however, discriminate
between the spontaneously painted picture when
under and over-painting were done in one sit-
ting— where everything was staked upon one
card — and the other type, when the frotte was
painted at one time, allowed to dry, and fin-
ished some other time. Our own William Keith
was a past master of the first method, and some
of his best canvases were painted in a now-or-
never spirit which we seldom meet with in art.
It was this technical swiftness and facility in
which Keith excelled and in which he at times
even surpasses the most spontaneous of Inness'

PI.ATK XXI

From tlie Oil Fainting by
Mai rice Braun

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT 129

work. At its best, this method of apparent ease
is convincing by reason of its freedom from hesi-
tation and fumbling.

But the method of warm under-painting has
now generally fallen into disrepute, perhaps as
being too dangerously connected with the past;
the younger men of the modern type, to judge
from their work, must be suspected of looking
upon the older methods with a mixture of sym-
pathy and pity. Perhaps it is not so much the
method of painting as it is the lack of color — in
the modern sense — which causes this attitude.
However, I do not believe the world will ever
tire of Duveneck, Chase, Currier, Sargent,
Brush, and some more recent arrivals like
Troccoli and Pushman.

After the thin and wet under-painting we have
the Impressionist and after this the Neo-Im-
pressionist — whom I abruptly abandoned in my
discussion — who wants to go him one better.
The light palette, gay with color, is not enough
for him. He wants the utmost in brilliancy and
sparkle. Here, fortunately, science came to the
rescue. Having become interested in the light
problem of the Plein-airist, or painter who
paints in the open air, the scientist pointed out

ijo POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOLPE

to him, on the basis of an optical discovery, that
small quantities of different colors put alongside
each other would at a distance appear like the
direct mixture of two on the palette; take pri-
mary colors, red, yellow, and blue, selected in
pairs, and juxtaposition of the proper two would
make orange, green, or violet, and so on with
the secondary colors and tertiary colors. That
advice started a furious technical activity which
at first shocked the public worse than anything
had ever done before. These dotted or stippled
pictures upset their fondest convictions, beside
forcing the necessity upon the people of learning
to see all over again. The close examination of
pictures became a joy of the past, and squinting
had to be cultivated to get any satisfactory sen-
sation. However, we must admit that Neo-Im-
pressionism is still with us and that we like it —
some of it we like immensely. Metcalf's "Trem-
bling Leaves" is as popular a painting as any
and the Frenchman Le Sidaner's night pictures
awaken poetic sentiments in many. Robert
Spencer's charming portraits and even those de-
lightful quarries of our very gifted Daniel Garber
show the symptoms of Neo-Impressionistic in-
fluences. Our modern art is absolutely dominated

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT iji

by it, and since our art is so largely the art of out-
doors, the art of the landscape painter, we recog-
nize its influence everywhere. No matter what
the particular method of the painter has been,
in one regard painters have always been of the
same opinion, and this is in the desire to use what-
ever may be their personal methods to express
themselves skillfully and with grace and charm.
We find that endeavor always, no matter how dif-
ferent the technique. A German philosopher
has justly said that as Kunst — art — is derived
from "Konnen" — to be able — a great deal that is
paraded as art is not worthy of that designation,
since little or no "Konnen" is in evidence. The
whole question of Cubism and Futurism be-
comes less a problem if looked upon in that
light, since "von Konnen da ist keineSpur" —
of real knowledge there is no trace.

The question of technical quality is naturally
governed by the effect desired, and any art
exhibition will disclose as many methods as
there are artists. One of the most acutely inter-
esting and competent of present-day painters in
a technical sense is our own Redfield. There is
not much romantic appeal in his work, but in its
straightforward method of painting it is almost

ij2 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

in a class by itself. He presents a most interest-
ing phenomenon of a most heavily painted pic-
ture which invites very close inspection and
which reveals a most fascinating technical qual-
ity. One's admiration grows for the painter of
these suggestive fragments of nature, largely
because the plastic handling of the paint seems
most carefully considered in each and every
stroke, with a full feeling of responsibility that
each stroke must tell, not only constructively,
but by enlivening the surface of the painting, by
catching light and throwing shadows. Redfield's
art is particularly noteworthy amidst that of
many modern Americans because of its live
quality of paint. Speaking of the living quality
of paint, one is reminded of the dynamic work
of a young Russian, Nicholas Fechin, who has
fascinated many by the technical extravagance
and animation of his superbly original work.
One feels that here paint has been made to do
things one too seldom sees on a canvas. The
suppressed emotionalism of Whistler's paintings
seems almost dead alongside of a Redfield or
Fechin, but it has a quality of its own which is
inimitable — and vexatious, as any Whistler nat-
urally would be. The "Lady by the Shore" by

AT THE HIPPODROME

PI. ATI-. Wll

From (he Oil Painting by

(,'IFFORD BEAL, N. A.

Owned by

Martin Ryerson, Esq., Chicago, III.

THE TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT i33

Leo -Putz, shown on many occasions in this
country, discloses another method of putting on
paint which, while it is decidedly mosaic, is
nevertheless very absorbing. After some thought
about this technical procedure, I cannot help
but feel that anybody must quickly come to the
conclusion that it is just along these lines that
painting really gains in interest. The vast num-
bers of pictures painted in an abstract, meaning-
less style will certainly arouse no interest. It is
here that a conception of style formulates itself
even in the mind of the layman, who must read
ily see that the handwriting of a painter, so to
speak, is an inalienable asset of which he cannot
be deprived. On the other hand, the catchy
legerdemain performances of certain painters
are often as quick in captivating one's eye as
they are in boring one's intellect. They are often
merely skill and nothing more. But mere skill
is hardly enough, though it should be the sup-
port of the artist to facilitate the transmission of
his idea upon the canvas. Much of the modern
slovenliness of painting is due to a lack of under-
standing of technical means. The "alia prima"
methods of modern stenographic painting often
profess to have as an ideal the fluent and direct

i34 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

methods of Velasquez, Franz Hals, Hogarth, and
Whistler, without realizing that much of the
wild dash of modern art is nothing more than a
physical stunt expressing neither an idea, a
mood, nor an observation. The present-day
leaders in the field of portrait painting, men like
Sargent, Salomon, Shannon, or Blanche, never
allow one to stop with an enjoyment of mere
beauty of paint, but they carry one on into the
psychological depths of their sitters. Style is
often used to define a certain difference in char-
acter of technique, and while the word is not
applied to that alone, it includes that. It is the
technique that attracts us to certain painters
because it contains something individual; the
man's technical procedure differs from that of
any other painter; it has a personal quality.

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 135

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL

IF we placed any trust in the oft-asserted
contention that what is considered beautiful and
elevating today was not so regarded in days
gone by, and vice versa, we should deprive our-
selves of the most engaging pleasure that art
offers, namely, its multiformity of expression.
While the choice of subject matter in art
throughout succeeding periods must justly seem
most vacillating, it must again be repeated that
the same common abstract qualities of art have
endured through all times. While the subject
matter in art may naturally have changed from
one thing to another, whatever constitutes artis-
tic appeal in methods of representation will be
found a universal quality throughout all ages.
This applies not only to the abstract elements of
beauty in a work of art, those which are de-
pendent upon line and form, balance, harmony,
rhythm, color, technique, and composition and
arrangement, but also to their raisons d'etre.

The use of different subjects in art, as they
appeal to our intellect, by reason of their moral

ij6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

religious, political, and philosophical character,
has on the other hand shown a great many
variations. To many people only those pictures
are absorbing which depict the habits, morals,
and customs of bygone days and of different
periods. Undoubtedly it is this aspect of a
picture that particularly controls and fastens
the interest of the masses upon art, and for that
reason it becomes of prime importance to the
student. It will be found that the genuineness,
the veracity of atmosphere in a picture, is very
intimately connected with its power of appeal.
Since the true artists of any period convincingly
and intentionally reflected the milieu of their
days, on the other hand all historical pictures
not coincidental in their production with the
period represented are annoyingly uninteresting
and affected. The pictures which at once be-
come engaging to the mind are those which
spring from the personal experience of the artist
— irrespective of chronological affiliation with
old or modern technical schools. The fresh and
candid pictorial document belonging to any
time holds not the same charms, however, in all
cases. The subjects represented may in their
appearance differ vastly, but the spirit of sug-

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 137

gestive realism, of live interpretation, has ever
been the same in the worth-while pictures of both
new and old. It is customary with many to value
paintings according to their so-called moral
power, as expressed by the subject — as if the
subject had any part in this question of moral
uplift — as if art could moralize in the sense of
the direct moral verbal appeal of the preacher.
The artistically good and the bad religious pic-
ture will prove the wrongness of this trite idea.
The loftiness of style, the rhythmic charm, the
stately balance of a Bellini Madonna stir our
instinctive feelings of exaltation just as much
as the expression of maternal pride and devotion
in her face. On the other hand, a treatment of
the same subject that is crude and vulgar in
form, color, etc., will put one's mind into a state
of depression in which one's capacity for good is
impaired. This common confidence in the emo-
tional and spiritual effect of a subject, inde-
pendent of the abstract artistic quality inherent
in the manner of representation, to my mind is
not based on any real experience, but merely on
prejudice and confusion of ideas.

It was purely an historical accident, I feel
certain, that the first important pictures painted

ij8 POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

were of a religious character. The church, being
the moving spirit in every human activity, early
constituted itself, in its customary zeal, the first
real art patron, with the result that the earliest
important pictures were all of the ecclesiastical
kind. It would be very wrong to conclude, just
because that was the case, and with regard for
age, that all religious pictures are necessarily of
a superior order. Since the age of the Madonna
and Child is synonymous with that of many of
the world's best pictures, the popular prejudice
in favor of these is easily understood. The
astonishing fact that the first period of easel
painting has never been equalled or surpassed
in loftiness of style, imaginative fancy, and
luxurious technique, moreover, very easily ex-
plains the confusion. I certainly believe that
after the truth of its appeal to sentiment is
acknowledged in a picture, the technical method
of the canvas should always be taken into ac-
count, and if they are found to support the in-
tellectual beauty, all is well. But how rarely do
we observe any attempt at this professional
attitude among the masses! The public at large
seems to have a most perplexing time trying to
estimate comparatively one quality against the

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 139

other. Every religious picture is treated with
reverence as if in its very nature it must be good
art. That the goodness of a picture may mani-
fest itself in twofold ways — in the intelligent
representation of the idea as well as in qualities
of abstract beauty — this alone can be the foun-
dation of artistic criticism. To many laymen it
seldom occurs that a religious picture might be
bad. The idea is generally regarded as prepos-
terous, no matter how distressingly composed,
no matter how dry in paint, the picture of the
Madonna and Child may appear to be. The
conventional idea of respect for everything reli-
gious has removed the religious picture almost
entirely from the sphere of criticism. What is
true in a special way of the religious picture is
even more true of the so-called Old Master gen-
erally. The term Old Master to many means
only one thing, namely, something supremely
good and exceedingly valuable. Any old canvas
with flyspecks on it and showing in every con-
ceivable way the signs of old age is termed an
Old Master. That it might be the work of an
old time apprentice or journeyman painter sel-
dom occurs to anybody. My many visits to re-
mote places to inspect so-called Old Masters of

140 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

supposedly enormous value have never resulted
in the discovery of a single picture which would
justify its being taken from its place in the store-
room. People are perfectly hysterical about the
discovery of Old Masters. As if there were
really many yet to be discovered? Most paint-
ings worth any attention are duly known and
recognized. But the merry chase goes on, like
the proverbial hunt for buried treasure on one
of the many palm-studded islands of the Pacific.
The religious picture remains a great favorite
with the public in this regard, and the worse it
is in color and drawing, the more likely it is to
be pronounced a masterpiece. With the modern
disregard for execution and form, the blame is
partly to be laid at the door of certain schools
of modern art. The great pictures of the great
masters of the Renaissance were mostly religious
though with the influence of the church lessen-
ing and the patronage by a rich aristocracy
waxing, naturally the character of pictures
changed and Saints or Madonna and Child
ceased to be the sole motives. However, the
Christ Child and its Mother, the glorification
of the joy and tragedy of motherhood, has occu-
pied painters of all time, even to our own times

MONTEREY BAY

PLATE XXIII

From the oil Painting by
Bru< e Nelson

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 141

when men like Melchers, Brush, Thayer, and
Paxton have treated it with great sympathy
and a new meaning. During the Seventeenth
Century, the great period of painting in Spain,
religious pictures were continued in the work of
Murillo, but the portrait of the rich citizen or
the nobleman and the battle picture began to
come to the fore. Since, as already remarked,
any art period reflects the political, religious,
and economic history of its time, art has often
supplied a truthful background invaluable for
the historian. Thus to the serious student art
becomes doubly interesting, while the person
merely looking for passing pleasures in art does
away with period pictures, as merely amusing,
forgetting how we ourselves might appear if
pictorially represented to some future gallery
stroller a hundred years hence. As to people
ridiculously dressed, the last twenty years here
and abroad surely have been as sensational as
anything we might meet in the early Spanish,
French, or Dutch pictures. The Meninas by
Velasquez, with their odd and cumbersome
hoop-skirts, are not half so amusing as the
glued-on hats and curls of the early Twentieth
Century damsel.

