Impressions on Impressionism

A note to the reader. This Pamphlet (here word for word) was published by the Central Art Association, based in Chicago, in 1894. It represents the comments of four men (identified below) while viewing the Seventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists at the Art Institute of Chicago. The preface to the exhibition catalog stated: "The conservative, the progressive and the advanced radical schools of modern art are all well exemplified in the collection represented by the following catalogue." Chicagoans had just witnessed the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and gained exposure to what foreign artists, particularly those of France, were practicing in the way of Impressionism, which to many in the Chicago art community was still relatively novel.

A WORD TO THE PURCHASING

READER.

This little bulletin is issued for the benefit of the Central Art Association. The idea came to the Committee while publicly discussing the pictures in the present art exhibition. The eager interest of the bystanders in the talk of a couple of artists before a picture naturally suggested that a talk worth listening to might be worth reading.

The Committee being self-appointed does not take itself too seriously. The judgments are off-hand and the talk informal. Criticism is kindly meant and is not intended to be final-merely suggestive.

The reader is cautioned also against taking this bulletin to be a catalogue of all the meritorious paintings in the collection. Each man in the Committee modestly disclaims any merit in his own talk; he is included merely to give the other fellows a chance to utter most suggestive truths.

It was thought advisable that the Committee remain unknown for obvious reasons. It will read just as well and the Committee will feel considerably safer.

The report was at first intended merely for the members of the Association, but on reading the final proof, it seemed too good to keep from the general public. If the Committee is sustained in this report, and if the conservative artists do not block the elevator with freshly whetted halberds and hauberks and other medieval weapons, the Committee will try again.

The Conservative Painter for a time threatened to bring in a minority report but he was overborn when the amount of space he had taken up was brought to his attention. Thanks are due the Art Institute for manifold courtesies.

{Note: Novelist-Hamlin Garland; Sculptor-Lorado Taft; Conservative Painter-Charles Francis Browne; Old Gentleman-Oliver Dennett Grover}

THE REPORT OF THE CRITICAL

TRIUMVIRATE

The Novelist meets the Sculptor and Conservative Painter in the rotunda of the Chicago Art Institute, which is filled with the click and lisp of many passing shoe-soles.

Greetings pass.

NOVELIST: What means the page bearing the book? 

SCULPTOR: My official stenographer. 

NOVELIST: And the keen-eyed young woman? 

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: My official stenographer.

The minority representation can’t afford to depend on the opposition stenographer.

NOVELIST: Always well to be on the safe side. Well, time is short and art is long. Shall we begin on the paintings? 

SCULPTOR: Yes, take things as they come. 

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: En avant. 

NOVELIST: I wanted to say that but wasn’t sure of the nasal. 

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Shades of Raphael! They’ve all gone crazy. 

SCULPTOR: Don’t cry before you’re hurt— 

NOVELIST: Hello, I wonder if that is one of Appleton Brown’s orchards up there? 

SCULPTOR: Looks like it. * Yes, it is.

NOVELIST: He seems to have felt the influence of the open-air method. That certainly seems keyed higher than usual. It's very sweet and sunny; too sweet, perhaps.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Yes, it's too pretty.

SCULPTOR: I like it, but I'm always a little suspicious of the "fake" in his work. See his snow scene up yonder. They keep them at Siegel & Cooper's at 99 cents, with mica sprinkled on for frost effects.

NOVELIST: There are some strong points about that picture of Roecker's.

SCULPTOR: It suits me. He is advanced, yet his picture is not all "values." There is richness here and beautiful color. He has the picture sense. My only trouble is with that diaphanous cow; she looks as though a light breeze would float her away. I suppose it is part of his scheme of keeping the foreground out of focus, but is it not unusual to weaken color for that purpose? However the picture is fine, and its beauty is not accidental, but a style all his own. We gave him a prize for something similar last spring in the Society of Artists.

NOVELIST: This meadow by Robbins pleases me in several ways. It's thin, to be sure, and was done a little too easily-but it has something more than promise in it. He's a young man, no doubt.

SCULPTOR: I do not know him-probably he is a "Cosmopolitan." Have you noticed this one by Mrs. Dodgshun? It seems to me very beautiful. I have seen several of her pictures lately and liked every one of them.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Yes, better than usual-more original this seems to me.

