m/Mi jffi Ihw \ KjgK^SfcpJtfl^/ irf jg nuMvl v1 ■» IM HK^faig ii^TB Sj'^aMkH^g tS^^’Ty .5 '7 V K C Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/catalogueofartdeOOnewe NEW ENGLAND MANUEACTURERS’ AND MECHANICS INSTITUTE y>ri/(! iq( ?q(5q;gS i^ jg^joy^focK- ^CW-4, -« If ^ .4.7^-.. >L,fe M&i ?5&l i’SiciffitSS * r y '> ■ '^. V: ' ,,. V ArA rV . R, ' ;’ ; V.. f. f:- '•’ ■ \fi K:M !!'*■ ^ “■ ; U ■'-* s . » ' : # * A* *!t ,' "t"' 3V» ’f *U' ' 3 ' •' ’^ P IT' ♦ I <■ fl- I ■ r OF THF AR'r DHFAR'rMFNT OF THF NFVV FN(;FANI) MANU- FACTURFRS’ AND MECHANICS' I N ST I T U T E COM.MirTKH: ON CONDUCT OF TMF EXPOSITION JOHN M. FIJ'l'EE, CHAIRMAN. .|\MKS E. I.rri'I.K, RRESIDENT. ^ JOHN F. W'oOD, TKFASUKI'.K. FREDERICK W. GRIFFIN, SECRFrARV. UlMlAM CO., I’l'fiLlsHERS, KOSTaV, MASS, COPYRIGHT 1883 BY AkIHi R B. rCRN'CRE iwr- ■ J -itV >*.:-■ I I I - J I PREFA CE I N offering' this Catalogue to the public, the Managers of the Institute have essayed to make it as perfect as their opportunities would allow. They have aimed to show by it the status of the culture and intelligence of x\merican Art in some of its most important phases as it exists to-day. The artists were asked to send in their etchings and drawings that they most desired to exhibit. And the most prominent art editors and writers were solicited to contribute their views of art from different stand-points. There only remained for the managers to select the best, and to publish these woiks in the most artistic manner that our native resources were capable of How they have succeeded, the public alone can evidence by their criticism and patronage. The managers desire to express their gratitude to the artists and writers who have assisted them in this labor, and trust that the)' will feel that an equivalent has been rendered to them. When draw- ings have been omitted, it has been because the good of the artists was considered, as well as that of the Catalogue. Mau)^ superior drawings have not been used, on account of their coming in too late, and the careless drawing of others known to be e.xcellent was something deplorable from an art catalogue stand-point. That there is a strong and growing art feeling among Americans to-day is evident from the signs of the times, and it is no reproach to any body of men that they recognize this. To encourage, to foster, and to guide this growing spirit in art, is the ambition of the founders of the N. E. M. and M. Institute. Fr.vnk T. Robinson, At'/ Director. John M. Little, Cliainnan of Comnittce on Exposition, i88p. There is none made so oreat, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear OF the power and lINKINDNESS, EVEN OF THE MEANEST OF MORTALS. ’’—SKNECA. CATALOGUE OF EX HI LUTS ALLEN, Thomas. Pelham Studios, Boylston street, Boston. I. iMaplehurst at Noon. Owned by 'I'homas IS. Clarke, \ew York City. ATALL, Agnes D. 2. ( 3 n the Wild New England Shore. 3. On Coolidge’s Point Magnolia, Mass. 4. Sweet Peas. _? ?7 Fourth avenue, Netv York. ARNOLD, M. E. 5. P'lower Study. 6. A Summer Day at P'armington, Conn. Providence, R. I. ANTIGUA, J. P. A. 7. P'isherwoman. 8. • Head. From collection of R. Wall, Esq., Providence. ALLICN, Erel). H. 9. Serving Girl. 10. Norwegian Sunset. Boston. ADAMS, Charles L. I I . Landscape. 12. Studio Interior. Savin Hill avenue, Boston. ADAMS & MUZZY. 13. Civil Engineering Designs. Boston. ALBEE, Byron. 14. A Sketch at Squantam, Mass. 14. Winter street, Boston. ANDREWS, Helen P'. 15. Sunset on the Kennebec. Providence, R. I. APPLEOl-^IST, E. E. 16. On Mystic Pond. 75 Court street, Boston. ANDREWS, J. R. 17. November Sunset, Hyde Park. Boston. ATWP'LL, Lizzie B. i/f.ga Tremont street, Boston. 1 8. Portrait. 19. Portrait. BUNCP:, Wm. Gednev. 80 E. Washington square, New York. 20. Island Sunset. 21. Clouds and Sails. 22. Midsummer Venice. Porn at Hartford, Conn. Studied in Munich and Pari.s. Exhibited in 1879, Salon and Paris Exposition. BODFISH, W. P. Wareham, Mass. 23 - The Rehearsal. BARKER, Miss C. F. Boston. 24. Portrait. BECKWITH, Arthur. 1 1 S5 Broadway, New York. 25 - Portrait. 26. State Camp, Peekskill, Seventy-first Regiment. 27 In the Revolutionary War. BAUER, W. E. Elizabeth, N. J. 28. In the Meadow. BRADLEY, Louise A. Winchester, Mass. 29. Sketches. BLOODGOOD, Robert F. E. Thirteenth street. New York. 30. A Water By-way. BURT, Annie F. Providence. 31 - Tropical P'ruit. 32. Cherry Ripe. 33 - Roses. BENTLEY, W. E. Boston. 34 - Scene on Charles River. 35'- Road at Byfield. BARRY, Mary E. S. Boston. 36. Apples. 37 - Thistle. ■ 38. Cat-tail. BUNNER, Rudolph F. Q W. Eourteenth street. New York. 39 - Marsh Lands. BURGMOFFER, J. J. G. no Dearborn street, Chicago, III. 40. Slave Cabin. 41. The Barley P'ield. 42. Entrance, Spanish Fort, New Orleans. 43 - Sandy Beach, Lake Michigan. 44. Sandy Road. 102 Washington street, Chieago, III. BEECHER, A. D. 45. The Smoker. BROWN, Mrs. Eva A. Winehester, Mass. 46. A Maine Lake. 47. A Farm Road. BR(_)OKS, Alden E. 70 Monroe street, Chieago, III. 48. On the Seine. 49. An Alsatian. BOUGUEREAU, W. A. 50. Peasant Girl of Savoy. From collection of Jolin A. Brown, Esq., Providence. BONNAT, L. J. F. 51. Italian Girl. From collection of John .•\. Brown, Esq., Providence. BOLGHTON, G. H. 52. Head. From collection of John Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. BONDIN, E. 53. Marine. From the collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. I. BON H EUR, Peyrol. 54. Landscape and Sheep. From collection of Oren Westcott, Esq., Providence, R. I. BREVOORT, J. R. 55 - Heath near the New Forest, England. BROWN, J. G. N. A. 56. Give me a Swing. Born in England, 1S31. Received several medals, .\mong the best-known .-\merican artists. BURGESS, Ida J. Chieago, III. 57 - If nid. 58. xTn Idle Hour. BACON, Mrs. Chas. E. Dover, N. H . 59 - Old Man’s Head. 60. Panel. Roses. 61. “ Wisteria. 62. Study of Corn. BIGELOW, D. F. lyo State street, Chieago. 63- Fern Lake, Adirondack. 64. The Old Mill Road. Boston, Mass. BIXDEX, A. H. 65. A Country Road. BELLE, Lucv, Miss. Exeter, N. H. 66. Flowers. 67. 68 . 69. BRISSOT, F. 70. In the Stable. BRIDGMAX, Charles. /<5 Cotirt street, Brooklyn, N. K 71. Amphitrite. 72. Meadow. 73. Blackberry Money. 74. Mary. 75. In Bad Humor for Breakfast. BOOTT, Elizabeth. 76. Italian Children. 77. Autumn Flowers. 78. Court in the Alhambra. BURR, Louis H. 79. The Interrupted Meal. BROWX, W. M. 80. Plate of Peaches. BROWX, H. K. Bush. 81. Purity. 82. The Rural Divinity. BOLIMER, M. De Forest. 83. Spring-time. 47 Mt. Vernon street, Boston. p IV Fourteenth street, N. V. Brooklyn, N. E. Newburg, N. I’. 5/ W. Tetith street. New York. BECKWITH, J. Carroll. 58 W. Fifty-seventh street. New York. 84. Azalie. Born in Missouri, 1852. Studied under Carolus Duran and Vvon. Received Honorable Mention. BICKXELL, Frank A. Malden, Mass. 85. Strawberries. BICKXELL, A. H. Malden, Mass. 86. Road Scene. 87. In the Woods after a Storm. 88. X"ear Annasquam. Pupil of Thos. Couture. His “ Gettysburg” and ■' Battle of Lexington ” are among his best works. BECKET, ALvria J. C. 89. On the ]h")rder of the Eorest. 90. October Day in the Woods, Vt. 91. A Cloudy Day in Virginia. BROWN, Nellie. J 2 Studio Biiildi)ig, Boston. 92. Intaglio. 93- Crayon. BURR! EL, Edward, Jr. Market street, Lynn, Mass. 94- Contentment. BEAMAN, Waldo G. y Treniont street, Boston. 95- Spring Evening. 96. Sunset, Lake Champlain. BRENNEMAN, S. W. 202 Second avenue, Neio York. 97- An Idyl. BURLEIGH, S. R. No. Maifi street. Providence, R. I. 98. Day Dreams. 99. Under the Apple Tree. BARSTOW, S. M. 182 Washington street, Brooklyn, N. k. 100. Road-side in the Catskills. lOI. Early Evening, Coast of Darien, Conn. BROWN, Paul. McCormick' s Building, Chicago, III. 102. A Home on the Rolling Deep. 103. The Pride of Old England. Horn in Troy, N. V. Ills “ Basket of I'eaclies,” pul)lished and sold in cliromo, gained idni a vviile reputation. BANNISTER, E. M. jO UYod's Bnilding, Providence, R. /. 104. The Stone Quarries, Morning. BARBER, J. Jay. 47 Monroe avennc, Colnnibns, 0 . 105. Cattle on the Bay Shore. Born in Oldo. Exhil)ited in the principal e.xhihitions of New York, Pennsylvania, and the East. BREUL, Hugo. Butler Exchange, Providence, R. /. 106. Old Letters. 107. Still Life. BURNHAM, Geo. W. 1 1 Indiana street, Bosto/i. 108. Balaam. 1 09. Nile Fishing Boats. 1 lO. BASS, Lewis C. The Pasture. Woonsocket, R. 1 lo^ Mnxfield street, Nezo Bedford, Mass. BROWNELL, Lranklin. 111. Portrait of Mile. M. D. 1 1 2. Peasant’s F ireside, Barbizon, P' ranee. BATCHPILLOR, Lrederick S. 2 College street. Providence, R. 1 . 113. Harbor of Providence, R. P BRUNTON, Nellie Sumner. Brighton, Afass. 1 14. Painting. BARNARD, PAiward H. 57 Tremont street, Boston. 1 15. Across the Plains, Belmont. BROWN, Geo. L. Malden, Mass. 116. Birthplace of Tas.so, Sorrento, Italy. 1 1 7. Morning, A Group of Ilex Trees, near Rome. Born in Boston. Lived in Paris and Florence. His works hang in the richest art collections in Europe and .\merica. The Prince of Wales possesses two of his works. One of the best-known American painters. BOARDMAN, James B. Sangns, Mass. 1 18. Strawberries. BALL, Robert S. p Milk street, Boston. 1 19. Convent of Isola Bella. 1 20. Cupid and Psyche. I 2 I. Halt in the Desert. 122. Sketch on the Thames. 123. P' lowers and P'ruit. BURPEE, William P. 4(5’ State street, Boston. 124. Morning, P'og with Catspaw Breeze. 125. Calm Before a Storm. BRIDGMAN, L. A. N. A. I 26. View on the Nile. Boulevard de Clichy, 75, Paris. — B., .\labama, 1847. Pupil of schools of the Brooklyn Art Association, N. V., and later of J. L. Oerome, Paris. First ex., Salon, Paris, 1S61 ; N. A. D., 1871. A. N. A., 1875; N. A., 1881. BRADLORD, Anne H. West Wins ted, Cozizi. I 27. Portrait Sketch, 15th Century. I 28. Pond Lillies. BURTON, Walter. Boston. I 29. Crayon and Color Portraits. BOGGS, L. M. Paris, France. 130. La Place St. Germain de Paris. Owned by Messrs. Hawk & W'etherbee, Winsdor Hotel, New York. The artist had two works in this year’s Salon, one was purchased by the French Government. The one above by Messrs. John A. Lowell & Co. BRITCIIKR, A. T. I :a • In Summer-time. 132. When the Leaves I'all. BELLOWS, A. E. N. A. 133- The Old Mill Stream. 134- E}’es to the Blind. BACHER. Otto II. 135 ' St. Mark’s Shrine. 136. Zatten. BLACKMORE, Arthur E. Mount \~cniou, N. 1 137 - Cottage in Devonshire, England. BUCKINGHAM, J. R. JO East Fourteenth street, X. 1 ’ 138. Azalias. 139 - Old Orchard. BROWN, Robert, Jr. Boston. 140. Hall and Staircase. 141. Old Cabinet. 142. The Rood Screen. CARTER, John G. Tjg Treinont street, Boston 143 - Niagara Ealls. American I'alls from Goat Island. 144. Gray Day on the River. Studied with Win. M. Hunt, and for sev'crai years ills studio companion. CRANE, Bruce. Jc? Ji: Fifty-seventh street. New York. 145. A Woodland. 146. Early Spring. COEFIN, W. A. jW JK Fifty-seventh street, Neiv York. 147. ^Esthetics in August. 148. The Close of Day. B. , Aiiegiieny City, Pa., 1S55. Pupii of Bdnnat, Paris. Eirst ex. ., Saion, Paris, 1S79; N. A. D., 1881. CARLSEN, Emil. 27 Treinont Rozv, Boston. 