142 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

The northern countries ultimately discarded
religious subjects entirely and went into an
artistic exploitation, with a realism sometimes
very frank, of subject matter which often shocks
the Puritan. We hear constantly that in spite
of the realistic depiction of every-day occur-
rences in the art of the Seventeenth Century
Dutch, their art was great and on a par with
the best of the world. These Dutch painters —
Rembrandt, Terborch, Ver Mehr van Delft,
Metsu, Brouwer, Teniers, Jan Steen — they knew
how to impart to their work a charm of abstract
beauty, a feeling of conviction which will make
any painting attractive. Pictures like theirs,
having a quality of beauty in line and form and
color, do not suffer by reason of subject, pro-
viding it is not directly debasing. The Dutch
painters certainly proved this very forcibly.
The Dutch were also the first to introduce still-
life as an independent subject of very ambitious
proportions. Jan Weenix, with his photographic
still-lifes reflecting in the highlights of the pol-
ished metal the whole interior of the studio, are
still looked at in the museums of Holland and
Germany with amazement and boundless joy.
They are said to have been painted under a

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 143

microscope and they certainly give one that
impression. They are great demonstrations of
the small value of the time of their painters, and
also of their lack of understanding of the limita-
tions of painting. While perfect in drawing,
they are very unsatisfactory in texture, and
every article in them looks almost as if made
from glass. This glassy, transparent quality is
more helpful in the representation of glassy
things like glass itself, or polished surfaces like
marble, copper bowls, or hand-polished fruit.
But when it comes to pieces of fabric, carpets,
and velvet particularly, the whole thing be-
comes inconsistent. This school of the Dutch
still-life painters still has its followers, though
our modern painters certainly show more knowl-
edge in the handling of textures. Hondecoter
was the really wonderful man in that field, and
his barnyard pictures will always remain most
interesting for beautiful design, bold handling,
fine characterization, and for the curiously hu-
man fowl. The veracious art of the sturdy
Dutch finds its antithesis in the ultra-refined art
of the English portrait painter, such as Gains-
borough, Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner, and
others. While the Dutch painters painted

144 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

invariably the true physical aspects of things, the
English strove for an idealized spiritual repre-
sentation of their aristocracy and upper classes.
We admire the stately dignity of the English
school, but it assuredly does not give us much
of an insight into the life of the English people.
Hogarth practically stands out alone as the
cool observer, the biting critic, the sometimes
snarly cynic, among the painters of England,
showing in bold ruthlessness the vices, corrupt
politics, and decadent home life of some of his
contemporaries. Hogarth's position as an in-
dividualistic analyzer of his time foreshadows
the even more personal outlook and self-realiza-
tion expressed in modern art. In the long run,
Hogarth as a figure will retain the admiration of
the world, not so much for the bold manner of
his painting as for his broad and illuminating
conception of his professional responsibilities.
Art has always been in England, more than any-
where else, the interest of the rich, though the
true art of the people, curiously enough, was
advocated first by William Morris, in the seven-
ties, when he laid the foundation, by his work,
his writings, and his preachings, of what we
now enjoy as the new school, particularly in

IN THE VALLEY

PI.ATK XXIV

From the Oil Painting bv

Joseph T. Pearson, Jr.

Owned by the

University Cub. Philadelphia. Pa.

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 145

applied art. To point at the constant change
in aesthetic ideals as a proof that art is simply
a matter of taste is an argument much used by
the public. But to choose a subject and inter-
pret it in the right environment is not always an
easy task. There is hardly a greater step than
from the Dutch painter to the English portrait
painter, although we know that the two are in-
timately connected by the art of Van Dyck,
who laid the foundation for the great English
Eighteenth Century school, and in his more
polished and restrained art bridged over from
the sensuous realism of Rubens to the refined
portraits of Gainsborough and Reynolds.

It is most puzzling that the ideal of physical
beauty painted by the Dutch is scarcely sym-
pathetic to anybody excepting the Dutch peo-
ple. Again, their independence in art, resisting
the southern tradition in aesthetics as well as
any attempt from that side to interfere with
their political existence, culminated in a spirit
of freedom that is well-nigh amazing. They
could neither be seduced by the exotic nor
forced by arms to be anybody but themselves.
The aesthetic ideal of the Dutch was home-
made. However, the shock is great to the

146 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

average American travelling abroad for the first
time, when he sees the many florid pictures by
Rubens or Jordaens in England, France, Hol-
land, and Germany. They are positively pro-
voking to him at first, though eventually he
learns to admire their skill and technique, their
joyous expression, and their big, decorative
style. The Dutch are absolutely by themselves
in the outspoken realism of their art. It is sim-
ply the reflection of the life of these people,
whose every manner and whose language were
and still are free from prudishness and false
modesty. Van Dyck carries over into his
adopted country all the technical brilliancy of
his great teacher, and in the studies of Gains-
borough, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the others
this grows into the stately and untempera-
mental dignity of a calm and more stoic race.
To the English, who had no understanding of the
often peculiar pleasantries of Dutch country
life, the turning up of the seamy side of life, as
the Dutch sometimes did, appealed even less.
The difference may seem radical between the
highest expression of the Dutch and of the Eng-
lish, but not any more so than between the two
of them and the Watteaus, Fragonards, and

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 147

Bouchers of the Eighteenth Century French.
While art in England portrayed idealistically
many people of high position and was always
careful to leave a good moral impression for the
future historian, the French painter of the
Eighteenth Century cared naught for the deluge
to come after him. These French painters
snapped their fingers in the face of future his-
torians, and in representations of lax morals
surpassed even the coarse naturalism of the
Dutch. The many frank scenes of bibulous
peasantry making love to their rotund women
that we see in Adrian Brouwer, Jan Steen,
Teniers, and others, are devoid of the graceful,
conventional mannerisms the gallant French-
man displays in the art of the fastidious painters
of the periods of Louis XV. and XVI. The
Dutch painter dwells upon the moral looseness
of his people by using as models the very same
people in their everyday surroundings, while the
Frenchman puts wings on them, so to speak,
and transfers them into Arcadia. It is simply
another phase of the change of the aesthetic
ideal, an ideal that will never seem the same,
and will always find its expression in some phase
of the political, social, and moral background

148 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

of a people. So long as the art expression of a
people is in harmony with some characteristic
phase of their life, there will never be anything
wrong with it. It is only when the art of one
country is bodily transplanted into foreign na-
tion that bad will result. The craving for the
exotic and the affectation of an ideal based on
alien backgrounds has diverted the attention of
many good painters from the fields of inspira-
tion in their immediate surroundings. The
cloudy mirroring of their own civilization was
the inevitable result of their short-sightedness
and lack of real interest in their work.

We see the half-digested art of the Paris atel-
ier in the modern Filipino paraded as a so-
called national art of that country. The effect
is grotesque, to say the least. The many efforts
of well-prepared modern painters to revive in
their art the civilization of bygone days is always
singularly pathetic. The classicising and fragile
art of an Alma Tadema is hardly a contribution
to the art of the present age, in spite of its popu-
larity. That the great periods had no naturalis-
tic painters, in the modern sense, is doubtless
regrettable, but we get all we ever wish to know
about their lives, manners, and contribution

THK STORM

PLATE XXV

From the Oil Painting by
Hermann Dudley Murphy

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 149

through other channels, and the pleasant plati-
tudes of such a painter as Alma Tadema, whose
every effort is uninteresting by reason of a lack
of wholesome imagination, will not tell us any
more than is already known. The beginning of
decay in any art has always been foreshadowed
by the borrowing of the methods and subjects
of bygone periods and of other peoples, and art
never was more interesting and wholesome than
when it was concerned exclusively with the re-
stricted atmosphere of a natural or racial unit.
Greece, the Renaissance, the Gothic period, the
art of the modern French, of Sweden, Norway,
and Finland, and even the art of America will
illustrate this point. The great ideal art of any
people has come out of the logical development
of their particular civilization, and the reac-
tionary methods of the Nineteenth Century
painters had to lead inevitably to the revolt,
the full importance of which we are made to feel
right now. What really constitutes the aesthetic
ideal in pictures nowadays is hard to say. There
is one part of the profession who think any old
established way is good enough for them. They
compare themselves with any older generation
of painters of any period. They are naturally

/So POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

opposed to anything which might force them to
unlearn old ideas and study new ways. To this
class belong all of the successful older present day
academic painters. The other is the modern
man generally, the younger member of the pro-
fession, who for many reasons, all of which are
very human and interesting, is generally op-
posed to anything the older ones do. Sometimes
he is a mere faker, realizing that the easiest way
to publicity and notoriety is to be different, and
he finds that very easy. To be contrary has been
at all times the attribute of the seeker of the
limelight. He has never known the rudiments
of the old school. Hard work is not an experience
of his life, and everything he does he values in
proportion to the ease with which it can be
accomplished. He often belongs to a mutual
admiration society, frequently large, and the
general attitude of the public toward all societies
of that type — the same attitude it takes toward
quarantined people — permits such coteries to
flourish unmolested until they die from persis-
tent anaemia. Works by these men go some-
times into respectable exhibitions, and certain
people who yearn for new sensations hypnotize
themselves into the belief that they are witness-

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 151

ing the beginnings of a new art. This sort of art
enthusiasm is not uncommon, and flourishes
anywhere. However, not all innovators are of
this kidney. The really earnest ones have grad-
uated from the conventional school, sometimes
with conspicuous honors. They have become
dissatisfied with the monotony of repeated per-
formances, and led by perfectly honest motives,
they begin to experiment, invariably with no
idea of reward of any kind. Often they make
great sacrifices in their search for a new expres-
sion of their ideas, go into seclusion as a proof
of their seriousness — and work! Just now we
are confronted with the results of such experi-
mental art, and the perplexities of the public
have grown almost unbearable. Although a cer-
tain consternation reigns, with remarkable
unanimity the public insists upon being amused
by these latest efforts. Despite solemn warnings
from the historically inclined that similar things
have happened before, and that contempt has
turned into approval, this time no such warning
has any effect. The typical examples of great
innovators are pointed out over and over again
— Constable's pathetic experience, the Barbizon
men in general, and particularly the great

152 PAINTERS ', PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

French Impressionists of the seventies, Monet,
Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, and others. But to no
avail; the public refuses to take these latest
innovators seriously. The chief cause for the
refusal lies in a certain lack of similarity of con-
ditions. While on former occasions only things
physically visible were involved, our new art
professes to have invaded the realm of the
psychic — that is to say, claims that painting has
rather suddenly ceased to be an objective ex-
pression and has turned to give visual form to
subjective motives of the artist, who, owing to
a change of circumstances to be pointed out in
a chapter hereinafter on "Art Patronage," no
longer finds it either necessary or useful to paint
objects for their own sake and so to have his
subjective feelings subordinated. We have had
always the "art of art's sake" painter, but the
rabid negation of the traditional has never
assumed such violent form as in certain in-
stances today. It has become very largely a
direct contest between the objective painter of
the past and the subjective individualist who
seems to sense possibilities in the part of paint-
ing heretofore never regarded as properly its
field.