SCULPTOR: Here's some good snow, and here is Murphy as delightful as ever.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Just the same as ever. You may not like him as well in the next room.

NOVELIST (glancing at north wall): That canal of Steele's up there, seems to me to be a most admirable example of good clear painting. Steele is a western man who has won the respect of his eastern brethren. He never painted better pictures than those two. I like the clarity of the canal picture-the garden is a little confused in the foreground, admirable in the background. He has never done more direct and natural work.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: What he and what we all need, for that matter, is more composition, more concentration of motive and idea. He's very strong and doing good work. I like him.

NOVELIST: It's natural in key-so is that-

OLD GENTLEMAN: To my eyes they're all exaggerated, everyone of 'em. I don't see any such color. Now that [pointing to dull yellow canvas,] that to my eye is a fine piece of color. What do you say?

NOVELIST: I don't see nature that way. But then my eyes are younger and-

OLD GENTLEMAN: I don't see what these men mean. I s'pose they think they see nature that way.

SCULPTOR: Here is the man who should have painted the Mid-Way Plaisance from the railway bridge

-Henri.

NOVELIST: [Studying it closely.] O that's fine! To suggest a crowd of people in the blaze of sunshine with so few strokes is mighty fine work. See how he lays his paints on. It ought to appeal to you, Mr. Sculptor; he evidently models with his thumb or palette knife.

SCULPTOR: Yes, he has actually put this sign-board into relief. 

OLD GENTLEMAN: Do you like that thing? 

SCULPTOR: Very much. 

PHILISTINE: It's all slop. Any child-

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: (coming back from a little excursion across the room)-Henri's a mighty clever fellow. There's a rainy-day picture of his further down there, and here's a dainty sketch that our impressionistic sculptor will like.

(Group of Philistines look at picture indicated, No. 153 on north wall and sniff in unison.)

NOVELIST: That portrait of Kemeys by Freer is good, but doesn't look so well as it did in the studio. The light strikes it too fiercely.

SCULPTOR: I think Freer missed it badly in the face. Kemeys has a strong face, full of character, tempered with much of high-born gentleness. I don't find it all here. But that head of Dr. Holmes is one of the best things that I have seen for a long time. I only miss a suggestion of "masterly carelessness" in the unessential.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Here's something too that we can all like; this profile of Mother and Babe, what a delicious harmony! He wasn't obliged to "lick" it over and it's great.

SCULPTOR: Freer is one of the cleverest painters in the country and a real artist.

ENTHUSIASTIC WESTERNER: The only trouble with him is that he has been catering too long to the ignorant down-east trade where "finish" is everything. (With exaltation.) That may be all right for New York, but for Chicago, the home of art-

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: [Aside] Just listen to the lake breezes!

NOVELIST: There's a subject which appeals to me-that herdsman at a water hole. It's away too low in key for the plains, but the man who did that saw it some-where. I wish his color sense were better. It's a big manly subject. Full of suggestion and power.

SCULPTOR: [Studying catalogue] It seems that he is a new man in charge of the Milwaukee school. To my mind there's a lot of good work in the picture. The poses of the animals are very true to nature. If the sunlight had only fallen as strongly on the rider as it does on the horse

NOVELIST: There is a picture that interests me-Needham is the name. Is he a young man?

SCULPTOR: It's a new name to me, catalogue says that he was born in 1844. It's strange that we should not know his work. It's good and direct, isn't it?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: A little harsh, but it's evidently very sincere. If he were a young man I would say that it showed great promise.

SCULPTOR: Ah, but here's something good: this lamp light business, isn't it fine? Well I declare, "Albert Herter, born in 1871." Do you see that? a mere boy-aren't they getting good starts now-a-days?

NOVELIST: I knew you would like it. I like him too. He's a man who covers up his tracks. He produces his effect with less apparent effort than most of them. I saw this picture at the Academy of Design last winter. It seems to me to have the virtues of the new method and few of its absurdities. What can you object to in it, Mr. Conservative?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: He strikes a pleasant artistic note, doesn't he? I remember his watercolors last spring. He is always delicate and refined. His lamp-light picture I feel a little too colored, but this figure of the girl and the dogwood blossoms is very decorative and chaste.