149. Peonies. CHAMPNEY, J. Wells. yyj Fourth avenue, Neiv York. 150. “ Heow d’ yr du.” Pupii of Ifdwani Frere. His works are in the most important coiieclioiis in this country. COOMBS, D. D. Auburn, Me. 151. Lewiston Ealls, Maine. CARY, W. M. A'ezv York. 152. Oxen Drinking. 15 3 - Sheep and Cattle. CHAPMAN, Carl T. ^V. A. Design, Nciv York. 154. Twilight, Maumee Bay. COLBY, GEORGE E. Chicago. 155. Morning in the Woods. CHASE, Anne V. Medford, Mass. 156. I'iusseh P'arm, Medford. CONTINENTAL STAINED GLASS WORKS. 157. Oxohyalographic Windows. COBB, Cyrus. Studio Building, Boston. 158. Prospero and Miranda. liorn in Malden, 1834. Has written on art themes, and is twin brother to Darius Cobb. COBB, Darius. Studio Building, Boston. 159. Portrait Rev. Reuen Thomas. Born at .Malden, Mass., 1834. His portraits of Rufus Choate, Gov. .\ndrew, Charles Sumner, and others, have gained for him an enviable name. CLAYS, Pierre- Jean. 160. Marine. Erom the collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence. COROT. 161. Study in Rome. Erom collection of Jolin .\. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. CROOKlf, Jessie M. Boston. 162. Painting. CHAR LET. 163. Soldier of the Eirst Empire. From collection of B. Mall, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . CHASE, Harry. 164. C.)n the Sands. Pupil of tVagner, Piloty, and others. Has e.xhibited in the Salon and other important national e.xpositions. CARR, Lyell. 165. Out in the T'ields. COLE, Thomas. 166. Portrait of Washington. Owned by 1 1 . L. Shattuck, Esq. CLOSSON, WiM. If. Trenio}it street, Boston. 167. Phigravings. Has taken a .Salon medal, and is one of the best of .\merican engravers. COROT. 1 68. Landscape. 169. 170. “ 171. 172. From collection of B. M’all, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . Hartford, Conn. CATLIN, Mary L. 173- Just Brought In. COLGAX, James W. « Boston. ' 74 - Portrait. CARPKNTICR, Ellen M. Tp Franklin street, Boston. 175 - 'Primming Her Hat. 176. Still Life. Pupil of (iuison, Berlin; Robert Fleiiry and Jules Le Febvre, Paris. COVEY, Caroline C. Bt. Paul, Howard Co., Adbraska. 177 - And Pansies for Thoughts. CO BP., Mrs. !■:. P. 2ipo Michigan avenue, Chicago, 111 178. Still Life. 179. Plate of Peaches. CHATAIN, Alfred. Ashland Block, Chicago. 1 80. Portrait. CHICKPIRING, Walter E. 181. Crayon and Photographic Portraits CURTIS, Lester L. Boston. 182. Crayon Process. DABNEY, Julia P. ly Boy Is ton street, Boston. 183. Moor. 184. Oriental Head. 185. Wiggelia. 186. Chrysanthemums. 187. A Breezy Afternoon. 188. Mademoiselle. 1 89. A Game of Marbles. 190. Looking Out for the Boats. DABNPIY, Mrs. Erederick. Boston. 191. On the Hague. 192. Achen See. 193 - Off Newport. DAUBIGNY, C. E. 194. Spring-time. From collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. De CRANO, F. F'. 15^0 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pa. Asleep. Ready for Conquest. 195. 196. DOLPH, J. H. A. N. A. 197. A Mother’s Cares. Studied under Louis Vankuyek, at Antwerp. DAUBIGNY, C. F. 198. Landscape. 199. 200. 201. 202. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. 1. 2J Music Hall, Boston. Boston. DUNSMORE, John W. 203. Portrait Rev. M. G. Savage. Pupil of Thomas Couture. DAY, Uknry. 204. Witcli Hollow, Bar Harbor. 205. Oriental Poppy. 206. Cactus. DIETERICH, H. A. E. 207. A Page. 208. A Sweet Flower. 209. A Bit of Jersey Road. DOW, Miss Florence. 210. Portrait. 211. Ideal Head. DABNEY, W.M. IF, Jr. 212. A Village Street. DIXWELL, Anna P. 213. Still Life. 214. View from Sharon Springs, 215. Villa de Este. Rome. DODGE, Philip H. 216. Peaches and Grapes. 217. Pears and Blackberries. DODGE, Mira R. 218. Bread and Beer. 219. Daisies. DRAPER, P'rances, Jr. 220. Morning in Harbor. DECKER, J. 221. Still Life. 222. Still Life. ?op E. Tiucnty-fifth street, Nezv York. Boston. ij Boy 1st on place, Boston. Jamaica Plain, Mass. r York. Toni s River, N. J. ijj6 Vermont avenne, Washington, D. C. i6j Warren avenne, Boston. Humboldt street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Wi listed, Conn. DOUGHTY, Carrie. 223. Still Life. 224. Peonies. 225. I''ruit and Glass. 226. Azalias. 227. Cherries. 228. Landscape Studies. DICKSON, JoiIX, Jr. Philadelphia. 229. 'Pile Artist. DIAZ, N. 230. Princess and Attendants. From collection of John Brown, Esq., Providence. DUPRIi, Julian. 231- Haymakers. From collection of John A. Brown, lisq., Providence, R. I. DOUG 11 PY, T. 232. Landscape. From collection of John .V. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. DAUBIGNY, Karl. 233 - Landscape. Collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence. DAVIS, Anna, M. Boston. 234 - Decorated Porcelain. 235 - Oueen Louise. DICKLRMAN, Mrs. G. \Y. Boston. 236. Squam Lake, N. 1 1 . 237 - Plolh'hocks. P:DVPARDS, Georc.e W. Paris, Prance. 238. P'ishing Boats. John A. Lowell & Co., ISoston, owners. Vigorous painter. Ilis works liave gainer him a conspicuous place among the young American artists. I 3 KS 13 RGIAN, Cornig. 12 West street, Boston. 239 - He is Late. 240. A Mohammedan Priest. LKSERGIAN, Telemaque. 12 West street, Boston. 241. Thirst. 242. An Old-I'ashioned Oriental Artist. 243- An Asiatic Lady. LMMICP, Rosina. East l\ocka%aay , Long Island, N. L. 244. Aurora. //^p Mt. Vernon street, Philadelphia, Pa. E A KINS, Thomas. 245. The Biglins Practicing. 246. A Quiet Moment. Born at Philadelphia, 1844. Educated under Bonnat, Gerome, and Dumont. His works are owned in many of the great cities of the world. 247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253 - 254. 255 - 256. 257 - >58. 259 - Morning in the Meadows. EATON, Chas. H Morning Peonies. IM)DY, Sarah J. Portrait of F Tittle Indian Girl. 52 E. Twenty-third street. New York. Born near .\kron, O. First ex., X. A. D., 1881. Portrait of Fred. Douglass. EEKINS, Ida. Pets. Game. EATON, Charles Warrex. Twilight, Staten Island. November. Winter FAening, New York Bay. A North River Pier. ECHTLER, Adolph. Lost in the Woods. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . Providenee, R. I. New York. 282 Sixth avenue, Nezv York. EAREE, L. C. News from Home. ELWEEL, D. Jerome. Studv from Nature. 70 Monroe street, Chieago, III. Gloueester, Mass. Studied many years abroad. /ppr? Treniont street, Boston. FUEEER, George. A. N. A. 260. Portrait. Born at Deerfield, Mass., 1822. Studied abroad, and has become one of the most celebrated of .\merican painters. FARR 15 R, Hexrv. yi JlPst Tenth street, Nezv York. 261. Now Come Still FLvening On. 262. The Old Wind Mills. 263. FA'ening on the I 5 ast River. 264. Gowanus Bay Shore. Born in London, 1843. Has exhibited in Salon and every important exhibition in .\merica, during the past fifteen years. His works are always tender and full of poetry. FOWLFLR, F'raxk. University Building, New York. 265. Kitty. X'ative of Xew York. Studied under E. White, Florence, and Carolus Duran, Paris, .\ssisted the latter in painting frescoes for the museum of the Luxembourg exhibition in Salon, 1878. Xc'w York. FKRY, Miss L. 266. Chrysanthemums. 267. Bird Nesting. 268. Altar 1 ^'all. \\’a\-ne Co. Penn h'ORl), H. C. J Yroadzvay, Xczv York. 269. A Soutliern California (den. 270. Santa Barbara Mission. 271. San (jabriel Mission. l!orn in Livonia, X. V., 1828. .Sludied in Pari^> and Llnrence. President Cliicatjo Academy of Design, US71 — 75 - I'AIRCHILD, Lizzie M. j 6 Mount Auhnrn street, Cambridge, Mass. 272. Lilacs. 273 - Marigolds. 274. Cactus. FARR, Mrs. Fllex B II Union Park, Boston. 275 - F' lowers. 276. Bric-a-Brac. 1 'F:R( 3 US 0 N, Helen M. y Mount street, Proy, Ac 277. New Process Mirror Portraits. FALKFNBURGH, R. Munieh. 278. The Lagunes of VTnice. I'RlfLLAND, Anna C. / ? Pearl street, Woreester, Mass. Bull’s Head, “ Duke Marlboro.” Sir Philip, No. 307. Lady Baronne, Second, No. 308. ILdl’s Head, “ Noble.” Deerfoot Jerseys. Red .Setter, “ Sam.” FROMENTIN, Kulene. 285. 7\rab Florsemen. Erom collection of John Brown, Esq., Providence. 286. Falconer. Erom collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence. FAIRMAN, James. A. M. ./o East Tiventy-third street, Xezo York. 287. FLigle Cliff, Massachusetts. 288. Bethel Meadows, Maine. Burn in ('dasgow, Scotland, 1S26. Kx-member of X*. Scliool Board. Colonel X. V. X’inety-sixth Regi- ment, late war. Has written and lectured on art matters e.xtensively. Studied m Idusseldorf, Paris, and London. 279. 280. 28 I . 282. 283. 284. FLACdi, Charles Noel. /ja JY. Fifty-seventh street. New York. A Monk. Laughing Boy. 289. 290. Cincinnati, O. FOOTE, E. K. 291. ]\Iohawk Bridge. 292. Clifton Canal, Ohio. G REN NT, Edward. 28 E. Fo2irtce)itli street, Nczu York. 293 - A Warm Day. Pupil of W. Bougueveau and Robert P'leury. GARRATT, J. H. 28 Winter street, Boston. 294. June Wild Elowers. GIORDANI, Pietro. • 295. Plaster Study, Theodore Parker. GREEEEY, Miss C. G. Sargcntville, Me. 296. Hollyhocks. 297. Yellow Roses. GARDNP:R, IWlZABETll B. Salem, Mass. 298. Magnolias. GAUBAULT, A. 299. Off Duty. GRIGGS, S. W. Boston 300. Morning on the Connecticut. 301. A Spring Study. 302. A New England Road Scene. GRAVIES, Abbott P'. Maplezvood, Mass. 303- P'lowers. GORDON, Mary S. Brattlcboro, Vt. 304- Blackberry Vine. 305. Meadow Lilies. 306. Wild P'lowers. 307- Wild Flowers. 308. Wild P'lowers. 309- Wild P'lowers. GAY, Geo. H. 81 Ashland Bloek, Chicago, III. 310. Morning on the Sea. GUILD, Sydney P. Lynn, Mass. 3 II- P'ishing Boats, Gloucester, Mass. GPLRRY, Samuel L. 6y Monroe street, Boston Highlands. 312. Return of the Cattle from Pasture. 313- The Eisherman of the P'lume. 314- Lafayette Brook, P'ranconia. GIH{R, Miss M. R. Nciu York. 315- Spring-time. 316. Share and Share Alike. GEKTS. 317- Lost. From collection of Joh 1 A. Brown, Esq., Providence. GUILLEMET, L. 318. Landscape. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . GAY, Edward. 319- Golden Grain. GRLENAVOOU POTTERY CO. Trenton, N. J. 320. American Vitreous China W "are. GOODALL, Mary S. ly Boy 1 st on Place, Boston. 321. Callas. 322. Peonies. GLAUZ, Ignaz. Nciv York. 323. Decorative Glass. GOSSELIN, H. C. Hartford, Conn. 324- On the Shore, Holland. HUNT, Charles D. 75 St. James Place, Brooklyn, N. E. 325- Outlet of Lake, Adirondack^ 326. Ausable River. 327- Otter Creek, Vermont. 328. Cliffs of the Ausable, Adirondacks. 329- Tramp Fiddler. HUNTER, F. Leo. Cold Spring, X. E. 330. Long Island Sound. HIRST, Claude R. 42 E. Fourteenth street, Xciv York. 331 - Jacqueminots. * HALEETT, Hendrich A. Boston. 332. Old Mill near Natick. 333 - Navy Yard, Boston Harbor. HASSAM, F. Child. Boston. 334 - In Central Park. HASKELL, Mrs. C. M. Xczv York. 335 - Roses. HERRICK, Caroline K. 336. Poinsettas. Brick Church, X. J. Schcrincrhorn street, Brooklyn, N. ]’. HEPBURN, WiLLLAM. 337. Our Flocks. 338. The Pasture Lot. 339. Winter Quarters. HORGAN, J. J. 340. Garfield. '\ 341. Hope. > Statues. 342. P'aith. ' 343. E. R. Mudge. ) 344. Longfellow. > Cambridge, Mass. HOLLIS, Samuel. 345. October. 