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 153

Here, immediately, the great question of the
limitation of pictorial expression is brought up,
and there, to my mind, lies the whole trouble.
No sensible person will deny the right of experi-
mentation to any person technically gifted, and
we are usually bound to respect any honest ex-
periment, but whether we should ipso facto take
as final and conclusive a new outlook heretofore
never connected with the aims of painting, as
to this, I think caution, if not suspicion, is surely
warranted. What is generally designated as
Cubism is of course no novelty to any painter
with academic training. The novelty merely
consists in presenting something as a finished
thing which was formerly looked upon as a basic
constructive start. From Egyptian and Assyrian
days to the present we find the cubistic principle
of drawing and also of painting. It is a perfectly
sound principle, a nursery idea which no painter
can afford to neglect. To see and represent
things geometrically in planes is the most
primitive method of reproduction, and the most
economical at the same time. Japanese wood-
carvings of older periods and modern wood toys
are as typical as the paintings which attempt
representation in the same fashion. The cubistic

154 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

idea is absolutely sound, and nothing but a
most healthy expression of the objections of
certain men in the profession against insipid and
loose construction of pictures. Cubism is con-
structively inherent in any good painting,
whether of old or new schools. To make it the
single feature of a picture denuded of any other
quality is of course objectionable to any person
trained in the belief that the constructive fea-
tures of a picture must be modified by decorative
aspects. A building left in the raw, so to speak,
merely in steel construction, is artistic some-
times if the engineer happened to feel his ma-
terial, as does an artist. Eventually it will be
clothed by the varied and modified forms of the
architect. Sometimes steel alone is not at
all uninteresting, and occasionally this fact is
acknowledged by doing the unconventional
thing and not covering up the engineer's work
with traditional architectural forms. The artis-
tic idea will always assert itself unless art ceases
to exist, and the fact that it has been suppressed
so vigorously by certain Cubists proves merely
their resentment against the meaningless repe-
tition of trivial things, particularly of the
pretty-pretty or sickly sweet variety. Asso-

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 155

dated with the constructive Cubism of many
modern artists is a demand for primitiveness in
color as well as in form. It is the logical step in
eliminating all mild and mushy middle tones for
the modelling of these figures, and is absolutely
consistent with the underlying idea of sim-
plicity. Some of the things which have been
produced in that vein are wonders of action and
of pattern. The Cubists do refuse to use the
conventional principles of rhythm, which play
a very important part in academic work. The
best of the Cubist work, Cezanne's, Picabia's, and
Picasso's, certainly is bound to find high place in
the history of art, and it is already evident that
the effect of the movement has been most bene-
ficial to art. Let us imagine, for a moment, what
might have happened if Cubism had not been
revived for us at this time in such vigorous lan-
guage. The complacent and gouty self-satisfac-
tion of the great masses of painters would by
this time have arrived at a point where it could
only be called sickening. The vigorous spirit of
the Cubists and their contagious method of
plastic thinking have given new impetus to art.
The best of their art is decidedly decorative,
reverting to the old original idea of the true

IS6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

function of painting, and that fact alone should
be greeted with approval.

I wish I were equally certain in my feelings
about the Futurist, whose procrastinating title
savors of conceit. He may be innocent of choos-
ing it, but the title has stuck, and increased one's
bias. The Futurist, by reason of this, will
always lay claim to be the latest. I confess he is
somewhat obscure to me, not so much in his
aims as in his attainments. I respect his at-
tempts, but often have no understanding of the
result. I believe he is as serious as his half-
brother the Cubist. Personally, I doubt whether
psychic emotion can be represented by pictorial
formulae. To me, the Diisseldorf painter with
his literary subjects was just as wrong as the
Futurist with his effects which might be more
successfully approached by literature or music.
But it remains to be seen, and we can well afford
to wait, since the great majority of painters have
decided to remain within the limitations of the
older schools. The public remains perplexed and
makes no effort to hide its feelings of disap-
proval. Why worry over it? Those who saw a
new world open up to them when the Futurists
or Post-Impressionists generally held their first

PORTRAIT OK ELMER S. HADER

PLATKXW I

From the Oil Painting by

1 . Si BNI I R MACKV

CHANGES IN THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 157

studio teas, had no doubt honest intentions in
giving the larger public a chance for observation
in public exhibitions. It would have been far
better if all of those experimental efforts had
remained with their sires. But it was the great
nation above all others willing to be used as an
experimental rabbit which opened its doors to
the new school in a large exhibition in New York
in 1913. When one considers that not one in
fifty people in this country of ours can appre-
ciate a conventionally painted picture, this ex-
hibition can only be called a futile though a well-
meant effort. Our method of bodily transplant-
ing the very latest to our shores, when other and
older nations have not yet taken a definite stand,
was typified in this Armory exhibition at New
York in 1913.

It is not improbable that our aesthetic ideals
will undergo a very radical change within the
next few decades. On the other hand the pendu-
lum may swing back, but that does not absolve
us from the responsibility of appreciating the
art problems of the day as they are expressed
in the more conventional paintings of our exhi-
bitions. The Cubist, the Futurist, or to use the
collective name, the Post-Impressionist, became

i $8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

a rebel in the evolution of his aesthetic con-
science. His experiences, his disappointments,
in the traditional methods made him what he is
today, and the serious student of art cannot
hope to reach his point of view by any different
road. The understanding of his aims must
spring from a firm belief in the broader meaning
of art as a medium for the realization of a per-
sonality, rather than a trade for the manufac-
ture of pleasing pictorial effects. However, the
foundations of all art will always be sincerity.

THE NUDE IN ART 159

THE NUDE IN ART

IN the heyday of ancient Greece, the undraped
human figure was the supreme expression of
representative art. Our museums abound not
only in eloquent fragments of the sculptures
of the Greeks, but also in complete copies of
their statues. Although the most of them are
only in white plaster, they nevertheless readily
convince us of the fact that the inspired Greek
artist fully understood the nobility of the
beauty of the human form.

In contemplating the vast galaxy of unclad
beauties, mostly reclining, which liberally dotted
the walls of the Fine Arts Palace at the Panama-
Pacific International Exposition, one is set to
think about the underlying motives of this
promiscuous pictorial specilization in human
forms.

It is evident that the classic point of view is
present in only a very few instances, and that
the greater number of nudes had little to do
with abstract beauty of proportion of line and
rhythm of form. We all know that to a Greek

i6o PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

sculptor or vase painter a human body was first
of all a symbol of nature, the very noblest
product of creation from a purely artistic point
of view. Even though these statues and por-
traits bear the jiames of individuals, their
abstract beauty is so compelling as to make us
forget the personality represented. Often these
noble forms are a type of beauty, an idealized
expression of what probably did not in reality
exist, either then or todav. All of the statues of
Apollo or of Venus possessed in common certain
qualities of beauty which frequently assumed
almost the character of an artistic convention.
This conventional treatment may be summed
up in the term — classic style.

What, then, more definitely, is this classic
style and why do we seem so lacking in it? In-
dubitably it was not a faithful reproduction of one
particular figure, but rather the result of obser-
vations of a great many models, each contribut-
ing in its way to stimulate the artist's sense of
form and proportion. The classic statues have
been analyzed by the philosophically inclined
archaeologist and a canon of beauty laid down
as representing the fundamental artistic require-
ments of the human proportions in art. Any-

THE PALACE OF FINE ARTS, SAN FRANCISCO

PLATE XXVII

From the Oil Painting by

Colin Campbell Coopek, N. a.

THE NUDE IN ART 161

body may have access to this table of measure-
ments nowadays. It is the common property of
all artists. And still our nudes, in sculpture or
in painting, are scarcely as good as the classic
figures. I take it that the idea of physical repre-
sentation, or rather imitation, never guided the
great Greek artist in his work. The naturalistic
figure is a creation of the modern dime-museum,
the most nefarious agency for the perversion of
public taste. Possibly the great sculptor of the
past, if he had had at his command the technical
facilities of the modern age, might have been
tempted to imitate with the idea of absolute de-
ception. However, imitation did not appeal to
him, neither of form nor of colour, and still
artist and lay-public alike admire the beauty of
classic sculpture. People even rave over it when
sadly diluted into small machine-made replicas
in marble from Italian sculpture-factories. It is
probably in that case the marble that lures the
multitude. Marble seems to be rated higher
than any other substance, though it went beg-
ging after the fire of 1906 in San Francisco, when
great quantities of good marble of many aban-
doned doorsteps were carried off for pavements.
To me those small Italian commercial replicas

162 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

certainly hold but little inspiration in their cold,
machine-made, technical brutality.

But to return to the live, pulsating quality of
the ancient marble. The individual model, pos-
ing for such a figure, became subordinated to the
artistic formula based on form and line and pro-
portion. Nothing is simpler and more convinc-
ing, as showing the dignified formality of such
art, than the treatment of the hair; and the
same conventional handling of the major parts
of the body, and of many minor details as well
was carried out almost on the basis of a uniform
artistic understanding. The ears were always
beautiful in proportion and well attached. They
did not so much express individuality in ears as
an ideal ear, made up of all the qualities of the
most perfect ears that could be found. The
hands, the feet, were shaped as nature produces
them but seldom and only in her most favorite
children. But what has remained of this artistic
conception of the human form in our present-
day figures ? We see little of it after the disinte-
gration of the Roman Empire until the Renais-
sance, several periods intervening of the most
primitive childlike renderings of human form.
The Renaissance, again, gave us many noble

THE NUDE IN ART 163

expressions of undraped human forms which a
prej udiced world unfortunately declines to receive
on the same basis as the ancient classics. With
the northward movement of art, the human
form, owing to climatic conditions, apparently
became less familiar to artists, and more and
more obscured, owing to the artists' lack of
every-day opportunities for the study of the
nude, an opportunity which the Greek sculptors
enjoyed in their gymnasia and elsewhere. I
wonder what would have happened if figure art
had become the heritage of a civilized people
living in the tropics?

The artist of the north found himself obliged
to resort to the artificialities of the studio model,
and to all appearances he has never — with few
exceptions — been able to free himself from the
influence of the individual, the one person
among many whom he might see unconven-
tionally devoid of garments. This limited oppor-
tunity for study may be one cause of the many
banalities present-day sculptors and painters
too often perpetrate. In many cases their pro-
ductions are nothing but imitations; too seldom
are they translations or interpretations by
means of artistic symbols. Many are outspoken

164 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

in their outright brazen attempt to be sugges-
tive and even sensual. For these we are in-
debted, I believe, to a certain coterie of modern
French painters who either accidentally or by
cunning produced many nudes of the kind now
universally recognized as the American saloon
nude. Water will find its level, and the saloon
nude, conceived in the saloon spirit, never could
rise to an appeal free from the base atmosphere
of its sphere of influence. Most of these pictures
are openly sensual, and one cannot but admire
the unalloyed honesty of the efforts of their
painters in that regard. No other potentialities
of appeal — and there are some — in these pic-
tures have any chance. This type of picture was
scarcely taken half so seriously here as abroad,
and the unabashed naivete of the many pseudo-
Bouguereaus who produced countless Eves,
Venuses, and other alluring ladies is really
amazing. As far as that noble institution, the
saloon nude, is concerned, we seem to have con-
quered the mania, and eventually we will cast
it into oblivion, together with the temple in
which it symbolized the physical nature of its
devotees. But the nudes still continue to ap-
pear, or rather imitations of the naked studio

MORNING

PLATE XXVIII

From the Oil Painting by
Norwood H. MacGILVARI

THE NUDE IN ART 165

models which the artist was neither able to for-
get, owing to the rarety of the occasion, nor to
put into artistic language. Far too many mod-
ern nudes impress one as mere literal imitations
of a particular model, sometimes to an embar-
rassing degree of photographic physical resem-
blance.