SCULPTOR: Himmel! Do you mean to say that the same man painted those two pictures? Sure enough. Well, isn't it a triumph, when an artist can do two things so different and both so good. Isn't she sweet? It's as refined as Lefebvre and the "academic" is all left out besides. Let's beg Messrs. Hutchinson, Dole, et al. to buy her for the Institute.

[The self-appointed three turned suddenly to the right and the novelist is moved again.]

NOVELIST: "Discovery" by Vonnoh is too prismatic to appear natural in the space of a small gallery. At a distance it would no doubt be less aggressive, but the fact remains, pictures generally go into small rooms and the test is a fair one when people say: I can't go to the other side of the block to see such a picture at proper focus.

SCULPTOR: But how it spoils all the rest of the would-be-sunshine in this room! Look at Richardson's bathers. See how dead the whole thing is; the sluggish water, the unhealthy vegetation. I'll admit that we can get too near to Vonnoh's picture. I would enjoy it better if it were only half as large. But you cannot call it uninteresting like so many big canvases-every one of those dabs means something in the toute ensemble.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Speaking of brass bands-Beg pardon, I would say, speaking of the aforementioned picture, his sky and background look to me like a mosaic background. The sky is luminous to be sure, but it is atmosphere, and we can't have the same texture here we must have on a gravel foreground. In general it gives a dry crummy effect that nature doesn't present to my partly trained eye. Will Robinson's sky in his marine is much hurt by the very same thing. Also Meteyard's smaller pictures. The picture is too colored for me. One feels primitive yellow, purple, etc. Mr. Vonnoh is one of our strongest men and is always improving. Wherever he goes, or whatever he does he'll be interesting in his work. I only hope he'll stay in this country and help the rest of us along.

SCULPTOR: By the way, don't those prismatic trees of his remind you of Mark Fisher's work at the Fair?

NOVELIST: Who's he? Is he a western boy?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: No, he was a down-easter. Had hard luck until he went to London, and now George Moore pronounces him the best landscape painter in England. His work seemed to me very crude.

SCULPTOR: While Vonnoh progresses all the while, some of the others do not. There's Beckwith, one of the nicest fellows in the world, but that picture doesn't approach some of his work of ten years ago. Is it possible that Janvier who writes so charmingly, looks like an Italian brigand?

NOVELIST: No; I know him very well, and this hardly suggests him. But isn't the Walker portrait (No. 324) great? So strong and fresh in tone.

SCULPTOR: Come and see this brush work. I know paintings are not made to be smelled, but I like to get my nose close to them sometimes and see how they are done. That's a new touch of Vonnoh's, how odd it is, near by; really seems drippy and uncertain, but how superbly fresh and sure, when you are at the right distance!

NOVELIST: It's no wonder that he has leaped into popularity here in Chicago. What other man is there today in America who can paint both landscapes and portraits half as well as he?

(The Conservative Painter is heard to mutter, "Abbott Thayer can beat his head off,"-but he doesn't say it aloud. Comparisons like that are odious to him and they do no good.)

SCULPTOR: It seems that he likes Chicago very much too; wonder if some of our rich art patrons couldn't form a syndicate and import him; I know it sounds funny, but it is just what the Chicago University is doing, and the Profs. do not seem to have suffered from the transplanting.

NOVELIST: Wouldn't it be fun selecting a half dozen or more good men to make an "art atmosphere" out here?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Worse than selecting one's "twelve favorite pictures" at the World's Fair. Lucky we don't have to take a vote today!

SCULPTOR: Our friend the novelist wants sunshine in every one of his, and blazing sunlight at that.

NOVELIST: O no, not so bad as that. I want live pictures though.

SCULPTOR: But these twilight pictures appeal to me just as much. Here's Dessar whose two fine ones hung on either side of the Flagellants at the World's Fair-he is just as conscientious in these little ones.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: But you don't see anyone stop to look at them.

SCULPTOR: I know it. People do not recognize the truth in their violet tone and fancy that the artist is defrauding them in his neglect of detail. How little we know definitely after all! Most of us have no idea what evening really looks like, nor sunshine either, for that matter. We open our eyes only enough to find our way around and lose the better part of life.