346. August Morning. Boston. HENRY, E. L. 347. Sunday Morning. 5 / W. Tenth street. New York. HALE, Miss Martha. 348. Margaret G. 7/ Bartlett street, Roxbury, Mass. HOUSE, Mrs. J. Alford. 349. Chrysanthemums. 88 William street, Bridgeport, Conn. HASKELL, Ida C. 350. The Gardener’s Daughter. 1 10 Dearborn street, Chicago, III. HILL, Mrs. L. S. 351. View, Bay of Naples. 352. Roses. 26 Temple street. New Haven, Conn. HARDY, A. N. 353. Photographs. HAMMOND, D. W. 354. Charles Street Jail. HOLER, H. 355. A Winter Twilight. Munich. HENDRY, Frank. 356. Shore Sebago Lake. J Oscar street, Roxbury, Mass. HETZP:l, George. 357. Study from Nature. Pittsburg, Penn. HUNT, Wm. M. 358. Head. From collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. 1. 359 - 36o. ?6i. 362. IIKRCAN, Jules. Landscape and Sheep. l‘'rom collection oi' 1 !. Wall, Esq., Providence. HAAflLTON, II.VMILTOX. The Peddler's Visit. HOPKINS, Geo. K. Court at Chioo^o'ia. -Wru York City. Cincinnati, 0 . HART, W’m. N. a. V. Jf. C. A. Building, Tiacnty- third street, Xeio York. Napanock Scenery, Ulster County, New York. Born in Scotland, 1822. Ex-President Brooklyn .\cadeniy of Design. A brilliant colorist. 80 E. Washington Square, Nezo York. 363 364 HOMLR, W'iNSLOW. N. A. Coming Tide, Plnglish coast. Fisherman’s Daughter, Fnglish coast. Born in Boston, 1836. Exhibited in Salon. Paris Exposition, and the most important exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic since 1864. HOVKNDFN, Thomas. TFa- York. 365. Chloe and Sam. ( )\vned by Thomas B. Clarke, XAw York City. 366. Head. Erom collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence. Graduate of Kensington .\rt .School. Studied under Cabanel. Contributed to Salon, 1S78. HALSALL, William F. 367. I'ishermen Becalmed. HFRRICK, S. B. 368. Jacqueminot Roses. INTERNATIONAL POTTERY CO. 369. American Stone Porcelain. 370. American Ironstone China. JONES, H. Bolton. 371. Spring, near Orange, N. J. Born in Baltimore. Ranks among the best American landscapists. Has resided in Europe for several years. Has painted a number of valuable works. I yq Treniont street, Boston. Bergen Point, N. J. Trenton, X. J. 226 Fifth az'enne, Xczv York. JOHNSTON, John B. 372. Landscape and Cattle. 373. Orchard Pasture. ( Iwned by Thomas Wigglesworth, Boston JONI'IS, Allister S. 374. Wood Interior. lyq Treniont street. Boston. Boston. 375 - JENKINS, Miss E. R. Still Life. Boston. JOHNSON, Marshall, Jr. 12 West street, Boston. 376. The Departure. JAMES, Nellie F. ./p Warren avenue, Boston. 377 - Flower-de-Luce. 378. Bric-a-Brac. JACOUE, Charles. 379 - Autumn Landscape and Sheep. From collection of John A. Brown, JOARDAN, A. Esq., Providence, R. 1 . 380. Reveries. From collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . JUDKINS, Eliza Maria. 20 Dunster street, Cambridge, Mass. 381. The Lily Cross. 382. The Cornet. JOHNSON, Mary E. ijj Warren street, Roxbury, Mass. 383- Hollyhock Panel. JONGKIND, J. B. 384- Harbor of Plonfleur. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. I. 385. JAPANESE KAKEMONOS. The First Japanese Mannfactnring and Trading Company, Xew York. i. Birds and Rock, by IPPO. 7 - Stag by the Stream, by Kansai. 2. Birds, by ROSETSU. 8. Fusiyama from Sea, by TOVOHIKO. 3 - A I'igure, by VoSHIN. 9 - Winter, by KoYO. 4 - Landscape, by SansetsU. 10. Fowls, by MitENOKI. 5 - Autumn, by Korin, 1 1 . Birds, by Baytsu. 6. Moonlight, by Gantai. 12. Birds, by BUNCHO. KENDRICK, D. T. Studio Building, Boston. 386. Portrait. KING, Evax a. /p Marian street, E. Boston. 387. Portrait of Child. KNAUS, Louis. 388. Head. I'rom collection of John Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. KOWALSKI. 389. Scouting Party. From collection of J. II. Congdon, Esq., Providence, R. I. KENNICOTT, Mrs. M. A. Chieago, III. 390. Elowers and I’ruit. 391. The Battle is Not Always to the Strong. 392. Raspberries. 393. May in the Alleghanies. i 6 q Trcniont street, Host on. KXOVVLTON, Aliss Helen M’. i 6 q Treniont street, Boston. 394 - October Afternoon, 395 - Roman Woman. 396. W illow Road. Studied with T. M. J. Johnston, Dr. Riminer, and Wni. M. Hunt. .Author of “ Hints to Pupils,” compiler of ■* Hunt’s Talks on Art.” Inhibited in all the principal national collections. RtATZ, Daniel. South B>cnd, Ind. 397 - Autumn in Indiana. LANDHR, Benjamin. 74 John street, Xe%v York. 39 ^^- The Sheep Pasture. 399 - Through the Trees. 400. Partegat Pond. LANSIL, W alter F. Dorehester, Alass. 401. The Midnight Arrival. Native of Maine. Member of Art Club Government. Exhibited in the National Academy, silver medals. 1878, and ’81 ; highest award at Mass. Charitable Mechanics’ Association. LAUBER, Jos. ^ Fifth street, Xezu York. 402. Head of an Old Man. LINFORD, Charles. 403. Autumn. LATOUCHE, Lewis. Paris. 404. Marine. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . EAMBINIfT. 405- Landscape. From the collection of John .V. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. 1 . LAWd^LNCE, Jenny. Boston. 406. Louis Agassiz. LYON, W'lLLIAM P. Cranford, X. J. 407. Apples. 408. Grapes. LENT, Lrank T. Studio, Fast Tzventy-third street, Xezu York. 409. Harvesting. 410. A Winter Day. 41 I. A Lowland Bit. Born in New York City, 1S55. First ex., N. .\. D., 1880; Salon, Paris, 1882. — lulitor of Ttu' Sludio. LATHROP, Airs. Rosa Hawthorne. Boston. 412. Grapes. LIPPINCOTT, \Vm. II. Xczv York. 413. Milking Time. Born in Philadelphia. Studied under Bonnat. Exhibited in Salon of 1878 and Paris Pixposition. Philadelphia, Pa. LAUDERBACH, James W. 414. Engravings. EOVliWELL, Rominer. Walnut street, Chelsea, Mass. 415- A Quiet Evening. f 416. A Spar Yard, East Boston. 417. ( 31 d Vessels at East Boston. 418. A Ship Yard at East Boston. LA CROIX, Geo. J. Cambridge, Mass. 419. Longfellow’s Wayside Inn. 420. Tired Out. LITTLE, Philip. Pelham Studios, Boston. 421. Mother and Daughter. 422. On the Marshes. The latter the properly of Thomas Mack, Ifscj. I EGANGER, N. T. lyg Tremont street, Boston. 423- Summer in the Woods, Adirondacks. 424. Portrait of a Child. 425. June. 426. The Charmer. 427. Head of Child. LITTLEEIELD, CiiAS. M. 428. Photographs. EANGERFELDT, T. O. Boston. 429. Otter Cliffs, Mount Desert. L( 3 T 1 IR 0 P, D. & CO., Publishers of “ Wide A wake.” Franklin street, Boston. 430. Proof Impressions of \Wod Engraving ( 25 )- 431 - Illustrated Works (10). 432. Original Drawings (20). LEIGHTON, Scott. Winter street, Boston. 433 - Mare and Colt. LOVGEI-:, M. L. Warren Place, Roxbury, Mass. 434 - Winter Scene. 435 - Twin Belknaps. LINTON, Hobart. Boston. 436. In Clover. MI'^AD, Larkin G. • Florence, Italy. 437. Snow Angel. Lucius G. Pratt, owner. Native of Brattleboro, Vt. Lived in Florence since 1S62. The “Snow Angel” was sculptured in snow by Mr. Mead when a boy. Mas sculptured some of the most important statues now existing in America. The most noted being that of Lincoln, for Springfield, 111. Paris. MEDARD, E. 438. At Longban, 19 January, 1871. MacGILLORAY, 1831. 439. Pair Chaffinches. |os. M. Wade, owner, Boston. MILLER, E. 106 Spring street, E. Cambridge, Mass. 440. Emit. 441. Eamily Cares. McLEAN, C. E. A. Glastonbury, Conn. 442. Larkspur. 443. Milk-weed. M()RSE, Marian Frances. Columbia street, Dorehester, Mass. 444. Roses. 445. Snow Scene. 446. In the Alleghanies. MENARD, H. M. 447. Painting. MARTIN, L. Edna. ipo Tremont street, Boston. 448. Flowers. 449 - 450. 451 - 452. MERROW, C. E. A. Boston. 453. Crayons and Colored Portraits. MINOR, R. C. University Building, Ncio York. 454. The Mill. Born in New York; studied under Diaz, t’an Luppen, and Boulanger. MICHEL, E. B. 455. Cloudy Day. From the collection of John Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. MADRACO, R. 456. Water Carriers. From the collection of J. II. Congdon, Esq., Providence, R. I. ALA.N, Cabriee. 457. Head. From the collection of (dren Westcott, Esq., Providence, R. I. One of the most prominent members of the Munich School. McCORD, CEO. H. The Market Place. Where the Swallows Skim. 458. 459 - MEYER, Constant. 460. An Idyl New York. McLEAN, N. Wallace. Boston. 461. The Champion. 462. Old Echo Chimney. 463. Gray Day on a Country Road. 464. Pooling Haunts. 465. Early Dawn. 466. Pond Lily. McAULIEFE, James J. 467. Sunset Down the Bay. 468. In the Bay of Fundy. 469. Fishing Boat Coming Home. MORSE, Miss Alice. 470. Pansies. 471. Vase. MAYNARD, Rene. Landscape. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., I'rovidence, R. 1. MACY, Fanny M. Nantnckct, Mass. Old Man. Girl’s Head. Brook Path. MASON, Wm. a. Cambridge, Mass. 476. The Poem. MORAN, Thomas. A. N. A. i66 IV. Fifty-fifth street, New York. 477. Etching. MONKS, J. A. S. 16 W. Bzaenty-third street, Nezv York. 478. Feeding Sheep. McLaughlin, M. Louise. Chapel street, Walnut Hills, Cineinnati, O. 479. The New Book. 480. Head. MOORE, Charles E. 12 Walpole street, Roxbury, Mass. 481. Church of Santa Maria della Saluta. 472. 473 - 474 - 475 - Boston. Boston. MOONEY, Ell.'\. Upper Red Hook, New York. 482. Peonies. MAGEE ART CASTING CO. 483. Art Castings. Chelsea, Mass. Diisseldorf. MUNTIIK, L. 484. The Last (ilcam, MALhXKI, \V. Berlin. 485. Algerian Camp. MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL ART SCHOOL, Otto Fuchs, Principal. 486. East Alcove. Estahli^hed by an act of the Legislature in the year 1872. It is governed by the State Hoard of Eiluca- tion. Ilis Excellency the tTOvernor, chairman. Under the direction of a Board of Visitors, Rev. .V. Miner, chairman. Object of the school: To educate and train teachers of industrial drawing. Number of students, about 120. The school is divided into four classes, ,V, B, C, and I), each representing one year. CHARACTER OF WORK IN EACH CLAS.S : First year. — Elementary drawing, free-hand and instrumental. B. Second year. — Form, color, and industrial design. Painting in oil and water-color. C. Third year. — The constructive arts. Descriptive geometry, architecture, machine, ship and topograph- ical drawing. Designing. D. Fourth year. — Sculpture and design in the round. Modeling and casting. The works exhibited show the curriculum of studies in the school and also the manipulative skill of the students at the various stages of their work. Tliey are classed as follows : Class A. Xos. I to 4. — Instrumental drawing. 5 to 8. — Outline object drawing. 9 to II. — Light and shade drawing. 12 to 14. — Color and design. Class B. . Xos. 15. — Advanced perspective. 16 to 21. — Water-color painting of flowers, landscapes, still-life, and portraits from life. 22 to 25. — Drawing of human figure from life and cast, anatomy, bones and muscles. 26 to 30. — Time sketches, in charcoal, water-color and oil, of still-life groups, antique heads, and portraits from life. 31 to 39. — Certificate works in oil. 40 to 44. — Applied designs of textile fabrics and interior decorations. Class C. Xos. 45 to 47. — Descriptive geometry. Projection of shadows and' screws. 48 to 50. — Machine drawings from copy, measurements and details. 51 to 54. — Design of building, structural details. Building from measurement and ancient styles of architecture. 