It is so very tempting, owing to the possibili-
ties of deception in the painter's medium nowa-
days, to yield to a desire to imitate. The worker
in three dimensions, the sculptor in marble,
knows that nobody will take his creation for the
real, but the painter, although he is deprived of
the third dimension in his work — in the physical
sense — often allows himself to cater to a cer-
tain public taste and produce the near-photo-
graphic. It seems to me that as with everything
else, the best nudes might be painted out of the
head, as Bocklin, the German-Swiss, painted
his in practically all of his flgural compositions.
Such naked, sea-roving creatures as he painted
could not be found in the flesh, and that reason
alone eventually forced him into absolute inde-
pendence of models. Many of the greatest
painters must undoubtedly have produced their
work in that way. How otherwise could

i66 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

Jordaens, Snyders, or even Rubens have painted
their large canvases of human anatomy with
such remarkable spontaneousness and ease?
Those things cannot be done in the presence of
the models nor directly from smaller sketches
and studies.

The most flagrant of examples of this photo-
graphic type of so-called art was "Stella."
Have you seen Stella? Well, I fancy you have
seen that reposing damsel, of coke-oven color-
ing. The pigs in the painting in the Argentine
Section, at the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition, glowing with colour, which looked
as if they had swallowed some burning incan-
descent lamp, were in no way inferior to the
naturalistic, apoplectic, roseate hues of Stella.
But aside from the colour, so effectively en-
hanced by orange reflectors, carefully concealed,
what of her so-called beauty? What of her so-
called aesthetic charm, of which we were told so
enthusiastically? It must have pleased many a
high school boy to discover an atmosphere of
indecency sanctioned by popular approval. But
was there really any beauty about this picture?
Honestly, does anybody think he could live with
such a picture, such a roseate incarnation of

THE NUDE IN ART 167

farm-maid's plumpness? Of course I take it the
illusion of reality was a great factor in the whole
affair, but as a matter of form, proportion, and
abstract beauty, Stella was a sad piece of aca-
demic draughtsmanship. I shall forthwith be
accused of jealousy by that part of the public
who know my small efforts in paint and who
believe that the manner of painting seen in
Stella is so difficult that jealousy prompts me to
make such emphatic statements. The portfolios
of the average well-trained painter contain many
convincing indications of his ability to paint
photographic likeness of a nude, and Stella is
nothing but a work of either immaturity or con-
scious deceit. Stella as a starting point is most
interesting, because it is an emphatic example of
the sensuous nude which in the very artificiality
of its existence has no relation to our own time.
The undraped figure is not as common a sight
in our midst as in the classic periods, and that
consideration alone makes the position of the
modern painter of figures doubly difficult, and
human weakness puts many temptations in his
way. He ought more and more to be satisfied
with a conventional form. He ought to appeal
to our artistic senses, and not to the physical

168 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

instincts. There was nothing noble about
Stella, and a good deal that was base, vulgar,
physical. However, many of the nudes in the
legitimate art exhibition were of similar cali-
ber, particularly in Portuguese art, where the
most offensive examples of mere physical naked-
ness abounded. The life-size marble portrait of
a society lady without any clothes, not even the
proverbial fig-leaf, presented a sad mixture of
technical dullness and hopeless insipidity of
style. As an example of close study of the nude
nothing could have been more painstaking. But
the horrible nakedness of the thing is appalling.
Anybody who lives in the home town of the artist
and model must have been morbidly pleased at
having thus been taken into the confidence of the
lady. In other words, she is an individual, defi-
nite person, and not even being possessed of
good proportions, she appears merely naked,
devoid of idealization, with no appeal to one's
sense of beauty. One feels the colossal waste of
material, time, and energy. In her company I
observed a typical nude allegory, a reclining
studio nude, unconvincingly put into an aquatic
background. What a difference between a per-
formance, if it is a performance at all, of this

THE NUDE IN ART i6g

type and Besnard's lady with the rabbits, in
the Luxemburg! Some may little care for the
vigorous colour of Besnard, but the personality
of this energetic painter manifests itself in every
artistic phase of this very remarkable nude.
Although it deals with feminine charm of a some-
what over-ripe type, the wonderful harmony of
artistic expression of what may well have been
an entirely out-of-the-head painting is most
compelling. The distribution of light and shade,
the effect of the sunlight, the live flesh and
sound anatomical construction, are all active
in making it a very commanding performance.
Though florid and Rubens-like in type, it is a
masterly picture, and it might be called "Na-
ture" in its wonderful wealth of fine colour,
light, and animated drawing. Representing the
opposite, the nudes by Mercie challenge com-
parison by their sweet bonbon-box-cover type.
They are, as far as I have observed, the more
popular of the two, but for what reason is hard
to understand, unless the crescent ornaments in
the hair of his ladies account for it. In the Bes-
nard nude the face is concealed behind the
raised arm of the figure. The faces of Mercie's
nudes show the charming harmlessness of a wax

170 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

doll of the better type. No character, nothing —
just a face with two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and
other accessories — though a certain idealization
of the form of the body contributes the saving
grace of these trivial pictures. As to painting,
I do not think it was fair to have them hung as
they were in San Francisco, as pendants to Bes-
nard, but still, who could hang in the company
of that dynamo — perhaps Simon.

On the whole, the French seem now to pre-
serve a much more subjective attitude in their
art, from the point of view of the painter, than
the other countries. The international section
at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
contained a delightful nude at the spring, of
wonderful texture and great restraint. In this
age of actualities, the nude by Agthe was very
gratifying in contrast with the many atelier
studies of naked women hung in the American
section. Such things as Gutmann's lady with
the parrot as the protector of her virtues and a
small velvet ribbon as an identification mark
was as banal as anything I have seen for some
time. It was well painted, in a general way, but
why indulge in the cheap trick of attracting at-
tention by such means? In the same class must

THE NUDE IN ART 171

be put Glackens's fragments of a discomposing
lady propped up on a chaise longue.

What may be done in the modern naturalistic
vein Carles demonstrates in a small, square pic-
ture of a nude against a dark background, pre-
sented to the San Francisco Art Association by
Mrs. Harriman. If we had a half-dozen more
nudes of the Carles type, it would be well, but
the Glackens type certainly is of no profit either
to the profession or to the public. Friesecke's
pictures, with their healthy glamour of colour,
life, light, and atmosphere, strike a particu-
larly happy note, though his outdoor nudes are
only half as interesting as his boudoir scenes.
Friesecke has the faculty of making use of the
model without being everlastingly under the
spell of the individual's physical features. His
art achieves a personal style, the individual note
possessed by Besnard, and it is charmingly com-
pelling in more than one way. Particularly in-
teresting is Robert Reid's nude before a Japan-
ese screen, owned by Mr. Spencer Kellog. One
feels that is not merely an academic study of a
model, but an underlying idea as well. My
imagination may be playing me a trick when I
see some very subtle symbolism in this com-

172 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

bination of what is popularly but wrongly called
a stork in this country and the somewhat pen-
sive attitude of the graceful young woman.
Reid gives such individual technical charm to
his easel pictures that they at once assume a
quality of their own. Of a totally different type,
Sargent's well-known Nubian girl compelled
great interest, not to be compared to the im-
pressionistic technical methods of a painting of
the Reid type, but most interesting from a very
keen quality of rhythmic outline, which ran
spirally through the picture from top to bottom.
It is a wonderful accomplishment, this Nubian
girl, in spite of its naturally leathery colour. As
in Reid's seated figure, one had here again the
satisfaction that the artist went beyond the
model in emphasizing certain suggested quali-
ties which, accentuated, became the real note
of interest in the picture.

Essentially, the trouble nowadays with so
many painters of the nude is that they are
utterly unable to free themselves from the influ-
ence of the individual before them. It is here,
again, as with the landscape painter of immature
attitude. He copies directly, clinging desper-
ately to the belief that his only salvation lies in

C ARM EL COAST

ri.ATK XXIX

From the Oil Painting by
William Ritsi hel, n. a.

THE NUDE IN ART 173

the faithfulness of his adherence to the fact.
In a nude of similar conception, this becomes
doubly painful because the indelicate exposure
of a more or less defective individual thus
brought about adds to the discomfort of the
observer, who is seldom rewarded for his pa-
tience by other artistic qualities in the picture.
The Greek artist did not give us this personal
introduction to the model. He does not reveal
the privacy of physical characteristics of an in-
dividual model. It was partly this physicalness
in painting which moved the Puritan forefathers
to turn against art; unable to resist, in their
curious lack of self-control, they condemned all
art and poured out the child with the bath. The
suggestion of immorality which there is in art
for many people is related to the incompetency
of the professional painters who are unable to
rise above mere physical suggestion. There is
something repulsive about the vulgarity of the
portrait nude that mitigates against the fair
treatment of the whole problem in the hands of
the public. In other words, the nude which has
an artistic message is luckily devoid of the
voluptuous. Its claim is not physical, but
based on rhythmic contour, good proportion

174 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

and spacing within the frame, and pure color
and tonal qualities.

One of the very finest examples of modern art,
one that is beyond all question free from the
suggestive and full of the logic of its milieu, is
Millet's "Goose Girl," in a private gallery in
Bordeaux. Here we see the budding form of a
country girl, relinquishing her task of leading
the village flock of geese and quietly dipping
into the shallow waters of a pool. Whether ever
observed in actuality by the artist or not I
neither question nor know — I well can go fur-
ther, and say I do not care at all — but the whole
situation is so convincing in everything that
nothing but complete aesthetic satisfaction will
result from a contemplation of this Millet mas-
terpiece. As another example of absolute purity
of form, devoid of any base quality, Arthur
Matthews's "Art and Nature" deserves high
praise for its singular conbination of strength
and idealism. How sadly unconvincing, along-
side of these, is the "September Morning" by
Chabas — that much-known picture of dubious
reputation. It is a shame that it should be so,
because it is a masterpiece of liquid painting,
but the artist is not free from the accusation of

THE NUDE IN ART 175

being guilty of putting a pampered Parisian
model into surroundings in which she is not at
home. It is the aesthetic antithesis of Millet's
"Goose Girl." It does not ring true, and the
Chicago policeman who exceeded his authority
by having it removed from the gaze of the curi-
ous public confessed to a fitting artistic instinct
which the artist himself did not have, or did not
care to exercise. The latter, of course, can be
the only assumption in a man who has given so
many evidences of excellent artistic powers.

Idealization is not one of the qualities ac-
cepted as necessary in a painting among a great
many of the radical naturalists of present-day
schools, but while one may rarely be offended
by the candid realism of a still-life or landscape,
the insistent vulgarity of the modern nude in art
is scarcely reconciliable with aesthetic demands.
We are indebted to modern tendencies for much
wholesome agitation, not always successful in
its results, but in the interpretation of the hu-
man form we are farther than ever away from
the classic ideal.

iy6 POINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

ON ART PATRONAGE

WHILE in the historic periods of the de-
velopment of European art practical support
was furnished exclusively by the dominant reli-
gious and political organizations, such as the
church and the aristocracy, the growth of art
here in America clearly demonstrates how in a
truly democratic country the very life and exis-
tence of art may well depend entirely upon the
broadest kind of popular support, and not
merely upon the interest of a few of the well-to-do
or socially prominent or ambitious. Patronage
of art has never been confined in this coun-
try to any small, select group of interests cen-
tralized in the church, the government or the
moneyed aristocracy, and it is this fact that
raises one's hopes to expect more of the art of
our country in the future than of that of any
modern country abroad, where conditions in art
patronage have suffered little modification.