(Murmurs of "There he goes again, hear him preach," but undaunted the Sculptor kept right on.)

Sometime after looking at a picture like "The Sailor at Home," you will go out into the soft descending twilight and see just what the artist has so wonderfully painted here-a distance hung with purple mist. Afar off thin, impalpable forms; near at hand figures solid and real enough, but broadly massed-just as a painter would do it" -with no detail excepting what you imagine you see. Then you know that the painter was right. He has looked and seen; you never did before, nor would now had it not been for him.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: And that's his excuse for existence, n'est ce pas?

SCULPTOR: Step outside here a moment and see Cur-ran's memoranda of the World's Fair-mighty neat, aren't they?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Just a little too neat to suit me-a little too "tight" as a rule, his choice of size here is peculiar. The World's Fair was nothing if not big-and one feels they pretty rather than grand in his elaborately finished souvenirs. Curran at his best in a barn yard. He has done delightful things on the slightest of themes.

NOVELIST: And proven himself thus all the greater artist, seeing and showing us the beauties in the despised everyday environment.

SCULPTOR: The highest mission of art-its most beneficent work-that's my creed.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: But to return to terracotta, as we say in Boston, these things are very good and clever, and some of them really charming.

SCULPTOR: Did you notice Grover's Fair picture's back in the last room? There's one that has the very sparkle and dazzle of those bright days. It's one of the best things that O. D. has done.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Let's step into this big room next; I may have to leave you soon.

NOVELIST: Ah! There's Benson's picture, way over there in the corner. I saw that at the Academy of De-sign. It is masterly. I don't know of anything finer in the way of firelight. See the simplicity of his method. That hand and arm is painted with three broad strokes of the brush, but it takes genius to do that. I think that picture superior to Tarbell's "Arrangement of Pink and Gray."

SCULPTOR: [Before Benson's picture] Isn't she a beauty? How aristocratic and unconscious! You told me of her the other day, but I did not dream of anything so crisp and pure in color. Look at those mellow shadows. Do you see the fluffiness of that drapery, the firmness of the flesh-the hardness of that glazed jar-why, man, that thing has all of Zorn's magic with the best of American refinement to boot

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Out of breath yet?

[To which mild derision the enthusiast deigned no reply but dragged his companions nearer:] See how it is done! See your effect of fire light now. Look at that arm. A stripe of pure vermillion and then next to it one of clean, vivid blue, and then the mass of transparent shadow. You step back three steps and they blend into the tenderest gradations but preserve a purity that you don't see once a year in a painting. Yes, that is equal to Zorn at his best, and you know how I raved over him last summer.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Steady-steady, now hold up a bit. Benson is a good painter and a splendid fellow as well, but don't put on your praises as some of us put on paint, in chunks. I don't find it so tremendously interesting. In color it is delicate, especially in the shade parts, but I don't believe he needs to fill her hands with vermillion and cadmium to represent fire reflection. The quantity of paint is objectionable, for it's noticeable at the focus distance of the picture; same with yellow on dress-it's too painty. The picture is good of course in its way, but I wouldn't get onto my knees to it.

[To which the excited mud-dauber made warm reply that he would, if he could not see it otherwise. He might have said more but at this juncture an important little bystander observed petulantly that he wished to goodness they would all kneel and give somebody else a chance to look in that corner. As the committee with-drew he was heard to grumble; "Great Scott! Is it that rough thing that those men were talking about? No, I guess it was these plums: they are mighty slick."]

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Blashfield's Choir Boys are bigger than need be for artistic purposes. What's the sense of all these big pictures? What are they made for and where do they go? Yes, the big censure is well painted but it needn't be two feet big.

NOVELIST: Come over and see this picture by Robin-son, Theodore Robinson. He is another masterly painter, but he has not selected an interesting subject. Like Steele and Herter and Benson he conceals his means and gives us only the effect.

SCULPTOR: Just the right tint in just the right place! They say that is all there is to painting. How you feel the surety of touch in Robinson's work!

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: (following afar off) Davis shows us some of the freshest, most normal, impressions. Here is a very delicate cloud effect over a simple rocky pasture, but he has slipped up on his sky. It's too roughly painted for his foreground and comes forward too much. Will S. Robinson's marine is very good, but like Davis's his sky is terribly rough and painty. It's all too near-I heard someone say the waves were solid and could never move.