55. — Ship draughting, construction. 56. — Topographical drawing, mapping. 57 to 62. — Designs for ornamentation of buildings and furniture. Class D. Xo. 63. — Historical ornament from the cast. 64. — Study of ornament from flat copy. 65. — Design for a capital, original. 66. — Model of flowers from nature. 67. — Portrait head from nature. 68. — Bas-relief from antique figure. 69. — Anatomical rendering of antique figure. 70. — Model in relief. Human head from a drawing. 71. — Bust from the antique. 72. — Human figure in relief from life. 73. — Cast from nature: human hand. 74. — Cast from nature: fruit. 75. — Cast from a piece mold, sulphur and gelatine mold from students’ own works. 76 to 81. — Designs to be executed in the round. London, Eng. 487. NORTON, W. E. Normandy Coast. Property of John A. Lowell. NICOEE, J. C. 488. Building an Elevator. 5/ IE. loth street. New York. NORRIS, Miss Caroline T. 489. Capture, Hebrew Family. go Florence street. East Somerville. NUTTING, Benjamin E. 490. Dish of Vegetables. 491. Corner of Studio. 492. Spring. 493. Autumn. 494. Mad River Valley. Boston. NATT, Phebe D. 495. Auld Robin Gray. 496. Married for Eove. Philadelphia. NORSIb, Stansbury. 497. The Industrious I'isherman. 337 Fourth avenue, Neiu York. 498. 499. 500. ;oi. Born August, 1847. Studied with M. S. Bloodgood. NESMITH, Howard M. South street, Nezo York. Opening of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883. NOA, Miss Alwina. Portrait. NOA, Mrs. Jessie. Portrait. Irivin Bnilding, Tremont street, Boston. Tirniont street, Boston. Stndio Bnilding, Boston. ORDWAY, Alerei). Zord. Founder of the Boston Art Club. Ills works are in some of the best collections in America. ONTHANK, N. B. 502. Golden Eocks. 503. Portrait. O’BRIEN, Thomas J. 504. Annapolis Valley, N. S. PIERCE, Charles F. 505. Autumn Birches. PUTNAM, Geo. W. 506. Cottage Scene. Studied in Europe. Boston. 6 j Broomfield street, Boston. 12 Jlest street, Boston. ly Nelson Square, Lynn. 507 - Pin'ERSON, Geo. D. Plaster Bust. .a Park street, Boston. PITMAN, Mira M. Somerville, Mass. 508. Flowers. P 0 PF 2 , Walter I'. 616 Washington street, Boston. 509. Ellis River, Andover, Me. POWERS, Preston. Florenee, Italy. 510. Evangeline. 511. Model Hand. Born in Florence, 1843. Pupil of his father, Hiram Powers. His work^ are many ami show characteristics, original and idealistic. His bust ol Oarfield, a commission from Mrs. ( larfield, is perhaps one of his best productions. PlvTERSON, H. E. C. i lo Dearborn street, Chieago, III. 512. The Young Student. 513. In the Woods. iTor. 514. Head. f rom collection of John A. Brown, E.s(|., Providence, R. I. PLAT!', George \Y 70 Monroe street, Chieago, III. 515- Vase and Fruit. 516. Melon and Grapes. PERKINS, Granville. y8 iCest syth street, Nezv York. 517- Morning in the Tropics. 518. Evening. 519. Mount Washington. 520. Scene at Asbtiry Park, N. J. 521. A Tornado in Cuba. 522. Mountain Torrent. PLUMB, H. G. Sherburne, N. T. 5 ^ 3 - What is That ? 524. Eresh from the Well. PYNE, R. E. J ijj Broadioay, Nezo York. 5 - 5 - A Winter Sunset. 526. A Winter IWening. PHILLIPS, John. Leland Hotel, Chieago. to Portrait. PIERCE, H. Winthrop. Rez’ere, Mass. 528. The Summer of St. Martin. PARTRIDGE, E. J. & W. H. 529. Photographs, Boston. 530 . PIKE, Robert P:. Pen Work. PLATT, C. A. 531. Street at Honfleur, France. PARRISH,*Steitien. 532. Drifting. PP 5 ARSON, Hiram S. 533. Farm Yard. PHELPS, W. P. 534. Winter Landscape. OUIMBY, Ralph A. 535. Hooded Merganser. 536. Snipe. 537. Red-Breasted Merganser. 868 Broadivay , New York. / ? Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pa. Past Poston. Loivell, Mass. Boston. RPA'NOLDS, Georop:. i yp Lewis street. New York. 538. Hearth and Home. A New York Tenement. 539. Haunted. 540. Hr. Francis’ Old New York. RUPER'P, A. G. Chicago, III. 541. In the Studio. ROBINSON, W. T. Malden, Mass. 542. Game. 543. Game. 544. Mount Washington. RONDELL, P'., Sr. A. N. A. I2g8 Broadzvay, Nezo York. 545. Old Orchard at Newport, R. I. 546. View on the Bronx, near New York. Boi'ii in Paris, France, 1825. .Studied with Monsieur fugelet, Tlieo. (iudirs. Marine painter to Louis I’liilippe, at the fiobelins and at the Beaux .Arts. Came to .America 1853. RICE, Henry W. 547. A Summer Afternoon. 548. Morning and PI veiling. RA.MSPIY, Milne. 549. Beer. 550. Champagne. 551. Hot Grog. 552. Sherry and Cake. RYDER, Albert P. 553. Landscape. Boston. Ip2^ Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pa. 80 E. Washington Square, New York. 554- RYDER, John S. 554. The Coming Storm. 7 7 Windsor street, Koxbnry, Mass. ROOT, Enoch. 555. San Georgio, Venice. ^ 8 iJ Mie/iigan avenue, Chicago, III. ROBINSON, Edward J. ^56. Landscape, Sunset effects. Bnckinghani street, Boston. RllhT-iS, M. J., Jr. 557. John Bull. 5:; 8. A Young Shaver. Dorchester, Mass. RICHARDS, E. De Bourh. 559. Bear Creek Canon, Colorado. 1^20 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pa. RAYMOND, E. Lannitz. 560. June. 561. English Primroses. Brick Chnrch, N. J. ROBINSON, Theodore. 562. Nantucket Shepherd Boy. Boston, formerly of Nciv York. RUSSELL, In A G. 563. P'lower Picture. Annandale, N. ]\ RASCH, H. Miuiich. 564. Starnberg Lake Costume, Seventeenth Century. ROBINSON, S. M. Boston. 565. Collection of Designs. ROWK, Nan'CV B. Ballai'dvale, Mass. 566. View on Lake Superior. After Briscoe. 567. Old Homestead on Staten Island. From sketch by Perkins. RITCHIE, G. W. H. 568. From Under the Trees. 569. Near New Utrecht. 570. Portrait of Robert Browning. I op Liberty street, Nezo ]ork. ROBINSON, Tom. 571. Stream Woodfort, YT. 572. Ox Plowing. 573. Cow and Calf Providence, R. I. Born in Nova Scotia, 1835 . .Studied under Courbet, and instructed by .\ugust Bonheur. Member of the Centennial Art Exposition. One of the strongest cattle painters of America. RICHET, L. 574. Figure and Landscape. E'rom collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. 1. ROUSSEAU. 575. Landscape. From collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. REAM, Morston. New York. 576. Emit and Wine. RICHARDS, T. Addison. National Academy Design. 577. A Summer Shower. 578. Sunrise on the Delaware. Twenty-third .street and Fourth avenue. New York. — B. London, 1820. Studied in N. A. 1 )., New York, 1843-1847. F'irst ex., N. A. D., 1846. Fllected A. N. 1S48; N. A., 1851. Secretary of N. A. D. from 1852 to the present time. F'irst Director of Cooper Union School of Art for Women, 1858-1860. Professor of Art in the University of New York since 1867. Author of a number of art works. ROTThiNHAMMER, Hans. Munich. 579. Susanna and the Elders. Owned by H. P. Leonard, Esq., Boston. SWORD, James B. 1520 Chestnut street, Philadelphia. 580. Champlain Valley. 581. Summer Morning on Conanicut Island. Pupil of Wm. T. Richards, Philapelphia. F'irst ex., N. A. D., 1863. President Philadelphia Society of Artists. . STEVENS, Alice B. Boston. 582. Wild Raspberry. 583. Roses. SONNTAG, Wm. Louis, Jr. 120 E. Tzucnty-sccond street, New York. 584. Study of an Old Barn. STETSON, Charles Walter. Providence, R. I. 585. Great Meadow, Blomidon Grand-Pre, N. S. 586. Girls at Play. 587. Allegro. SHEFEIELD, F. New York. 588. On the Canal. SARTAIN, William, A. N. A. 752 W. Fifty-seventh street, Nezv York. 589. The Road to the P'arm. 590. Sandy Land near the Sea. Near the north shore, Nonquitte. Born in Philadelphia, Pa. Pupil of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Leon Bonnat and I'Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. First ex.. Royal Academy, London, 1875; N. A. D., 1876; A. N. A., 1880. Professor in Art .Students’ League. Silver Medal 1881, Massachusetts Charitable Association. Ex. London, Vienna, and Munich. SCHELL, P'red. B. j 20 Walnut street, Philadelphia. 591. Sketches from Nature. 592. Illustrations for Picturesque Canada. 593. Illustrations for Picturesque Canada. j3 E. Tzvcnty -third street, Eheiv York. STORY, Geo. H. A. N. A. 594. Portrait of Colonel Rich Lathers. 595- Where Ignorance is Bliss 'Tis I'olly to be Wise. Born in New Haven, Ct., 1835. Studied in Europe. State medal of Maine. lias painted some strong por- traits ; is among tlie best colorists of .tmerica. SPREAD, H. V. 1 10 Dearborn street, Chieago, III. 596. A Joyous Afternoon. SPIAWJ Annie C. 3.j.oy Vernon avenne, Chieago, III. 597 - Afternoon. STUART, Frederick T. 42 Court street, Hoston. 598. Meadows, South Windsor, Conn. 599 - Windsor J^'armer’s Cottage, Conn. STITTS, J. R. 72 East Twenty -third street. New York. 600. The I'irst Days of April. S M E P P A R D , \\' A R R E N . 281 Ninth street, Brooklyn, N. L. 601. A Warm Night. Born at Greenwich, N. J., 1855. .Studied under Professor llertzberg. SCHILLING, Alex. Ashland JUoek, Chieago, III. 602. The Daisy-topped Ilill-side. 603. PIvening in the Marshes. SANBORN, C. V. Bible House, Third avenne. New York. 604. Study of a Head. 605. Portrait. 606. Salt Meadows. SOUTHWICK, Jean IE Lea. 6 Home street, lYoreester, Mass. 607. A Pitcher I'ull. 608. Behind a Cloud. 609. Down the Hill-side. 610. Yellow I'leur-de-Lis. 61 1. Jersey Marshes. SWAIN, H. J. 60 Winthrop street, Roxbnry, Mass. 612. Painting. SHANNON, Miss Mattie A. Hyde Park, Mass. 613. Southern Magnolias. 614. SOULE PHOTOGRAPH CO. SIMMONS, G. J. Ihston. 615. Metalized Plaster. STEWART, J. L, Paris. 616. The Proposal. SMITH, H. P. Neiv York. 617. Brigantine Shoals, Jersey Coast. 618. Moonlight. SCHLIECH, R, Munich. 619. The River Iser, Twilight. STEPHENS, George Frank. 1 1 j6 Girard street, Philadelphia, Pa. 620. Portrait Bust of John Casain, Esq. SHEARS, Mrs. L. D. 16 E. Tzventy -third street, Xezv York. 621. Castle of Chillon. 622. Screen, Rocky Point. STAIGG, R. M. 623. Portrait, W. Allston. From collection of John A. Brown, Esq., Providence, R. I. SCHEAFFER, Arv. 624. Original Suggestion for Painting, long in the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre — Suliote Women. From collection of B. Wall, Esq., Providence, R. I. SHIRLAW, Walter. 625. Peggy. SANDERSON, C. W. ^ Mt. Vernon street, Voston. 626. Vermont Intervale. 627. Llano Water, Salisbury, Vermont. 628. Willows, on the Merrimac, Methuen. Native of A^ermont. Studied in London and in Paris. Pupil of Boulanger and Eefevre. SHURTLEFF, R. M. A. N. A. j8 West Fifty-seventJi street, Nexo York. 629. In the Wild Wood. B. New Hampshire. First ex., N. A. 1 )., 1872; A. N. A., 1881. .SHELTON, W. H. / Union Square, Nexv York. 630. Artillery Sergeant. STOKES, M. Chelsea, Mass. 63 I . Portrait. ST. JOHN, S. H. 632. Waiting. SEARS, Charles Payne. 633. Navesink Woods. Atlantic Highlands, N. J. Maple avchiic, Ihston. SHEPLIE, Miss Carrie E. 634. View in Day’s Woods. 635. Vdew near Mount Wdllard. 636. Child* 637. Dog. SHURTLEEE, R. M. 638. The Meadows. 639. Sunset, Otter Creek, Vt. TRACY, John M. 640. I'ox Terriers. TRYON, C. 641. Eandscape and Sheep. From collection of R. Wall, I'Nq., Providence, R. 1. TURNER, C. II. 642. Portrait of William Vv’arren. 