During the greater part of the Renaissance
the church was practically the sole patron.
Artists looked to the church for commissions to

WHAT AN INDIAN THINKS

PLATE W\

From thr Oil Painting by

Maynard Dixon

Owned by

F. M. DANZIGER, Esq., Los Angeles. Cal.

ON AR T PATRONAGE 177

support themselves and those dependent upon
them, and this one-sided patronage, as at any-
other period, produced a very one-sided art,
reflecting only one definite phase of civilization.
We are almost forced to believe that the artists
took no interest in the many artistic suggestions
which must undoubtedly have come to them in
those days from the many other varied aspects
of life; one looks in vain for anything that might
indicate that their Italy was populated by any-
thing but Madonnas and Saints. This concen-
tration upon one subject naturally produced
the flower of religious paintings, but it shows
also what exclusive patronage will result in.
Eventually, the worldly nobles and the moneyed
aristocrats assumed the responsibility of caring
for the promotion of artistic aims, either to
gratify aesthetic ambition or for purely selfish
purposes of self-glorification. And so we find
during practically all of the fifteenth and six-
teenth century periods, throughout many coun-
tries, art put into the service of the aristocracy,
to help preserve their positions by perpetuating
the dazzling, awe-inspiring phases of their more
or less artificial existence. The masses had to be
impressed with the wealth, the power, and the

i?8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

glory of the reigning families to keep them
cowed and in servile obedience. A true art of
the common people in those days did not exist.
The early Dutch, so independent in many ways,
had far less of this sycophantic attitude toward
religious and political institutions, and one feels
with great joy, on more than one occasion, that
the antics of the lower classes, as one sees them
in the pictures of Breughel, Steen, Brouwer,
etc., must, at the time of their production, have
violated all the traditional rules of the academic
dignity of accepted subjects. One enjoys noth-
ing more than the betes noirs of these various
periods — those independent, socialistic spirits
who scorn the artificial, and like Hogarth among
the English, jump into the whirlpool of every-
day life. History shows, very consistently and
gradually, the slipping away of the arts from
the grasp of the church and the state.

So today no government openly dares to pre-
scribe subjects for the pictures of its state-sup-
ported prize students, although everything is
tried to encourage young artists to help in the
perpetuation of the system in power and in
making more secure existing political institu-
tions. To the church, the change amounts

ON ART PATRONAGE 179

almost to a pathetic collapse. The religious painter
exists no more — there is simply no such thing
as a religious painting in the sense of the old
sycophantic flattery of the Roman Catholic
Church, although I believe we are by no means
less religious than our deceased forefathers.
There is a splendid opportunity for our young-
est sister of the family of churches, born on our
own soil, to avail itself, in its generous way, of
art for the popularizing of its institutions. The
whole question of patronage has changed, and
it presents, here in America particularly, some
most interesting and novel phases.

The most significant thing is the growing in-
dependence of the modern artist as compared
with the older man. Where little was done ex-
cept by commission, a spirit of self-satisfaction
and loss of individuality could easily develop,
while in our modern age the artist's thoughts are
seldom diverted from his work by the interested
patron. That is to say, modern artists produce,
first of all, to satisfy themselves, to realize their
own ideal, irrespective of the objective use and
application of the picture. The modern spirit in
art owes much to its freedom from official pat-
ronage, and it is singularly true that the path-

180 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

finders, the innovators in art, could dare to fol-
low their convictions only on account of this
very severance of official patronage and the
artist.

Originally, in the earlier days of American
civilization, we cared naught for the home pro-
duct in art — in fact we most consistently pre-
ferred art made abroad. The few artists at home
were given to understand that there was no
hope for them in this great country. This
pseudo-civilization continued for a long time,
even into the days of the middle of the last cen-
tury, when we had already produced good
artists like Innes, whose work compared favor-
ably with that of then popular European col-
leagues. The only thing these artists could do,
often, was to scrape enough money together and
turn to countries where governments and asso-
ciations more kindly disposed were willing to fill
their pockets and decorate their yawning but-
tonholes. That artists have to live, seldom
occurred to anybody at that time in this coun-
try, and our very rapidly increasing art patron-
age of today is probably more often moved by a
vain^desire for something we observe other
nations in proud possession of than by an

ON ART PATRONAGE 181

acknowledgment of the responsibilities of the
public toward the artist. In our very earliest
days of American art, in Colonial days, the his-
torians tell us of the signs for tradesmen's shops
our painters had to produce in order to eke out a
living. Since Watteau and even Titian and
others did similar things, no odium should be
attached to this experience of the American
painter. I think conditions generally were no
different in our pioneer days from what had
been the case under similar conditions abroad.
Slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity,
we have changed, and at the present moment an
art interest is holding the country in a grip so
vital that one almost fears its ability to develop
any further. It is interesting to compare present
methods of support abroad with those in the
United States. Abroad, it is still the govern-
ment, officially, which controls the channels
through which the artist receives his financial
and social encouragement, and the latter is by
no means less welcome than the former. Human
vanity has in the past deprived America and
does even yet of the presence of a great many
very capable painters who would rather live in a
country where decorations, titles, and other like

182 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

distinctions give the artist a social standing
which he cannot as yet hope to attain at home.
To the man of artistic perceptions, it may not
mean much when he contemplates the kite-tail
of honour and decoration in the biography of
American artists like Alexander Harrison, who
cast his lot entirely with European interest. His
brother Birge, who stayed at home, one of our
very able landscape painters, pales into insigni-
ficance in a biographical catalogue alongside his
brother for lack of any such distinctions as are
indicated by orders, decorations, memberships
in societies, medals, honorary offices, degrees,
and what not. Such were the penalties of stay-
ing at home, one might say. But one may care
for such things, and one may not. That may
well explain the social discrepancies between the
two brothers. Unfortunately, the public follows
the artist whose biography looks much like the
suitcase of the man who went to Europe for the
first time, and who wants everybody, on his re-
turn home, to know where he has been.

After all, the difference in artistic quality be-
tween the work of Alexander and of Birge Harri-
son is not truly indicated by the number of
their medals, etc. But gradually we are supply-

ON ART PATRONAGE 183

ing the means of ready classification of the artis-
tic profession, and it looks as if we were going
to outdo Europe, at least in the establishment
of monetary prizes and honorary distinctions an
artist may receive at home. Ours do not as yet
mean quite so much as the foreign article, but
eventually time will supply the dignity neces-
sary for their effect. The generous attitude of
the private citizen in our country has furnished
the most effective means for the cultivation of
the fine arts. And by that, only one thing can
be meant, and that is the expenditure of money
for the support of the profession. We may
prattle eternally about art, write about art, and
profess to be interested in it, but the only means
by which the growth of art can be measured in
any country is the relative amount of money
put at its disposal. The world has seen some
very interesting examples of the power of
money in promoting art. Money alone, without
national professional ability for artistic produc-
tion, of course will not suffice, but after the
artistic capacity of a people has been developed,
the thing most necessary is financial support.
Competent artists will always go to those coun-
tries, those places, where they may expect at

184 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

least to make a living and possibly a little more.
The establishment and success of Munich as an
art center was due entirely to the lavish endow-
ment of artistic enterprises by a Bavarian king
who could easily have lost in the promotion of
his city scheme against the rivalry of better
climatic conditions elsewhere. But art in
Munich flourished, though in a raw climate, by
lavish patronage. The one similar American
example is that of Pittsburg, where, under very
uninviting general conditions the munificence
of one citizen has caused the most important art
exhibitions on the American continent to be
held. Surely there are other cities than Pitts-
burg in the United States predestined through
cultural interest, artistic atmosphere, and cli-
matic conditions to be leaders in art. But,
curiously the liberal interest of one man has
provided for Pittsburg the dintinction of hold-
ing the most important artistic function in the
United States, in the biennial international exhi-
bitions of the Carnegie Institute.

The commanding artistic standing of the
French is the result of their persistently kindly
and generous attitude toward their painters and
their artists in general. No other people have so

LOWER MANHATTAN

FLA IK XXXI

1 rom the Oil Painting by

I.I I 'S Khcol.I.

ON ART PATRONAGE 185

liberally and tactfully looked after the needs and
interests of the artistic professions as have the
French, and the national benefits derived have
surely paid for the effort. France has set the
example and furnished the method which has
become the guiding principle for all of the mod-
ern countries. We here in America have adopted
in many ways the methods of the French, and
our whole system of art patronage is brought
over directly from Paris — the Mecca of Ameri-
can artists. "Les amis d'art" of France, imi-
tated as the Friends of American Art at Chicago
and elsewhere, have been a blessing to the pro-
fession, and a cultural boon to an otherwise
abundantly flourishing commercialism in that
section of the country.

While organized support of art in this country
goes back as far as 1804 — to the foundation of
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts —
the more solid interest in art was caused and
accentuated by the great American Expositions.
The year 1876, the year of the Centennial, is
generally counted the turning-point which
marks the awakening of a national conscious-
ness of an American art. Again, the Chicago
Exposition in 1893 stimulated the Middle West,

186 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

and the years 1904 in St. Louis, and 191 5 in
San Francisco, saw the American public revel in
the pride of having discovered the fact, up to
that time very obscure, that there is such a
thing as American art. Since the days of Phila-
delphia we have made enormous strides, and
the mushroom-like growth in the United States
of publicly-supported institutions and societies
devoted to art is astonishing. We learn from the
American Art Annual^ in an article by Miss
Florence N. Levy, its editor, that in 1882 the
report on art education prepared by the United
States Government points out thirty museums
existing at that time, and the first volume of the
American Art Annual^ published in 1898, enum-
erates forty-one. Since then, the increase has
been surprising, so that we have at present in
this country nearly seven hundred and fifty art
museums and societies and two hundred and
fifty art schools — a total of approximately one
thousand organizations. We learn further from
the same source that the first American museum
to be devoted wholly to art was the Wads-
worth Athenaeum, at Hartford, opened in 1842,
to which the Morgan Memorial has been
added within recent years. Among the newest

ON ART PATRONAGE 187

museums are theWatson Memorial at Rochester,
dedicated in December, 1913, and the Los An-
geles Museum, opened in 1914. The building of
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has lately been
dedicated and an important art museum has
been opened at Cleveland. Recent additions to
our art galleries include the Deshong Memorial,
at Chester, Pennsylvania; the Peter A. Gross
Gallery, at Muhlenberg College, Allenton, Penn-
sylvania; the Franklin Simmons Museum, at
Portland, Maine; and the August Saint Gaudens
Museum, at Connot. All this is gratifying — and
bewildering. Many of these museums are per-
manent structures and architecturally of great
beauty, and their collections are diversified and
representative. The good that some of these in-
stitutions have accomplished for artists and
public alike is very far-reaching. Moreover, I
believe that their activities are much more pro-
gressive and up-to-date than those of similar
institutions abroad, and not merely confined to
regular exhibitions, open to the public at little
or no cost, but also broadened by very liberal
courses of lectures, public instruction to young
and old, and education generally reaching in a
true democratic way far into the hearts of all

188 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

classes of people. This is carried on in even the
smallest communities, and one is amused and
pleased to find that even a community rejoicing
in such a name as Pawhuska, Oklahoma, has an
art club with a membership of thirty. This
Pawhuska society proudly reports to the Ameri-
can Art Annual^ referred to before (which yields
much valuable information), that it organized
in 191 1, that its dues are one dollar, and that
the membership, of only thirty, has studied
Italian art during the last few years. A photo-
graph of the "Sir Galahad" by Watts was given
to the High School, and last, but not least, an
exhibition of the work of local artists was held
at the home of one of the members. One is
immensely pleased to read of such enterprise,
which surpasses the activities of many much
larger cities, particularly in attention to local
artists. While this is only an isolated instance,
it shows what we may eventually expect every-
where. The most promising feature of the situ-
ation is the inevitableness of the turning of our
industrially acquired wealth toward artistic
aims. This started with general university en-
dowments, and gradually begins to single out
special professions, particularly the artistic.