SCULPTOR: Here's Walter Gay, as good and as uninteresting as ever. There are a lot of those fellows over there whom I call "still life" painters. Their peasants interest them-and us-just about as much as a sardine-box and a candlestick.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Yes, one tires of such pictures, however well it's painted one can't help but feel the whole thing is an "affaire pittoresque," not a living, pulsing religious ceremony. How can a man paint, really paint, what he doesn't feel? [Bravo from the Novelist.] If he is a well-trained man, he can give us an external, shell-like representation, but the art masterpieces of the world tell more than that, they give us the life-germed yolk.

[All separate for the moment, one looking at Maratta's pretty studies, another with bated breath at Hovenden's certificates of a change of heart. The Conservative Painter makes a discovery.]

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Here's a western hemisphere subject done in a fresh American manner and nobody speaks of it. Why is it? Perhaps it's uninteresting, but it is well painted and good in color. H. R. Butler is in the way of developing American art by doing American subjects

[At this point the committee comes upon an eminent painter. They work him hard for a few moments.]

SCULPTOR: What about these Alexander portraits? EMINENT PAINTER: They'd be astonishing if no one had done anything like them before.

NOVELIST: They're after Whistler, I take it?

EMINENT PAINTER: Boldini, and Whistler too. One or two of them would be stunning, but they're repetitions in a way. See how he lets his canvas speak for him. The trouble is, it comes to be monotonous, like a word repeated over and over again.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Let me squeeze in a word while the eminent painter takes breath- Here's the eccentric again-I'm sure these pictures can't last long painted so thinly and on such coarse canvas. Think of the dirt Chicago would present such a canvas within a few years. What's the use of pushing a person into a northeast fog before they can be painted? What's the matter with light and wholesome fresh air! Thayer's people are healthy and living and we miss them very much here, don't we?

NOVELIST: You're quite right, I don't like such evident effects, but I want to learn a little more about these remarkable portraits. They're marvelously clever. But are they anything more?

EMINENT PAINTER: That centre figure is. There's more depth and variety of tone secured there.

SCULPTOR: I like some of those poses immensely, and they seem like real people. Take that yellow-haired girl who wears her eyebrows so high. See how she carries herself. Maybe I like her better because she does not appear to ignore us.

EMINENT PAINTER: Then they're impaired by being hung together. It is a difficult matter to hang two pictures in a gallery. Now that "Pink and Gray" yonder of Tarbell's is "killed" by that big hard canvas by Johnson and by that high keyed Marine on the other side.

SCULPTOR: Come over and talk to us about Benson's-

EMINENT PAINTER: What in-Chicago, made them put that picture 'way up there-those two children in white? That would be good if one could see it. Cut down the canvas-not quite so much smooth background and sofa-and hang it where its delicacy can be appreciated.

SCULPTOR: I saw it at O’Brien’s, and it seemed to me one of the daintiest, most charming pictures of childhood that I have seen for many a day. Miss Kellogg put the woman's feeling into it.

EMINENT PAINTER: There's no woman's feebleness in the handling.

SCULPTOR: No, but the newspaper critics seeing it hung high have been calling it quite unworthy of our strongest woman painter. It is a beautiful thing.

EMINENT PAINTER: 

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: } It is. 

NOVELIST:

SCULPTOR: What do you think of that firelight picture of Benson's? 

EMINENT PAINTER: I like it, of course. 

SCULPTOR: We've been raving about it. 

EMINENT PAINTER: It's high-class work-not up to Tarbell's perhaps.

NOVELIST: I think it leads Tarbell. Tarbell isn't so good on faces. He seems to me to be hard and flat in his painting of faces, especially in shadow.

EMINENT PAINTER: Benson's a strong man-a very strong man, but Tarbell is a genius.

NOVELIST: I'd put it the other way. and very delicate in color. I'd like to have a little more flesh and blood thrown in with the pink and gray in mine. I don't quite feel the form enough under the dress. Yes, perhaps her head might be better, but he isn't painting heads, he's painting tones-and has made so far a success of it. I wish he would tell us more about his sitters. He says he's going to someday.