12 West street, Pwstou. TATNAEE, W. E. 643. Outdoor Sketch. Wilmington, Del. TP:EE, George A. 644. lingraving, Gray’s l£leg}’. Poston. THURSTON, Eanny R. 645. Under the Wdllow. iVezo London, Conn. 646. Morning Glories. TP:WKSBURY, Miss Eannv W’. 647. Wisteria. 648. Rocks at Magnolia. Neivton -i 'illc, M ass. 649. Beach at Ocean Spray, Winthr 650. The Willow Path. op. THOMPSON, Jerome. 651. Child with Pet Lamb. ACiu York. TROTTER, Newboli) H. 652. Jersey Beauties. 653. September. 654. Lion and Lioness. ij20 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pa. TRYON, S. J. 655. Oak Trees. Hotel Pelham, Poston. THOMPSON, Albert. 656. Cerney la V^ille, Ph'ance. Wobniii, Mass. Boston. TUCKER, Miss Rubv. 657. Painting. THE CENTURY CO. 658. Original Drawings. I . Meeting of the Salmagundi Club. H. P. Share. 2 Red-Horse Inn Yard. Jos. Pennell. J- Yard of Plow Hotel. Jos. Pennell. 4 - Vista View at Oak Knoll. Homer Martin. 5 - Tile Club Sketches. C. S. Reinhart. 6. The Brotherhood. ( St. Nicholas.) W. P. Smedley. 7 - Tom Meets the Wandering Jew. ( St. Nicholas.) A. Brennan. 8. The Bathing Beach. R. Swain Gifford. 9 - Flight of the Countess. ( St. Nicholas.) R. B. Bircfi. 10. Picnic Lunch. A. C. Redwood. 1 1. Indians Hunting Wild Sheep. J. Bolles. 1 2. An Indian Village. H. F. Farny. 13 - Our Grandmother’s School-house. P'rancis Lathrop. 14. Seizing British Arms. PI A. Abbey. 15 - Diversion in the Cloister. S. W. Van Schaick 16. On Long Island. R. Swain Gifford. 17 - Old Half- Wall Fence. R. Blum. 18. Afloat on the Ice. Henry Sandham. 19. Fish Houses at Rocky Neck. Stephen Parrish. 20. Most Ancient Part of Holborn. C. A. Vanderhoof. 21. Bathing at Coney Island. R. Blum. 22. Among the Docks. C. A. Vanderhoof. 23 - A Seaside Homestead. Alfred Parsons. 24. Master Self. (St. Nicholas.) R. B. Birch. 25 - Brookbank (where George Eliot once lived). Harry P'enn. 26. One P'rame containing four proofs from St. Nicholas. ULRICH, Charles F. Broadzvay, Nczu York. 659. An Amateur Etcher. Owned by Thomas B. Clarke, New York City. B. New York, 185S. Pupil of Loefftz and Lindenschmidt in Munich. Eirst ex., Diisseldorf, 1880; N. A. D., 1882. U ELMAN, Nath.an. 2jp East Fiftieth street, New York. 660. Fruit. VOLKMAR, Charles. 661. A Family of Quacks. 662. Home to the Fold. Pupil of Harpignies. Exhibited in Salon several years Charcoal Club. VFAZIF, Anne G. Rzitland, Vt. 663. Painting on Glass. 664. Neapolitan Boy. 665. Cupid and Psyche. Treniont, New York. Vice President Salmagundi Club, President VON BOSKERCK, R. W. 656. Jersey Lowlands. 5 a MARGUERITE BY IDA V. BURGESS * DAY dreams” by S. R. BURLEIGH / 4 > .r'* Im ' v % y-v, t . i "-v I-- « : I . « *• t • ' > ■ fi •• I #> i A . 1 r ? THE STONE QUARRIES GATTLE ON THE BAY SHORE. VIEW ON THE NILE I \ -t ' i N. *■ > I \ It:- tec .. v n ;r ( i i \ % I .1 , J a' i.. «‘i LA PLACE ST. GERMAIN DES PR^S, PARIS ” Albertype ; — Forbes Co., Boston. WILLIAM A. COFFIN THE CLOSE OF DAY V • “the young squire” ENGRAVED BY \V. B. CLOSSON AFTER COUTURE MADEMOISELLE BY JULIE DABNEY MORNING IN THE MEADOWS BY CHAS. HARRY EATON FLOWERS BY LIZZIE M. FAIRCHILD MORNING AT SEA ADIRONDACK POOL BY C. D. HUNT LONG ISLAND SOUND” BY F. LEO HUNTER “ IN CENTRAL PARK ” BY F. CHILDE HASSAM '.J « ft ■% * 1 . • I <■ I . ► I <> '■ .. : > ‘ y I /' s /■ A r ■ r. -’ V» .’■.»•• ■■ * >A‘ . . - s.* ' . ' ■ - • -i ' .'y- iT s • , j ' • ?■ ■-. ^■. • •i'f* • * ^ ^ T ' ' ' '* . * y"*' c ■■ - ,yi-r . ' ' '-"t ^V. t vVlbertype; — Forbes Co., Boston. HAMILTON HAMILTON THE PEDEAR'vS VISIT 1 !/■ > i V \A ■ V. *J< w *' 1 SPRING NEAR orange, NEW JERSEY. ...pstesiaii ss6«gagiS)itiiM ';rj; J^ ,' ' 7 •' '4 •} ^ >•: '3^:;:^ J ? WILLOW ROAD BY HELEN M. KNOWLTON fl % • .. 1 : 'f^ ' ^ *' ^rr» »■>. }■' ■ ¥X ^r tv ^ -* r"i5. h ■ ; ■ ''i; -.>: ' i * f'' 'I ,1 •>'I! 'i i' ■i' *1 .■ i y- .J I FISHER WOMAN ” BV WILLIAM E. NORTON SUMMER AT ST. MARTIN ” BY H. WINTHROP PEIRCE GAME BY FRANK T. ROBINSON THE Wll.n WOOD \ 1 u r • • r * > ir k ■ ^ »■ , ‘J !■ / > j : \ -i •«i. ■‘jersey lowlands” by r. w. van boskerck ■I* K • ^ ; JC- •* .1 IDEAL LANDSCAPE FOX TFRRIFRS t 1 w"WvP?rL 'M 1 'SJ H 'iTri-Tl A 4 -y' ' V ! X r _'(; ^ X * « > < ( i r.t . C* y * ' ,v , . \ <*•••# M -*1. t' -f -^^ ***• '•*** w.. , f ■ , 'J • *> r . » I / 'V» G-. W H.Ri.tcliU. Imp. rm>m; VARIOUS PHASES American ARI.O HATES S. R. KOEHLER A. CURTIS BONU FRANK T. r.ENT R. RIORDAN EDWARD DEWSON EDWARD A. ROBINSON SIDNEY DICKINSON WM. HOWE DOWNES FLORENCE FINCH ARTHUR B. TURNURl- L. C. KNiuirr IHLIAN WHFl'INI AMERICAN WOOD ENGRA VING is hardly to be expected tliat anything of striking novelty remains to be said upon a subject which, by attracting so wide attention as has w'ood engraving, has come to be so much dis- cussed ; while the attempt at anything like an exhaustive sketch of the history of this art in America would far exceed the limits of an article so brief as this must of necessity be. Suffi- cient excuse for writing is easily to be found, however, in the fact that ignorance is still wide-spread regarding the history, the progress, and the tendencies of wood engraving, and in the general principle that to the consideration of all progressive arts something may always be added which shall mark the measure of their advancement. Without going too minutely into the rise and history of the art in general, it may not be amiss to glance at its more salient points. The earliest attempts in this line, the plank-blocks, were made by cutting away with knives all portions of the wood not covered by the design drawn upon it; and this style of engraving, with unessential modifications, although naturally with great improve- ments, lasted for centuries. Indeed, until the knife was displaced by the graver, the mechanical cutting away of the wood left untouched by the artist’s design practically covered the whole scope of wood engraving ; and it was only by the introduction of the “ white line ” that the art acquired the freedom and dignity which distinguish it to-day. “White line,” although having a severely technical sound, is really the simplest of matters. If a block of wood is covered with ink and then pressed upon paper, an impression of the entire block is produced. If, however, any portion of the block has been cut away ; if, for instance, an incision has been made across it with the graver, a corresponding white space will appear in the print. This is the “ white line ” of the engraver, and a moment’s reflection will show the difference between a servile cutting away of the wood surrounding the black lines of a drawing, and the interpretation of that same drawing from black lines upon white into white lines upon black. In the former case the engraver is a mechanic, in the latter an artist. An engraving, it must be added to prevent misunderstandings, is seldom entirely in white line. Occasionally it is so, but for the most part the outlines of the artist’s drawing are preserved in black line, while the shadings and textures are given in carefully discriminated white lines, of which the skillful engraver has a great variety of combinations at his command. It would not be just to leave this portion of the subject without adding that, while it is accurate in the main to class black line work as mechanical and white line as artistic, neither statement must be taken too exactly. Art in this application becomes a matter of original and intelligent rendering, which may, of course, be in black line. To produce the black line, however, the process is the negative one of removing the surface of the wood surrounding it, while the white line is the direct product of the free graver ; and it follows that freedom and spontaneity are far more likely to result from the latter process than from the former. Many engravers have distinguished themselves by the strength and character of their engraving in pure black line — or, to use Mr. Linton’s far better, because more descriptive term, fac simile — engraving; but they have done it in the face of difficulties which the more legitimate methods avoid, and which render freedom and originality impossible to anything like the degree belonging to the latter system. White line engraving was brought into prominence and perfection by Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) and his pupils, Charlton Nesbit and Luke Clennell, the latter in some respects surpassing their master. American art goes back to Bewick through Dr. Alexander Anderson (1775-1870). He, and others less conspicuous, laid the foundations of white line work in this country, which the publications of the Ameri- can Tract Society and of Harper Brothers fostered. The centur}^ had, however, passed its meridian before American wood engraving attained any marked excellence. Henry Marsh, with his exquisite and wonderful illustrations to Harris’s “ Insects Injurious to Vegetation,” for whose perfection he paid the price of falling into a minuteness which injures all his subsequent work ; W. J. Linton, with his excellent understanding of the true aims and the innate limitations of his art ; A. V. S. Anthony, whose delicate yet broad graver work stands still at the head of American engraving upon wood, were all distinguished in the first decade and a half of the present semi-century. The establishment and rivalry of the illustrated monthly magazines, “Harper’s” and “Scribner’s,” brought into prominence a number of engravers and exerted a most marked influence upon their art. It is in connection with the magazines, and especially with “Scribner’s,” that the term “New School” has come into use. The title is sufficiently vague, and of necessity must remain so, since it has been used like charity to cover a multitude of sins, rather than to mark the development of any fresh and vital principles. It has been made the sufficient answer to all protests against slovenliness, sensation- alism, and clap-trap. Its followers have sacrificed drawing, texture, and precision, to striking impressions of color, or to an unworthy and finical imitation of the processes of the original design ; they neglect every -desirable quality to reproduce the brush marks of the picture they engrave, or they mingle foreground and distance, sky, sea. and land, in one indistinguishable mass of unmeaning lines, simply caring to work out some single striking effect. An artist is always upon the wrong track who conceives the secret of emphasis to lie in distortion; he is often justified in suppressing, seldom in falsifying, details. When an engraver has cut one portion of his block the remaining portions demand a certain relative value, not necessarily any especial and definite combination of lines, but an absolute discrimination, an honest interpretation ; and to slight or ignore this is to falsify the whole. The great absurdity of the so called “ New School” engraving has been that it constantly struck a key-note with which it refused to remain in harmony. The tendency to precipitancy and spasmodic growth has been so strongly marked in all American affairs, that even art, which most requires calm and leisure for its healthful development, has not been able to escape it. Enterprise has been so worshiped that moderation has been forgotten, and American wood engraving has shared the misfortune of the marvelous success which advertising has bestowed upon patent medicine. The essential in art has been made to give place to the successful accidental. It may not be amiss to glance a moment at the definition of essential as applied to wood engraving. Engraving is the art of interpreting in cuts of the graver the thought which the artist has expressed with pencil, pen, gauche, or whatever medium it suited him to use. It follows that the interpretation must be faithful to the intentions of the artist; the drawing must be preserved in its integrity, th^'^extures must be distin- guished, and above all — the principle is one which underlie^*..