ON ART PATRONAGE 189

With one notable exception, all this support
is coming from the public. The United States,
at the instigation of a few interested congress-
men, in the nineties provided for an American
Academy in Rome, where our native talent
could go to be inspired, alongside of the schools
of the European countries. Unfortunately, the
government forgot to provide the money to run
the place with, and the director of that institu-
tion finds himself obliged to make periodical
journeys home to appeal to the public for sup-
port. It is not very dignified, but it is sadly
true. I do not believe the patronage of the gov-
ernment will ever be more than negligible, and
it is probably better that way, since our govern-
ment officials seldom consider an enlightened
knowledge of art a necessary means to political
success. Nevertheless, I am optimistic enough
to feel that we shall be privileged to vote yet for
a president who will be courageous enough to
include the creation of a Secretaryship of Fine
Arts in his platform. Some men in public life
have as private citizens aided generously — Sena-
tor Clark of Montana and many others.

Speaking of politics, we are gradually, also,
discarding the notion that art museums must

igo PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

furnish some of the many sinecures necessary
for retired and disabled politicians. It was this
condition more than anything else, in some in-
stances in the past, that retarded the growth
and development of many organically-healthy
institutions. The Museum Director is beginning
to be recognized in this country as belonging to
a special profession, as he has long been recog-
nized abroad, where men with a thorough
academic training and a special knowledge of
archaeology and also of the equally broad field
of modern art are put at the head of the mu-
seums. Sometimes we have helped ourselves, in
this country, by making use of artists with
executive ability to look after our museums and
galleries, and in many such instances we have
done remarkably well. The professional pub-
licity man has sometimes fitted in, welding a
bond between the public and his institution by
providing information, and sometimes instruc-
tion. Eventually we shall take art administra-
tion as seriously as any other profession. One of
the reasons we do not regard it as we do law or
medicine is because human lives will never suffer
for mistakes made within its sphere of influence.
The artist individually, also, enjoys better

ON ART PATRONAGE 191

social advantages than heretofore, although, as
with everything else in this country, there is no
national standard in this regard. There are now
approximately five thousand artists living in
New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Fran-
cisco, and decreasing numbers as one leaves the
seaboards. Their influence, as collectively ex-
pressed in clubs and other organizations, is mak-
ing itself felt for the good of the commonwealth.
The public, on the whole, has a general disin-
clination to patronize the artist directly, and
prefers to obtain what it wants through the
agency of dealers. The lack of accessible and in-
viting working quarters in many cities, outside
of the big centers, is often the cause of this.
Many of the dealers are of no help to home art,
since they, for purely commercial reasons, decline
to handle American art. There is not enough
profit in dealing with American pictures,since the
standard of living at home does not permit the
American artist to compete with his European
colleague. It is much more lucrative for the
dealer to buy a picture in Europe for two
hundred and fifty francs and to sell it for five
hundred dollars in America than it is to buy from
an American artist for two hundred and fifty

ig2 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

dollars and to sell it for five hundred. The pic-
ture dealer on the whole has been little helpful
to the active artist, with the exception of some
genuinely interested men, like the recently de-
ceased Macbeth, who in New York for many
years courageously tied his fortunes exclusively
to American art. As for the great number of
others, pictures are to them commodities, and
they sell pictures as they would a chandelier,
with interest only in what they can get for
them. The one agency the artist here in America
must look to is the direct patronage of the pub-
lic, the practical support of that part of the
community which is discriminating and which is
willing to learn. It is only a small group, but
wherever it exists it is the mainstay of artistic
existence. The Panama-Pacific International
Exposition sold to individual visitors works of
art, mostly pictures, amounting in price to more
than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Such support is encouraging, particularly when
one considers the generally high standard and
originality of the work sold. No accurate sta-
tistical material regarding the total amount of
money expended on art in the United States is
available, but it is certainly very generous, and

ON ART PATRONAGE 193

growing continually. The great industrial pros-
perity of this country will ultimately cause the
richer classes to turn much wealth toward edu-
cational purposes, and not all of it is going into
the sciences. America, to the capable original
artist, will be as worth while to dwell in as it
was discouraging only fifty years ago. The con-
ditions abroad will for many years not be con-
ducive to a very liberal patronage of the fine
arts, and already the European artist is looking
toward America for a market. Twenty years ago
we should easily have yielded to the fascination
of a foreign name, but the American artist is
beginning to be so firmly established in the affec-
tion of his own people that national pride alone
will safeguard him forever against unfair foreign
competition. Times have changed. Though we
have yet to give a distinctively American art
exhibition abroad, we are in a fair way to assert
our own artistic convictions, alongside of the art
of the world. It is still customary for the Euro-
pean to attach the success of our leading paint-
ers to their European training, but the number
of those who are rooted in home influences is
becoming larger, and this is for the profit of
American art.

IQ4 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART

ALTHOUGH the loftiest exemplification of
art is still to the average person the painting,
and an oil painting at that, one cherishes a fond
hope of making the public extend their interest
to other artistic matters besides paintings. This,
briefly, I feel to be our most urgent need. The
art sections of our many civic organizations and
clubs when they devote themselves to art still
generally take up the study of painting — Renais-
sance Madonnas. My own experience in this
respect in dealing with women's clubs is too
often disappointing. I am asked to give a lec-
ture on art, at such and such a date, and mis-
giving at once are evident when I suggest as a
subject the beautification of the home garden,
the problems of sculpture, or even mural deco-
ration— let alone architecture. Paintings seem
to be regarded as the most exalted expression of
the noble, the uplifting, in art, and the only
reason to which I am able to ascribe this deep-
rooted prejudice is that it is the solitary art
expression which is utterly disconnected from

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 195

anything we need and use, and absolutely irrele-
vant to the particular needs of a civilization.
Moreover, painting certainly has in itself all the
elements of luxury, and it should for that reason
alone come the very last in the affection of man-
kind. People do not seem to realize that a pic-
ture has become a rather perverse form of art,
and that it is fundamentally no more important
than the many expressions of the so-called de-
pendent or applied arts.

My own faith, then, in pictures is not so very
great either as an exhaustive expression of the
art of a people or as of fundamental educational
value for the large masses. If we had consist-
ently developed our art by inherited instincts,
we should probably never have arrived at the
making of transportable pictures, such as we
see now by the thousands in art-shops, exhibi-
tions, and galleries generally. One can only hope
that the character of our art expositions will
change radically by embracing within their
scope all the manifestations of art which contri-
bute to the beautification of even the humblest
dwellings. In thus depriving art of its character
of a luxury, we shall make it an alleviating fac-
tor in our life, free from the taint of decadence

ip6 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

and arid privilege. What it means socially to
put a desirable thing at the command of the
masses, the modern automobile has demon-
strated. Once upon a time, when prohibitive
prices deprived the man of average means of
having what he instinctively felt was a sane
pleasure, the rich automobile owner in his in-
evitable predicaments on the roadside had to be
content with the taunts and sneers of a jealous
mob. He had to rely upon his own resources.
But now, with the introduction of inexpensive
small motor cars, what was once a luxury is now
well nigh a necessity. The expression of social
friction by envious humans by a lavish distribu-
tion of nails upon the road has ceased to be a
popular pastime. So it is with art. To turn
artistic ability exclusively into the Locomobile
picture class has only an exclusive effect. The
thing that counts is to spread the enjoyment of
art broadly over our common world. Every ma-
terial, every detached object, first, and later on
the walls and dwellings generally, will reflect
some day, I hope, the desire of men to make
them alike beautiful and useful. My firm belief
is that art is in the broader sense based entirely
on a utilitarian principle, and should exert itself

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 197

that way in a proper promotive and stimulative
atmosphere. We have accomplished such pro-
digious beginnings in this country, in develop-
ing the artistic significance of our dwellings, that
I hope we shall be leaders in future domestic
architecture. In fact, I am sure that our Ameri-
can homes are on the whole more tastefully fur-
nished than those of Europe. Our sense of sim-
plicity and fitness, and a demand for the practi-
cal, have saved us from the mistakes of the old
countries, which have never been able to free
themselves completely from imitation of the
historic styles.

We must all deplore that we have neglected
so far to show the great mass of original work
we are doing as a nation in the field of the useful
arts. But the scattered evidences make one very
hungry for a big comprehensive x^merican exhi-
bition of the industrial arts. I have a suspicion
that it would be even more interesting and con-
vincing than our surprisingly good national fine
art. So far, one still looks forward to that event
with great anticipation, and I believe the next
international exhibition in these United States
will not be able to sidestep this issue as deplor-
ably as was done in San Francisco. The St.

ig8 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

Louis Exposition, in 1904, gave the American
public the first comprehensive idea of the im-
portance of national art as demonstrated in the
displays of the German and Japanese peoples.
To my mind, they contributed the most inter-
esting single units of that great undertaking,
notwithstanding the fact that in the Palace of
Fine Arts no effort had been spared to impress
with square miles of ludicrous paintings and
miles of linear feet of more or less ugly frames.
In the meantime, we should not lose sight of the
fact that we must do our share in the field of the
industrial arts.

That art as related to life not always finds its
expression through the medium of the picture is
shown abundantly by the great number of very
artistic people who seldom come in contact with
paintings. We all have had the refreshing ex-
perience of meeting with all the qualities of an
artistic atmosphere in the most unexpected
places, particularly where there was no outward
indication of wealth, which so often tempts
people to acquire more than the necessary
things. Good proportion, true tonality, agree-
able spacing and grouping of furniture, proper
accentuation of color, often seem to work

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 199

together in such instances into a unity of artistic
atmosphere, and we often observe that the pres-
ence of a painting in such houses is not the rule
but the exception. Almost all paintings in the
great periods were painted for certain definite
positions. In our day we have reached the high-
water mark in the production of detached and
portable paintings, and to watch the antics of
artist and public alike in trying to dispose of
them is surely amusing, to say the least, if not
pathetic. The fact alone that people do not
know what to do with their paintings is a proof
of their absolute lack of relation to everyday
life, and for luxurious purposes, their number is
entirely out of proportion to the available wall
space.

In the development of this country's art, we
may observe the same imitative procedure as in
anything else — as in our government institu-
tions, our schools, or our social system. As the
inauguration of our national independence we
adopted whatever happened to be the vogue at
that particular time in the mother countries of
our varied population. And it is only recently
that we are beginning to shape our institutions
to our own needs. There are even some people

200 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

who are actually sacrilegious enough to say that
our laws and constitution are not befitting to
our needs, and who wish, accordingly, to change
them. With art it is rapidly becoming much
the same. Our first pictures were a typical trans-
plantation of English motives upon American
soil. Again, we were content to borrow the
effects rather than to develop an art of our own.
We began with pictures right away, and we have
stuck to them more or less ever since. Instead
of trying to develop any real national art from
the soil, so to speak, we adopted a certain phase
of a declining European easel picture, and
thought we had done everything necessary to be
called artistic. The greatest achievements in
art, however, do not come about that way.
They are the direct result of a common co-
operative desire of all the artistic forces to make
everything beautiful, not merely to produce an
abstract expression of artistic impulse in one
form alone. It all amounts to this, that as long
as the necessary things in life are not taken care
of artistically, the picture is apt to be merely
an unhealthy affectation. Doubtless we are
producing too many pictures, largely for specu-
lative purposes, and we are paying too little

SOBRANTK VISTA

I'l.ATI XXXII

From the Oil Painting by
Eugi N Nil H AUS

Owned by

Mks. \V. C. \\ HITCOMB.Rochclle. III.