NOVELIST: O I believe in Tarbell-only I'm going to stand by Benson.

NOVELIST: Did you see the work of some of the young Chicago fellows? Did you see Peyraud's and Roecker's little canvases.

EMINENT PAINTER: Yes I've noticed a number of new men who are very promising. In fact Chicago seems to be coming on surprisingly. Kemeys and Freer and other New York fellows have settled here I understand.

NOVELIST: Like yourself I've only just come back

to the west so I can say I'm delighted to find so many high-class men located here. Did you see Kemey's bronze reliefs in the hall?

EMINENT PAINTER: Yes, and they're fine. I know his work. It made a strong impression at the fair. I liked those little statuettes by Miss Potter out there in the hall.

NOVELIST: So did I. They're up to date. It seems to me a fine natural thing for an American girl to do. Aren't they dainty-and faithful without being literal.

EMINENT PAINTER: Talking of literal delineation of things, there's Mosler's cabbage-patch.

NOVELIST: Isn't that hard and dry?

EMINENT PAINTER: It was painted for the owner of the field apparently.

SCULPTOR: I used to like his picture in the Luxembourg-has he retrograded or have we advanced?

EMINENT PAINTER: He has not changed; we see better.

SCULPTOR: Now supposing that garden had been painted by a pupil of yours, what would you tell him about it-how would you go to work to improve it?

EMINENT PAINTER: I would tell him that such an amount of detail took away all charm, that an impression of the scene is really far truer than all of the actual facts.

SCULPTOR: Yes, but more specifically where would you eliminate first?

EMINENT PAINTER: Why to begin with, the artist must select some particular plane upon which the eye is focused, things nearer or beyond are then out of focus and if you paint them with the same insistence you lose all opportunity for optical illusion. Now you see in this picture the middle distance where the woman stands is worked out with great precision. Very well then, the foreground should be subordinated to it. You must have true notes of color, but if the contours of those obstreperous cabbages had been softened and left a little uncertain, if the veins in their leaves called less loudly for attention, the picture would be immensely better.

SCULPTOR: How about the corners of a canvas?

EMINENT PAINTER: The same principle applies literally on the chosen plane; the eye is not square. I prefer a picture where the attention may be focused upon some important object near the centre and having the edges and corners somewhat slurred. This is not always an easy thing to do, however.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: The old chaps knew how to do it all right-just the same. Mosler's big cabbage-patch is worth some study. It isn't slurred and evaded any way, and that's what can't be said of some of our "broad" painters. It's refreshing in its clear positive-ness after his mushy story picture opposite. Don't you think? [But his hearers didn't think and were rapidly running away. Having gotten a good start, the Conservative keeps right on, so to speak.] Och! The man is on the good road. All things considered I believe his winter landscape is the best thing in the whole exhibit. Why? Because it has a central idea, a personal individual sentiment well-expressed by his composition-modern but not peculiar, by very delicate drawing, suggestive but not niggly; and by a very charming and truthful color scheme. There is no bass-drum technique, no affectation, no forcing anywhere, he has simply gone to work and put on canvas what he felt from nature, in a direct, normal way. When you see the technique, it's bad; when you feel too much color it's bad-when anything is vague and incomprehensible it's bad.

NOVELIST: Wait a moment-a good technique may be noticeable because it's new not because it's bad. People sometimes like a thing because it's old and doesn't disturb them, not because-

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Let's have good honest statements and let's not fuss them up and cover them over, and thrust them out of shape, and color them up as if we had to use up every last squeeze of paint in the tubes, and don't let's show the public how smart we are by our very original stroke.

[During this diatribe the others seat themselves and discuss the blue shadow and things.]

NOVELIST: We haven't looked at that picture by Inness. Now let everybody be discreet. EMINENT PAINTER: It's a poor example of Inness, but there is always a certain distinction in his pictures.

YOUNG ARCHITECT: It looks like the landscape before the flood.

EMINENT PAINTER: There's no air in that picture. You couldn't breathe that any more than so much glycerin. There's no blue in it, no silver. You can't breathe when there's no silvery light.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: [Suddenly rejoining the group.] Yes, it's hard to get silver into a picture, but it's a plaguey sight harder to get any out of it-(and he thinks of the rent bill on his studio file and draws a deep sigh.) Perhaps Inness isn't at his best here. But we are glad to know he is sometimes. One wonders on whose shoulders his mantle is to fall.