*!! the arts — there must in every stroke of the graver be meaning and intention. Mr. Linton very happily defines pure white line as a “ line drawn with meaning by the graver ” ; and it is always perfectly competent to hold any engraver to account for strokes by which he has relieved himself from ^le trouble of finishing his block intelligibly. Accuracy and Intelligibility are the prime essentials of all good engraving. We have been led into quite a digression by the mention of the ” New School,” but the subject is one of much interest and importance. Various technical points have come into prominence in connection with recent American engraving. Photog- raphy on wood, first practiced in England a quarter of a century ago, has been revived with some flourish of trumpets, and although it has many disadvantages, as, for instance, the sacrifice of values, and the danger of a loss of just proportions by the abandonment of drawing directly upon the block, it has come into very general use. The fact that it allows the artist to work upon a larger scale and that it preserves the original design, have been two strong points in its favor ; and although some of the best engravers object to it, It seems likely to hold its own. It is necessary to distinguish between the ‘‘ New School ” and the engravers who have been connected with it. Some of the men who have been betrayed into the worst extravagances of this craze are those who elsewhere have done most excellent work. Engravers like Thomas Cole, for instance, have shown a power for simplicity and directness which has given them a high rank as artist-engravers that makes it the more difficult to forgive the eccentricities and nonsense into which they have allowed themselves to be betrayed. The portraits of Mr. Cole, for instance, have varied from the superb plate of Madame Modjeska to heads which — partly, it is true, owing to the originals from which he worked — have the general look of an attempt to mold a bas-relief in cotton batting. It is more pleasing, than to dwell upon this phase of the subject, however, to consider to how high a degree of perfection the art of wood engraving has been carried in this country. American pride has been justly aroused by the acknowledg- ments from abroad that in delicacy, refinement, and directness, this art has here reached a perfection hitherto unattained. German wood engravings have often more robustness, and perhaps more vigor ; but, in the qualities indicated, the superiority of American work is undisputed. Masters like Linton, Anthony, Cole, Thomas John- son, Juengling, F. S. King, Kruell, J. P. Davis, Robert Hoskin, and others of whom the list is too long for insertion here, have given to this one branch of art a rank and prominence of which there is, unhappily, little prospect of the attainment in any other. The absurdities after which an uneducated public has run are being left behind in the advance of appreciation and culture, and those engravers vdio have been faithful to their art, rather than to the eccentricities of a transient craze, have the satisfaction of seeing appreciation and understanding returning to genuine and artistic standards. While New- York has to a great extent been the center of influence in American wood engraving, Boston has a record upon which she may fairly congratulate herself. Without taking space for extensive enumeration, it would be unfair to omit mention of Mr. Closson, best known by his beautiful and thoroughly sympathetic rendering of George Fuller’s “Winifred Dysart,’’ or to pass over in silence W. J. Dana, an engraver of taste and skill, with well-trained artistic instincts. To Mr. Anthony I have already alluded, and want of space must compel the omission of others who are assisting wood engraving to that new and glorious future which, if many significant signs may- be trusted, will outdo in brilliancy- even its present. • Arlo Bates AMERICAN ART FURNITURE HE Centennial marked an era in our useful arts and awakened the apathetic talent of our manufacturers ; our country had been chaotic in industrial design, and our fancy, tickled by the abundance of mechanical means, stopped short of application to decorative problems. Pleased by the applause of older nations we became uncon- scious of our short-comings, and failed even in a national blush for our infantile accomplishments in the finer works. It required the graceful skill of a F'ourdinois, the joining of Vogts, and the aisthetic shaping of Thonet, to create in our mind the disposition for rich surround- ings. Our designs were crude, our cabinet work imperfect, our construction unreliable — aesthetically; we cared little for comely shapes, and gave no thought to pleasing effects. Hair- cloth upholstered upon polished rosewood was the fascinating finish furniture displayed, and we found place for it in the plague-stricken parlor, closed to the every-day visitor by our domestic board of economy, composed of our wife and our superstition, lest a ray of sunshine should vivify the germs of that fatal disease, extravagance, lurking within the prison-like apartment, ready to spread its contagious poison upon the slenderest opportunity, and perhaps bring with it the fatal maladies of good taste and 'better desires. Art was dw^arfed in the court of our first President, and we had drifted through an hundred years of artistic nihilism until we were confronted with the evidences of what was possible in the “ effete monarchies ” of Europe. livery man appointed a mental investigating committee of one energetic member, and discovered for himself that the disposition to secure pleasing and harmonious surroundings had not died with the aboriginal peoples, but vigorously asserted itself in the homes of our neighbors across the sea, — one of the forms of mediasvalism that they had retained while we were striving to anticipate the tw'entieth century in the invention of im- proved cotton mules and powerful but unmanageable motors. We were surprised into activity to find comfort lurking in the furniture houses of Berlin and Vienna, and the undemonstrative Briton environed by charming morceaux of the carver’s skill or trifles that bore the touch of a master’s chisel — his tired brain resting itself in the contemplation of harmonious associations, and the smoke from his cigar curling about the lively creations of Burne Jones or Leighton. Our manufacturers were equal to the demand ; they left the path of preceding generations, and, drawing upon the designers of other countries, prepared to cultivate the taste of the people, and supply a sure and inexhaustible quantity of refinement — to order. Marvelous were the changes, and rapid too ; family portraits, particularly precious as antiques, the sole decorative scheme that had figured upon the walls for years, were banished to the retirement of the attic, and their successors were sus- pended some feet below what had heretofore been considered “ the line,” and we very soon marveled at the awful existence of Americans in the Ragnarok age of confusion, when tyranny limited the possibilities of enjoyment and home splendor was pro- scribed. This is one of the accomplishments of the novitiate — enthusiasm, and we were nationally enthused. It may be that an unavoidable mercantile spirit biased the judgment of manu- facturers in the adoption of ideas. A design that would find ready purchasers and fulfill all the requirements of barter and trade must naturally be the proper one to select, and the result, no less fortunate than satisfactory, pleased the purchaser with the possession of what he preferred and gratified the desire of the dealer. Following this first enthusiastic period of our naissmice, the new demands of the people were made a subject of commercial consideration in the art schools, and with commendable celerity classes were organized to teach the new and fascinating pro- fession of designing. Students, regardless of adaptability, took up the study with the questionable result to-day that there is no private society mentioned in the United States Art Directory that gives attention to furniture designing, and the curriculum of no college embraces this useful phase of art. The weeding process has been thorough, no incompetents are left in the field ; they thought it was an easy task to rival the lines of Apelles. Foreign sources supply our demand for talent, and our rooms are evidences of the perfection of imported ability. Art manufacture has distanced art designing, and we discover the anomaly of qualified native fabricants unsuccessfully seeking qualified native dcssinatcurs, and disturbed by the discouraging fact that no apparent efforts are being made to change this condition of the mark&t. Germany and France are the nurseries where we find our art workers, but to the present all the children of our factories are adopted, none ours by right of maternity. There is a legend that has come down from some of our earliest settlers that we originated, or adapted, or cultivated a style that stands as the sole, solitary offspring of the designing element in our history ; but this Colonial form was a supreme effort ; the struggle of genius succumbed, and its anaesthetic slumber was protracted to the centennial anniversary of the application of the narcotic ; and then, when it was violently shaken up, it rubbed its eyes, and found itself several generations behind the times. It discovered that during its lethargy human beings, resident in the United States, had been constructed to fit the furniture, and in a melancholy way it relapsed to await the coming of a time when furniture, in its turn, would be made to fit human beings. Toward this period we hope to be hastening ; but the speed of our motions can be accelerated only by the lubricating process of an adequate education, technical if you please, but as practically technical as possible. Such is the condition to-day of American art furniture; constructively consid- ered, manufacturers are equal to the most exacting requirements, and the best pro- ductions of our best makers are equal to the best from anywhere else. There