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 201

attention to the so-called useful arts and their
primary importance in our art activities.

Our first art schools in this country, like our
universities, were copies of European patterns of
the highest type of education instead of schools
for teaching the practical, technical, useful
things needed at the moment. We are acknowl-
edging the mistakes by the almost hysterical
way in which we are providing technical schools
for teaching the things actually needed within a
civilization of physical development. Our uni-
versities are now really becoming American in-
stitutions, not imitations of certain institutions
abroad, and if the desire for technical education
has become so great as to overshadow the study
of the classics, it is merely a temporary symp-
tom, which will remedy itself with the changing
of our industrial civilization into one more cul-
tural. Our art schools are affected similarly, and
the change that is taking place must be re-
ceived with joy by every intelligent citizen.
While formerly we had nothing but art acad-
emies in this country, the number of schools of
applied art is increasing so rapidly as to assume
the right proportion. In England, and in
France, and Germany particularly, the propor-

202 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

tion of art academies to industrial or applied art
schools is one to ten, while in this country it
was originally one to nothing. The change,
however, is taking place rapidly, with the
awakening of a national understanding that the
art of a great people is not merely a matter of
looking at pictures but a question of living in
well-designed surroundings, in houses which are
artistic primarily by reason of the application of
aesthetic principles to their every detail, of
orderly arranged and harmoniously formed in-
teriors and exteriors which reflect an under-
standing of artistic principles. Foreign critics
have been quite right in their observation that
we spend large amounts of money for pictures
and often put them into ugly houses. It must
seem to some that I am again getting away
from pictures. As a matter of fact, I am getting
/"nearer to them all along. A good picture embodies
certain artistic principles which we should meet
with and desire everywhere.

To return once more to our schools — we are
about to do what we should have done a hun-
dred years ago if the encouragement coming
from Europe had been of the right kind. When
we set up housekeeping in America at the end

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 203

of the eighteenth century, art in Europe had
started on a downward march, only here and
there relieved by symptoms of life. The interest
in the useful arts was carried on only by the
endless and meaningless imitation of Renais-
sance ornamentation. The acanthus was
worked to death, and into a shapeless mass.
The inevitable happened in a renewed interest
in original expressive art — a sudden desire to
find new and heretofore unused forms of orna-
mental decoration. Picture-making suddenly
was pushed into a corner. Many very talented
painters abroad saw the narrowness of their out-
look, and applied their talents to what is prop-
erly called design — the designing of useful
things. That is what I hope will be the privi-
lege of our talented younger Americans, who
are working, often against their own convic-
tions, along the narrow lines laid down by a
public which is unconsciously guilty of retard-
ing the growth and universal spread of art. In
Europe and in America art had become so hope-
lessly dull, by the end of the last century, that
the only thing that promised any relief appeared
to be a return to the artistic shaping of needed
things. Picture-making had lost sight of its

204 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

true aim. The Diisseldorf and Munich school
flourished, in anecdotal pictures which had no
relation to the sister arts of architecture and
sculpture, having invaded the realm of litera-
ture.

From England this new impulse for the beau-
tification of everyday things spread to Belgium,
whence it went to Germany, and soon the mod-
ern movement spread all over Europe. It
traveled like wildfire, and caused many local
artistic revolutions. The old guard, finding that
all was not well, fought furiously against the
new idea. The new idea was first of all a desire
to be original, independent of the past. The
older men agreed that this was not possible, and
pointed with pride to the example of the Renais-
sance, acknowledged to be the second greatest
period in art, the greatest since Greece; the
Renaissance, they said, developed upon the
foundations of the classic tradition. Of course
this is only partly correct, for the art of the
Renaissance is partly attributable to that same
spirit of creative desire which caused our mod-
ern movement in art and which had its be-
ginning in the useful and decorative arts. The
spirit of independence, the desire to get away

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 205

from the past, arose simultaneously in the so-
called fine and applied arts. We are not as yet
fully realizing upon our inherent art instinct,
here in the United States, as eventually we
shall be able to do. In St. Louis in 1904, as
already pointed out, the most fascinating artis-
tic efforts displayed were not found in the Fine
Arts Palace but in another building, where cer-
tain complete units, from carpets up to pictures,
were exhibited in separate buildings devoted to
the applied arts. John Brisbane Walker, at that
time editor of T'he Cosmopolitan^ wrote a very
fine appreciation in his magazine of what he
saw to be the real art at St. Louis. In San
Francisco, the matter of grouping applied and
fine arts together was officially under considera-
tion, and at the last moment it was decided, very
much to my regret, that such a logical arrange-
ment was impracticable. Still, as many remem-
ber, this was done in part. Several of the foreign
nations, under no restrictions as to the nature
of their art exhibitions, and following a custom
now well established abroad, did not exhibit ex-
clusively pictures, and they saved the Palace
of Fine Arts from what would have been monot-
ony. Japan had entrancingly wonderful screen

206 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

pictures, bronzes, carvings, lacquerware, and all
the practical art of the Orient, upon which we
ourselves are beginning to focus our attention.
China had similar things. Sweden had decorative
pictures made into wall hangings, and France,
in a building all by itself, charmed thousands
of people daily with the most extraordinarily
skillful combination of the beautiful in the ab-
stract and in the practical-useful. The French
display was a veritable sermon of art. A people
who can give aesthetic pleasure in a neighborly
display of Gobelins, perfumes, porcelains, and
pictures, justly deserve our unstinted praise for
their artistic accomplishments.

In the American section, the only man working
in the useful arts was Mr. Louis Tiffany. He was
seen with some excellent jewelry and decorative
vases, all in one case, in one of the larger gal-
leries. As for the rest of the show, it was a flood,
a sea, a veritable ocean of paintings, and I don't
blame people for getting tired of them. The
only way I can see to deal with the great desire
of the masses to appreciate art in the form of
paintings is to teach tham first to appreciate the
beauty of a well-designed spoon, and in an evo-
lutionary way proceed from practical things to

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 207

things of a more detached artistic expression,
leaving paintings to the very end. In other
words, to learn to appreciate paintings is a
question of beginning at the bottom of the
ladder, and learning to see beauty and get
aesthetic enjoyment out of the ordinary, useful
things. Nothing is more agonizing than to hear
expressions of so-called intelligent interest be-
fore some highly experimental and individual
pictures, from people who do not understand
even the simplest kind of conventional picture —
not to speak of the glorious expression of poor
taste in the clothing in which such people often
parade. A person who cannot understand art
as a principle in clothes, generally cannot expect
to appreciate the same principle in a picture.

That brings us right to the crux of the matter.
Everybody feels, then, the need of a certain
principle to go by — certain means of approach.
Of course without an understanding of those
principles there will never be a full enjoyment of
art, and the only thing to do is to study them
and try to recognize them in a universal way.
These principles, of course, are not new, as I
have pointed out, and while I have spoken of
them in previous discussions, I feel moved to say

208 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

again that they are universal conventions, open
to anyone who is willing to learn. These laws
certainly were not invented to inconvenience
either the public or the artist — on the contrary,
they owe their existence to the fact that when
artists do things in a certain way this results in
agreeable, pleasure-giving effects. While we
have not as yet shown any very marked inde-
pendence, we have certainly developed original
opportunities for the study of art, which I anti-
cipate will aid materially in our national artistic
problems. In speaking of the art schools of the
country, I have referred to the exclusively tech-
nical school. In concluding, I should like to
refer to the modern American university, where
all studies, the classics, the humanities, the
sciences, the applied sciences, and finally the
arts, have found themselves side by side in a
unified whole. One has to know European in-
stitutions of similar names but of totally differ-
ent make-up to appreciate the advantages of our
young people. Now the broadest foundation for
an understanding and appreciation of all the arts
may be secured entirely within one institution.
Such centralization may have its defects. I have
discovered none, however, though this is sur-

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 209

prising in a type of institution which owes its
existence to expediency rather than to plan.
It is something new under the sun,quite outside
of precedent, but I believe it will result in a very
generous culture, not one-sided, but genuine in
its recognition of all phases of aesthetic expres-
sion. Where is the institution abroad where a
general student, interested in art, could study
classical archaeology, the history of architecture,
the philosophy of aesthetics, the history of cos-
tume, of ornament, the theory of design and of
color, artistic anatomy — to name the purely
theoretical subjects alongside of practical ones —
and drafting-room work of every imaginable
kind, to support and augment his other studies?
The breadth of such work and the possibility of
getting it, so to speak, under one roof, is to me
one of the most interesting elements of the
American universities.

The universality of this all-comprising teach-
ing is at once novel and effective, producing not
only people for the professions outside of the so-
called fine arts, but giving also, to a student of
medicine, for instance, or engineering, agricul-
ture, or chemistry, opportunity to lay a founda-
tion for an interest in the finer things of life that

2io PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

may ultimately become the saving grace and
happines of his later years. Since the great
majority of our teachers in the public schools
system are women, so far the nucleus of our art
lovers will be found largely among that sex. It
is possibly the refining and soothing element in
art that is sometimes thought to appeal more to
women than to men. At any rate, among the
average student there seems as yet to exist the
delusion that an interest in art is a confession of
mental and physical weakness. The average
young man with aesthetic appreciation is still
the exception in America, not the rule, How-
ever, this will change, with many other things
which are the heritage of a civilization where
physical strength was more valued than spiritual
power.

The important problems in art education in
America seem to me to be these: First, to pro-
vide in all communities opportunities for the
study of the aesthetic traditions of art, includ-
ing those manifestations that disclose man en-
deavoring to shape and express things in such a
way as to give aesthetic pleasure. The general
museums, with its broad educational activities,
of which the Metropolitan Museum in New

HOPES FOR AMERICAN ART 211

York is the most conspicuous example, is the in-
stitution best fitted for this work. Such an in-
stitution in its beginnings in the smaller com-
munities will eventually be nothing more and
nothing less than a store-house of collected
things which may be of interest largely from a
sentimental and historical character. The prop-
erly classified and catalogued museum of
authenticated and evaluated things is only pos-
sible, generally, long after the first stage has
laid a foundation for the understanding and
interest of the next generation. The change
from the first to the next will successively in-
volve the employment of experts, which many
of our museum directors as yet acarcely are.
In this regard we might well go further, and
establish at our larger museums schools for the
training of museum directors, to supply the need
of a profession which at present is recruited from
every source. Second, we must teach the masses,
particularly through the public school system,
to appreciate what we are pleased to call the
applied or useful arts, or, to be more logical,
those arts which do not belong among the fine
or useless arts. Only then shall we be able to
enjoy the full realization of our artistic efforts

212 PAINTERS, PICTURES AND THE PEOPLE

when we learn to understand art wherever it
exists, whether as an independent element, in
pictures and poetry, or in wall-papers, a carpet,
or an illustration. Our native talents are so
numerous and endowed with such enthusiasm
and energy that if properly supported they will
yet, I am confident, give to this country an art
that will dominate the world. Our time is
bound to come, and before long.