NOVELIST: [To Eminent Painter.] Are you going to send anything over to the Salon this year?

EMINENT PAINTER: I don't think so. I believe I'm losing faith in exhibitions. [All look surprised and show deferential attention.] I don't mean that I am down on all exhibitions, but these indiscriminate ones, however interesting, lead to false estimates. A good picture may be "skied" or "killed" by surroundings; a poor one may have the "place of honor" or be brought right to the front by an accidental combination. The only just estimates are those founded on individual exhibitions. It is the hardest test, yet the fairest. A man is most interesting thus. You get his scope, his intention, his limitations.

SCULPTOR: Certainly we have had nothing more instructive than those special exhibits at O'Brien's last year. What a contrast for instance between Vonnoh's and Ochtman and how delightful they both were.

NOVELIST: Especially Vonnoh's. PASSING ACQUAINTANCE: Particularly Ochtman's, there's a poet for you.

EMINENT PAINTER: Then you had Harrison, I believe.

NOVELIST: Ah! such Marines! An application of modern methods to the painting of twilight effects. Who is there that can equal them?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: And such figures! Is there a man living who would want to equal them? Their commonness makes me sad even at this distance. [During the discussion the Eminent Painter steps quietly over to Robinson's picture and later, taking advantage of the preoccupation of his admirers, moves absent-mindedly but with increasing speed from the neighborhood.]

SCULPTOR: There's one of his waterscapes in his best style. He has turned his waves the other way-see how they stretch on towards infinity. That is as impressive as Aivazovsky without the stage effect and lime-light attachment.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: By the way, Harrison didn't do it. It's some of Leslie Cauldwell's work. Never mind, Harrison showed him how. It may be all right but I want to see a little attempt at composition. Give us just the least bit of sky. It's always the same thing; individuality goes even to eccentricity. The normal and healthy is forgotten in the race for notoriety. I feel this through the whole modern movement. But we need a strong dose to act on us after the Miller-Van Elten disease. There isn't much difference, I'd about as leave have chills as fever. Fortunately the new men are leading us somewhere and we'll all be better bye and bye-

SCULPTOR: There's some wet water there. It must be our lake. NOVELIST: It's some of Wendt's work. You know him don't you? A young German, self-taught. But that picture is nowhere in sight of the landscape he showed us in his studio-the "Cabbage Patch." I don't believe he knows himself how good it is.

SCULPTOR: Did you notice that panel up there? It's as artistic as a Japanese screen-see those rocks in high relief down in the left-hand corner balanced by the dis-tant shore in the upper right-hand corner and nothing but those delicate modulations of the sea's surface between. I call that pretty cute.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: What do you think of that picture of Tarbell's over there?

NOVELIST: I rather like 'em all. They're prismatic to be sure-he's an extremist just now-but they're full of spirit. That wharf now at this distance is high-keyed but not false. How do they strike you?

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: That's the trouble. They strike me! He can do better than that.

SCULPTOR: I was just now noticing that near by it meant nothing at all-has not even solidity, but from here it becomes very true and delicate, though not attractive.

NOVELIST: I don't know that it is a virtue always for a picture to make talk, but Tarbell is a force-a dis-quieting force.

[With a stern, set look on his face the Conservative Painter approaches the "Spanish Women." He studies them with a calmness that all could feel was assumed, then slowly articulates the following:]

What's the matter with Dannat? Artist, critic, and public look on and wonder. To me his things seem the harmony of ugliness-for they are consistent within themselves, but they give one a turn and no mistake. Let's give him the credit of being 'tres fin de siecle,' and let him go with all his honors and medals and decorations, and he is one of the best American painters.

[Bystanders are visibly affected and to relieve the pressure the Novelist tactfully changes the subject.]

NOVELIST: That Utah harvest-field is very good. I like that clear yellow, but it seems a little dry in texture. The grain seems dead-the stalks run together. There is good color in the background, but he has almost no air in his trees.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Nor sunshine; plenty of it on the ground and none on the foliage. It would brighten the edges at least.