is a phase of the furniture business in this country, however, that must be allowed its weight in all comparisons between our own and other work. The more expensive grade of articles, just like the more intellectual class of persons, is about the same all over the world, without distinction as to nationality : there we have excelled only in rapidity of our progress, not in form ; but in the cheaper quality we are undeniably at the head. If you are a doubter, visit those cheerless, dusty deserts yclept furniture warerooms, on some of the boulevards of Paris, beyond the Porte St. Martin, or, to go a step lower, in the vicinity of the Halles or in the opposite direction toward Mont- martre, and seek something cheerful from the mass of clumsy lumber hewn out into the shape of a chair, a chaise longtie, a tete-a-tete, an armoire, and a hundred other caricatures upon the fashionable furnishings of the St. Germain. So, too, in London : take Tottenham Court Road, and Oxford street not many blocks from its junction with the Road, lunch at the Horse-shoe, and you’ll be within easy distance of a dozen just such places as I am talking about. Understand, I do not ask you to visit Four- dinois nor Lippman, not even Jackson & Graham, but the middle-class dealer, he who turns out pieces by the gross, each piece with the carved apple in the very same spot on its arm or back, and the stems of the fruit all pointing in identically the same direction, and the same mistake of making the protuberance look more like a cannon- ball than a fruit. This is the furniture I am discussing ; and in the attempt at per- fection in this quality we distance our foreign friends with wonderful ease. Our cheap material is much superior to theirs ; no American that I have met would be satisfied to furnish his home from Grafton street, for Fourteenth street would supply his tem- porary wants more satisfactorily. The demands of our rapidly growing country have necessitated immense factories, with a practically unlimited capacity in producing machine furniture. This stock furniture aims at and attains a certain degree of attractiveness that is commendable and, considering the quantity of it turned out, is really remarkable. Expensive suits are more or less faithfully counterfeited and the appearance, at least, of fashionable and, at the same time, substantial surroundings is guaranteed the economical purchaser. Yet the factories bring forth some finely finished work as well: it is not confined to an inferior grade by any means, but much of it is worthy of being artistically considered. We no longer seek a furnishing that will last through a life-time and be a cause of contention to our heirs; an hundred years hence very few antiques dating from this year of grace will be unearthed from the dust of the garret, and the ponderous clock of the Revolutionary period will still reign unrivaled upon the first stair landing, a memento of our earlier history ; — this because fashion changes with the months, and to those who desire to keep apace with it the rapidly producing process is essential, and quick construction is fatal to antiquities. I can hardly undertake in the limits of a catalogue article, even to suggest a means for increasing our brain labor to the standard of our manual labor, — that can only come with increased education; but in the meantime we can cultivate good taste, and the surest way of doing so is to preserve in all our furnishings a purity of style even at the expense of comnie il faiit. A. Curtis Bond WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT? charge against achieved in the FTER the American has learned the technique of his art, the question comes, What shall he do with it ? Most Americans to-day go on repeating substantially the suc- cesses of their school-days. As the best of their schools are in France and Germany, the art of Americans is usually Furopean. This is the great drawback of the famous revival of technique, since the young men of the present generation came back from Munich and Paris, and the “ Hudson River School ” of the National Academy of Design fell into disgrace. The Hudson River school had at least this merit — their subject-matter was American ; such as their art was, it was their own. The gravest ‘ the young men ” is, that they don’t know that what they have improvement of technique is but the first step from the foot of Par- nassus, — the means and not the end. Still, at times the truth seems to break upon them, and we see one and another of them attempting an “historical painting,” and upon some subject out of American annals. But the Old World trammels and traditions persistently cling around such an adventure, and we find its projector merely transporting his Roman gladiators or Egyptian procession to America, just as he had before transported his modern procession or ring-fight to Egpyt or Rome. The combatants in his American historical paintings are, in substance, the old knights or grandees of the European past masquerading in American clothes of the colonial period. The failure of such travesty to impress commensurably with the old art which it imitates, is reason enough for the discouragement that ere long overtakes the laud- able ambition to do historical painting. Our European-bred young painter then goes frankly back to his French or German school exercises, his kitchen maidens preter- naturally innocent or stupid, or his old men phenomenally decayed and hideous, or is fain to content himself with those “stunning bits of color,” or realistic reproductions of studio bri:-a-brac, objects of brass, pottery, or textile fabric, that are much applauded by his fellows. The most brilliant and accomplished of the “ young men ” of New York have little to show as yet but these smart studies of mere odds and ends — the “ properties,” to borrow the term of the theater, — which should only be seriously presented to public view as detail, in subordination to the main purpose of a consistent composition. Signs, however, are not wanting that the artists themselves are not satisfied with these achievements. Every one of them has his dreams of a grand composition, which he will “ get down to ” some day, when his “ pot-boilers ” are out of the way, and he has more opportunity to study and to think. But his great picture is always after some ideal of a great picture, remembered as a revelation of great art in his early visits to European galleries; the atmosphere of the past and its romance seem necessary to great art. This is a lesson that has sunk deeper than any of the technical teachings of the academies or ateliers. Then what- can ever be done in atmosphere-less and vista-less America ? Hardly is American out-of-doors, artists say, with its thin air and untempered sunshine and with never a castle or ruin, fit for art purposes ; and American work-a-day life, with its commonplace good men and women and with neither peasants nor grand seigneurs, is not to be thought of in connection with art. It is the hard fate of the would-be patriotic American painter that American nature and American human nature both “ put him out.” Can we, then, never boast an art of our own, escaping from the Old World’s art ? Cannot America, by and by, when it has mastered the elementary things in art, and attained a good footing in the practice of painting, strike out in some characteristic and original expression of art-sentiment and art-purpose ? One or two things that have already been witnessed as accomplished facts in the modern history of art are encouraging. Eor example, modern art has clearly emancipated itself from the relig- ious subject and motive that so largely dominated old masters. Academy art may still live in classic mythology, and go on painting, really for the opportunities at the nude. Naiads and Apollos, Andromaches and Eurydices, with the persistency of conservatism enthroned in institutions. But even that art has less and less to do with martyrs and saints, Marys and crucifixions. There is herein, within our own times, a clear and distinct new departure, which may be taken as cheering evidence that other and futher departures are at least not impossible. It is true the aimless and tentative contemporary French art, with its literal and material delineations of the cruelty and horror of modern battle, of the by-play of the coulisses or the dissecting room, of orien- tal slave-markets or harems, with their pampered prisoners and stolid executioners, is a sorry exchange — what is it but morbid and exhausted sensualism? — even for the pseudo dignity of the elder classical school, or the affected romanticism of its successor, that in its turn went out of fashion. Millet was purely unique in French art, an excep- tion, the product of no school and the creator of none. Modern art, to judge from its best existing illustrations in France and Germany, may have settled down to no definite and comprehensive purpose as yet, but it has at all events declared its independence, taken fresh starts in a number of directions, and asserted its freedom from classic rule and conventional precedent. This release is one great thing of promise for our own art of the future. The bonds, having once been broken, may be broken again and again until the old canons as to propriety, dignity, and the field and limitations of art, shall have been entirely remade. The English “anecdotal” school of art, degenerated from Hogarth and Wilkie, which it is the proper thing to deride as small and goody in spirit, and prosaic and commonplace in motive, is nevertheless an illustration of the universal adaptability of art to the genius of a people and its characteristic social and moral sentiments. The exotic affectations of the Grosvenor Gallery school will pass and be forgotten first. The elasticity and catholicity of Art, as proved by the rise of the English school and its fulfillment in certain really distinctive English graces, are another item of encouragement. We may imagine therefrom how art may one day be turned and employed to cover and idealize American life and types. It is hard to foresee what America may become in the great by and by. But it is very certain that it will be still further away than at present from the mediaeval subject-matter of the great masters, who may nevertheless continue to be the undisputed great masters in that day. Knights and chivalry, the pomp and fashion of European aristocracy, mariolatry and myths of the saints and martyrs will have gone still further from our associations and sympathy. The Greek sculpture and subjects of classic poetry, with their pagan nearness to great universal nature, in origin may still continue to “ shine aloft like stars.” But the art that will be “of the people and for the people,” the art that will represent them and their time, as the art of the great Italians did their time, and that of the great Dutchmen theirs, and, sed longo intervallo, that of the founders of the strong and simple English