INDEX

Abbey, Edwin A 46

Ability to Judge and Enjoy 6

Acanthus 25

Affinity, Artistic 98

Agthe, Kurt 170

Alexander, John W 46

"Pot of Basil" 88

"Phillis" 88

"Walt Whitman" 101

Rhythm of 88

Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence 148, 149

Amateur 49

American Academy 189

American Art Annual 186

American University 208

Andromeda, Brush 68

Apollo 84, 160

Architect 2, 13

Architecture 1,11,14,15,65

Aristocracy, Patronage by 176

Art Nouveau 24

Armory Exhibition New York 157

Art, Administration 190

Aims of 9

Colonial 181

Critics 5

Declining Periods of 101

For Art's Sake 152

Greatest Period of 13

Modern World of 16

Nude, the, in (see chapter headings)

214 INDEX

Art, continued —

Patronage of (see chapter headings)

Significance of (see chapter headings)

Standards in 6

Universality of 22

Utilitarian 16

Balance (see chapter headings)

Barbizon, Men 124. *52

School 52

Tradition 128

Baroque Style 81

Beal, Gifford "3

Belgium 204

Bellini, Giovanni 137

Bellows, George 116

Besnard, Albert 169, 171

Blanche, Jacques Emile 134

Bocklin, Arnold 165

Bolinas Bay 41

Boucher, Francois ]47

Bouguereau, W. Adolphe 164

Boston 191

Botticelli, Sandro 92

Brangwyn, Frank 119

"Breaking Home Ties'* 46

Breckenridge, Hugh 75> ll9

Breughel, Peter I78

Brouwer, Adrian T47> I7%

Brush, George de Forest 68,129

Buffalo Fine Arts Academy 127

California 39» 83

Canadian Rockies 41

Canon of Beauty 160

Carlsen, Emil 62, 75, 90

Carlson, John F 4 *

Carles, Arthur "9> I71

INDEX 215

Carnegie Institute 184

Carriere, Eugene 94,116,117

Caser, Ettore 74

Ceramics II

Chabas, Paul 174

Chase, William Merritt 49, 75, 99, 129

Chemistry of Color 106

Chicago Art Institute 29

Chicago Exposition 185

Church, Frederic E 48

Church, Patronage of 177

China, Art of 206

Cincinnati Museum 42

Cleveland Museum 187

Clark, Senator William A 189

Classic Point of View 159

Classic Style 14

Clouds, Cumulus 82

Formation 82

Clubs, Women's 194

Color (see chapter headings) 7, 12, 66, 105, 107, in, 119

Cold and Warm 108

Symbolism of 105, 108

Psychology of 108

Composition (see chapter headings)

Concarneau 40

Constable, John 109,124,151

Constitution, American, Change of 200

Connoisseur 3, 34

Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille 52,74,94,96,112

Cosmopolitan Magazine 205

Crane, Walter 86

Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento 40

Cubism 39, 95, 105, 131, 153, 154, 155. »57

Currier, Frank 129

Dachau 41

216 INDEX

Dance, the n

Davey, Randall 43, 113

Dealers 19

Art, Commercial Exploitation by 17

Decoration n>23

Decorative Pictures 45, 47

De Chavannes, Puvis . . 94

Desert, The 41

Design 7

Deshong Memorial 187

Dickens, Charles 45

Domes 27

Dougherty, Paul 90

Drama 11, 14

Dusseldorf School 45,86,156,204

Dutch Painters 142

Duveneck, Frank 42, 97, 127, 129

Easel Picture 32

Ecclesiastical Pictures 138

Eckmann, Otto 23

Egyptians 20, 105

England, Art of 144, 202

Etaples 40

Exploitation of Art, Commercial 17

Literary 5

Experts, Museum 211

Fakers, Art 1 50

Fauna and Flora 38

Fechin, Nicholas 132

Form and Line 12, 66

Formula of Greeks 14

of Romans 20

of Renaissance 20

Fountains 16

Filipino Art 148

Fragonard, Jean Honore 146

INDEX 217

Frames 57, 58» T98

France, Art of H7> 2o6

Frieseke, Frederick C 113,116,171

Friends of American Art 185

Front Parlor 31

Frotti no, 126, 128

Futurism 39. 105» l3l> lS6

Gainsborough, Sir Thomas 44> H3> '45» x4°

Garber, Daniel 130

Genius, Definition of !03

Germany 2°4

Genre 54

Glackens, William !7X

Gobelins 2o6

Goethe, Wolfgang von 44

Goose Girl, Millet *74

Golgotha 52

Gothic Period 26, 149

Grand Canon Io2

Greece '49

Art of 20

Greek Civilization I3> x4

Greeks, Principles of Idealization of 15

Examples of Art of 16

Grisaille Pictures JI7

Gross Gallery, Peter A 187

Gu6rin, Jules *5> 23

Gutmann, Bernard J7°

Hals, Franz 17. 43> *43

Harmony (see chapter headings)

Harriman, Mrs 17l

Harrison, Birge 4X» 1 82

Harrison, Alexander 182

Hartmann, Bertram I:9

Hassam, Childe 97

Henri, Robert "3

218 INDEX

Hermitage, Petrograd 104

Hill, Thomas 40

Hogarth, William 134, i44, i78

Hokusai o0

Holland 63

Homer, Winslow c 1, 101

Hondecoter, Michael ^3

Hoppner, John 44> j^, 146

Hovenden, Thomas 46, 70

Hudson River School 50

Human Quality in Art 54

Hysteria About Old Masters 139, 140

Ideal Democracy o

Idealization 15,43,44

Ideas, Iconoclastic 32

Illustration 23, 35

Impotence, Temperamental 37

Impressionism 107,113,124,125

Inness, George 52, 128, 180

"Coming Storm" 127

"Georgia Pines" 100

"Medfield Meadows" 100

Innovators, Art jn

Interior Decoration 16

Investment, Art 18

Japan, Architecture of 16

Sculpture of 17

Utilitarian Art of \(,

Wood Carving of 153

Japanese Prints, Art of 17, 198

Johansen, John 60

Jordaens, John 146, 165

Keith, William 74. 128

"Sonoma Valley" 52

"Berkeley Oaks" 52

Konnen ... 131

INDEX 219

Kunst 131

Kiinstler 13

Landscape Gardening 11

Painter 38, 49

Laguna Beach 41

Lake Tahoe 41

Laren 40

La Touche, Gaston 94

Layman 53, 92

Lepage, Bastien 114

Leonardo da Vinci 21,101,123

Les Amis d'Art 185

Le Sidaner, Henri 42, 130

Levy, Florence 186

Lindenthal Bridge 28

Los Angeles Museum 187

Luxembourg 42

Macbeth, William 192

Madonnas 80, 139

Madrid 87

Manet, Edouard 152

Maybeck, Bernard 19

Marin County, California 41

Mathews, Arthur F 48,114,174

Melchers, Gari 123

"Mother and Child" 100

"Maternity" 61

"Smithy" 61

Metcalf, VVillard, "Trembling Leaves" 130

Metsu, Gabriel I4a

Metropolitan Museum 210

Merci£, Antoine 169

Michel Angelo Buonarotti 21,99,102

Millet, Jean Francis, " Goose Girl" 174

Minneapolis Institute of Arts 187

Mission Furniture 3°

220 INDEX

Moore, Albert 86

Mona Lisa 123

Monet, Claude 118,124,152

Monotony 95

Morris, William 24, 144

Mullgardt, Louis, "Court of Abundance" 19

Munich 204

School of 45

Munkaczy, Michael, "Golgotha" 52

Mutual Admiration Societies 150

Mural Painting 27

Murillo, Bartolome Esteban 116

Murphy, Herman Dudley 57

Museums 190

of Monstrocities 31

Music 1,11,12,36

Color and 106

Niagara 48

Nature 57

Copying of 51

Rhythm in 82, 83

What the Artist Takes Out of 53

Neo-Impressionism 125, 129

Neilson, Raymond, P. R 113

Nelson, Bruce 48

Nude, American Saloon 164

Old Masters 139

Orient, Art of 47, 206

Outdoor Painting 124

Paintre Artiste 13

Panama-Pacific International Exposition . . 15, 19, 159, 166, 192

Parrish, Maxfield 23

Pawhuska Art Club 188

Pearson, Joseph T., "In the Valley" 48

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts . . • 185

Peters, Charles Rollo 74

INDEX 221

Perspective, Linear, Aerial 8o, 81

Phidias 21

Photography, Handicaps in 44

Pictures, Naturalistic 45

Decorative 45

Pinakothek, Munich 71

Pissarro 152

Pittsburg 184

Pleinairist 113, 129

Poetry 1,11,12,14

Pope Sixtus 70

Portraits 49

Colonial 18

Portuguese Art 167

Post-Impressionism 39, n 6, 156, 157

Pottery, American 18

Pre-Raphaelites 86

Prints, Japanese 17

Psychic, Realm of 152

Public, Attitude of the 1

Voting Contests of 34

Views About Art 2

Whims of the 2

Putz, Leo, "I ady by the Shore" 132

Puritans . I42» ^73

Pyle, Howard 23

Raphael, Sanzio 21,116,123

Realism 43

Reid, Robert 171, 172

Redfield, Edward W 97, 131

Religious Paintings I39>177

Rembrandt, Van Ryn . 99, I42

"Anatomy Lesson" 87

Luminosity of no

"Man with the Helmet" 101

"Polish Nobleman" 104

222 INDEX

Renaissance 20, 25, 80, 149

Madonnas m

Patronage 176

Renoir, Auguste 152

Reynolds, Sir Joshua 44,51,143,145,146

Rhythm (see chapter headings)

Ritschel, William 62, 90

Robinson, Charles Dorman 40

Romney, George 44, 143

Rousseau, Theodore Etienne 94

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 86

Rubens, Peter Paul 93, 112, 107, 146, 166

"Descent from the Cross" 71

"Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus" 71

Rug, Oriental 12

San Francisco City Hall 27

Saint Gaudens Museum 187

Saint Louis Exposition 186, 198, 205

Solomon, Solomon S 134

Sargent, John Singer 49, 129, 134, 172

Scenic Wonders 41

Sculpture i, 11

Schools of Applied Art 201

"September Morning" 174

Sforza, Ludovico 21

Shannon, James Jebusa 134

Signorelli, Luca, "Education of Pan" 71

Simplicity 101

Simon, Lucien 170

Simmons Museum 187

Sistine Madonna 69

Skill in Painting 122, 133

Sketching Grounds 63

Snyders, Franz 166

Spencer, Robert 130

Steen, Jan 142 147 178

INDEX 223

Stella 166

Stuart, Gilbert 18

Style, Classic 160

Personal 97

Subjects, Literatesque 46

Sunset 85

Swing, Rhythm 84

Talent, Definition of 103

Tarbell, Edmund C 97

"Girl Mending" 101

Technique of Painting 120,123

Teniers, David 142, *47

Terborch, Gerhard H2

"Musician" 104

Texture, Definition of 123,143

Thaulow, Fritz 97

Thedy, Max, " Dutch Girl" 126

Tiepolo, Giovanni Domenico 107,117

Tiffany, Louis 206

Tintoretto, Tocopo Robusti 123

"Origin of Milky Way" 71

Titian, Vecellio 99,107,117,181

"Entombment" 71

"Sacred and Profane Love" 71

"Man with Glove" 101

Tito, Ettore, "Centaur and Nymphs" 69

Tonal Pictures »3» "4

Travertine Surfaces 15

Troccoli, Giovanni Battista I2q

Truth, Photographic 3°

Turner, John M. W 44

Twachtman, John 95

University, Modern American 209

Useful Arts 29

Useless Arts 29

Utopia, Artist's , , 3

224 INDEX

Utilitarianism of Art 24

Van Dyck, Sir Anthony 107, 145, 146

Velasquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva . . 87,99,102,123,134,141

Venus 84, 160

Ver Mehr von Delft i42

Ville d'Avray 52

Wadsworth Athenaeum 186

Walker, John Brisbane 205

Watteau, Antoine 146 181

Watts, George F., "Sir Galahad" 188

Water, Rhythmic oo

Watson Memorial Museum 187

Waugh, Frederic go

Weenix, Jan J42

Whistling Boy, Duveneck 127

Whistler, James A. McNeill . . .44,49,93,112,114,116,132,134

"Mother" gg

Woodbury, Charles H oo

Woodstock 4I

Woolworth Building 28

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