NOVELIST: That there's a fine study by Peyraud-who is he anyway?

SCULPTOR: A young Swiss who has exhibited some very clever work the last few years.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: But nothing truer than this. With slow and rather weary footsteps, but with the consciousness of a duty well performed the triumvirate turned from the room. As they passed through the successive halls they saw nothing, but their voices mingled in earnest conversation. Here are some of the sentences that the awed populace gleaned in their passage:

It's good.

It's American.

Nothing but a fad.

They're on the right track.

NOVELIST: What I miss in the whole Exhibition I miss in American art-and that is the drama of Ameri- can life. It is all so far removed from human interest. I'd like to see more figures in sunlight-not exactly like Tarbell's-but characteristic American scenes, dainty figures like Miss Potter's statuettes. Themes like the herdsman drinking, only with better color of course. I want to see the people put appropriately and with equal technical skill into those landscapes-these fields and orchards. The laugh is not all on Hovenden-you saw his girl under the tree there?

SCULPTOR: Her saucy face seems to say, "See us do the sunshine act!" Isn't he trying to make fun of us? He'd better keep to "Home Ties."

NOVELIST: Let me make my point. "Breaking Home Ties," was very well as a subject-the discount was upon the technique. It was thin and flat and without the strength and variety which Herter, for example, or Ben-son would have put into it. You see my point?

SCULPTOR: It made no difference to the public whether it was painted well or poorly; it was the story and not the painting which attracted. I was not prejudiced against it like the rabid art-for-art's-sake critics; I was not wildly enthusiastic over it like the crowd. I thought that there was some excellent characterization in it, in the boy's face as well as in the mother's. I simply grew tired of it. It told its story too well. The first day I nearly shed tears before it, as the picture recalled memories that time can never fully efface. The next day I passed it with respect but was in a hurry and could not stop to cry. And so, from day to day one grew a little impatient and less inclined to pay tribute. That is the trouble with a story-telling picture. It is hard to have "emotions" to order. Reminds me of the parson's marginal notes: "Let voice falter." "Weep here."

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: Well whether it be a story-telling picture, or merely a story-suggesting one, as you may prefer, our friend the novelist is certainly right regarding American art. We will never have any home art with the real home flavor unless we are in close touch with what's around us here. What are Charles Sprague Pierce, Dannat, Walter Gay, Harrison, Howe, D. Ridgway Knight, Melchers, and hosts of our most talented American born doing for us? In one way, nothing and less than nothing, for they've educated the public into thinking that a picture isn't good for much unless dated and signed abroad. Is a Brittany peasant more to us than everything else? Haven't we outdoor subjects in our fields, or our mountains, our glorious lakes, on the shores of our loud sounding seas? We assuredly have. American art must be developed by the artists in happy sympathy with American surroundings, and sup-ported by a public loving the home things more than imported foreign sentiment.

NOVELIST: Bravo, Conservative, that sounds like my own prayer. We can't go on doing imitations and taking notes abroad. What pleases me about the Exposition is that while the principle of impressionism is almost everywhere it is finding individual expression. Henri and Herter, and Steele, and Tarbell, and Vonnoh, and Robinson all have a different touch-they are gaining mastery of an individual technique. This shows we're pulling out of the imitative stage. There are very few pictures here with Monet's brush-stroke imitated in them. The next step is to do interesting American themes and do it naturally-I don't want anybody dragooned into being American.

CONSERVATIVE PAINTER: As an exhibit it does what it should, it gives one an idea of the tendency of things up to date. It's fresh and bright enough and interesting too, but it doesn't fan one into a red hot hope for the future of American Art. Painting is more than paint, and sunlight is more than orange and purple, and a landscape as well as a figure means more than a symphony of color, a pang in grey, or a "whoop in violet." We painters must think beyond our tools or we won't do much. We're going through a color fever now and when we get back to ordinary vision, we'll all, public and producer, be better off for it. There's no use denying the fact that some of us have it pretty bad-but nature seen with reverential eyes will cure us in time.

NOVELIST: The public will rise to meet the impressionist half-way; we never will return to the dead black shadow, nor to the affected grouping of the old. Mean-while the videttes of art will push on to other unconquered territory.