school theirs, — will be of its own time. To the same extent that we are able to reconstruct the social life of an epoch from its art, we should be able to imagine the art of an epoch from its social life. A state of ripened refinement, of assured wealth, of luxury, ease, and repose, must be presupposed for any art. Such a social condition is indispensable ; it is art’s soil, sunlight, and atmosphere. Art is only added after all else has been achieved. It is the blossoming culmination in beauty of all useful work. A crown of glory, its proper and matchless function is to celebrate the steps by which the summit, the consum- mation, of civilization has been gained. Thus Greek and Egyptian art embalmed history. Thus pre-Raphaelite art glorified and commemorated the virtues of the early Christian saints. Thus the Gothic art of the dark ages immortalized the work of the fathers of the church, through whom the world possessed whatever of grace, blessing, and refinement humanity then enjoyed. Thus later generations celebrated the triumphs of great soldiers, noblemen, rulers, and pontiffs, whose munificence and splendors appeared to embrace and represent all the beneficence of the world and nature. The future art, it cannot be doubted, will represent, as the art of the past has done, the events, the scenes, and* the personages that shall be recognized as con- tributing the most toward the then existing condition of the most favored society. Not to soldiers and princes will be ascribed the credit and the glory of the civilization of the twentieth century, which will probably be nowhere more distinctive and com- plete than in America; to the inventors, the humanitarians, the scientists, the reform- ers, the thinkers, poets, and artists themselves will fall the most fit and most inspiring commemoration of the epoch through art. The art of the old masters will be venerated as is that of the pious carvers and painters of what we now call early art. But as their sumptuousness of color and bold voluptuousness of subject were the fit expression of the luxury and munificence of the splendid, unconscious selfishness of a ruling aristocracy, that best expression of civilization to their date, so their style would be precisely the most unfit for our own humane and intellectual democracy of the future. What makes the weak and crude art of the pre-Raphaelite painters valuable and interesting to-day is its utter genuineness of spirit and of representative character. What makes the art of the sixteenth century so imperious to-day is its perfect embodiment of the imperial spirit, strength, wealth, and ambition of its age. A like representative fitness will make the art of the twentieth century what it shall be. As surely as mind is ever conquering matter, so surely will the progress of the world go on making fire-wood of the institutions of the past, ecclesiasticism, militarism, and caste. It will go on not with the sword, but with science; not with the oppression of the lower by the upper classes, but by the raising of the lower to the level of the upper. All the art that glorifies the mere prowess of physical strength or beauty, mere rulers, priests, and nobles, will be studied only as the art of the old monks, or of the ancient East, for the teaching it conveys of its time. The art of the twentieth century will occupy itself with the steps by which the twentieth century rose and with the great minds that taught the world to take these steps. Our own nineteenth century master-spirits that did for their age what the popes, the grand dukes, the doges, and the tyrants did for their comparatively poor and petty day, shall have an equally worthy representation in the grateful record that art, as humanity’s deepest, sincerest, most abiding utterance, never fails to make. The modern science, the modern fine arts, the modern philosophy, the modern philan- thropy (indeed there is no other), and, above ail, the modern democracy, sweeping away every old-world landmark, have all to be yet duly celebrated in art. Since art has never failed to do justice to its epoch heretofore, art will find ways to do justice to the twentieth century. As the modern scientific knowledge and spirit have gradually invaded and established themselves even in the forms of poetical expression, so they must do also with the elements of design and pictorial representation. The poet of to-day paints a flower or a sunset, not only in different, but in better and more accurate terms than a poet of the eighteenth century. The painter of to-day, thanks to science, should and will draw man and nature with surer intelligence as to what lines mean, and with a wider and deeper apprehension of man’s relations to nature and to his fellow-men. E. H. Clement ASHION has decreed that the beautifying of the house shall not stop, as was the case during the past decade, with the more important feature, — the walls, ceiling, and furnish- ing, — but shall extend into the minor details and acces- sories, giving to each, while forming part of a general scheme, a beauty and value of its own ; thus, under this ' all-potent influence, stained glass — an art that had long suffered from neglect, and had fallen into line with the tinker, the plumber, and other useful but non-elevating trades — has been rapidly brought to the front and become a petted and, in many instances, a spoiled child of this all-ruling goddess ; good, bad, and indifferent, we find it everywhere in the homes of the refined, educated, and wealthy, and no scheme seem- ingly is complete without its glinting, scintillating presence. As in “ the days of old,” when the first glass workers were artists as well as workers, drawing their inspirations from Nature, whence all that is best in art emanates, so now has there sprung up a class of art workers in this country, men of refined taste and fine artistic feeling, who are struggling with a difficult medium and varied but as a whole excellent success for the best possible artistic results, as many beautiful and valuable productions will testify. Not all have been good, however, notably some of the most ambitious efforts of more than one well-known artist in this medium, wherein the motif sought for was undoubtedly good, but the result falling sadly short, or so far overreaching the original conception as to border on the absurd ; this failing comes from a desire for originality, and a pushing out into ‘‘pastures new,” where the way is untrodden and ofttimes too difficult ; a motif perhaps “wild and weird ” is half conceived, the artist gropes blindly, feeling his way cautiously toward an unknown quality, the result is startling both to artist and public ; but no one can tell, when the agony in opaques, rubies, and olives is completed, what, in the much abused name of art, the designer was driving at, and ofttimes not he, for he has lost his original motif in “ diverse muddy ways.” There is on the one hand much excuse for such failures, as Dame Fashion seems never to be satisfied, but is ever demanding something new and novel, forcing the artist almost in spite of himself to reach out for new and unexampled efforts; and on the other hand, the pity of it is that a piece of work should be allowed to leave the studio that is not a satisfactory embodiment of the artist’s best efforts of heart, brain, and hand. Such failures from certain master-hands are far worse than the crude evolutions of the vapid and unskilled imitator ; for each piece, as it goes through the artist’s hands, bears his individual mark, and should, if only for his own reputation, come as near to perfection as his material will permit. No fine painter allows a picture to go out that is not a complete child of his brain, perfect in every part and a true imprint of the mind that brought it forth ; why is it not always so with the irridescent picture — allowing, of course, that the artist be a good one. Why ? Because fashion has sent forth her manifesto. Certain master minds came to the front, asserted their power of originality and artistic skill in this field, and behold, they are in the front ranks of her favorites, and to be a “ favorite of fashion ” means to be driven to the wall with commission. The overworked brain has not the time to do more than conceive the ideas, leaving to other hands the task of bringing it to completion ; and if, as a work of art, this embodiment is not all that it should be, there is no time — and the monetary point of view is also to be considered — to remodel and correct, even when the desire to do so is not wanting; the w'ork goes into place. Would you criticise. “ Why it is so-and-so’s work; it must be all right.” And what is to a certain extent a failure in the studio, goes out to the world as a freak of genius. Why this is so, no one knows better than the artist, who finds little time, throughout the heat and drive of American ways of doing business, to give personal attention to all the choice bits of detail and intrinsic odd effects that give to the work true artistic value. I refer especially to the whimsical, kiiiky combina- tions so much sought after nowadays ; for when the artist adheres to his true sense of artistic coloring, and acquires knowledge of design, the results cannot fail to be ex- cellent, and in many instances excel, both in design and quality of material, the best of contemporary European work. The windows in a leading church at Lynn, Mass., will illustrate the danger of extremes. These windows are the work of a well-known firm of New York artists, who have of late given their entire attention to decorative art. The call has been for a broad, dashing style of art, as practiced by the late William Hunt and his disciples; to a limited extent these effects may be produced in glass with rich and harmonious results; so wide a field is there now, in the selection of quaint and odd conceits in the material, that, with rare skill and judgment, by the use only of the rich glass and lead lines, unaided by brush work, the imagination may be captivated and led for awhile pleasantly and entertainingly from the every- day walks of life; but the attempts to embody these principles, as a whole, into the larger and more ambitious pictorial and figure subjects has not, as yet, met with complete success. When this principle is brought into contact with the more finished pictorial work, the result is so sadly in contrast with it as to suggest an unfinished effort or, at least, the first blocking out for the artist’s brush. What, in smaller mosaic or decorative work, would be pretty or quaintly suggestive, in the windows referred to, with blotches of local color and sharp lead outlines, without brush work or delicate shading to soften their hard intensity, becomes a serious annoy- ance to a thoughtful person of delicate and refined perceptions who is compelled, nolens volens, to study them during the hours of worship ; to such an one, these attempts at mediaeval breadth, without qualifying softness, are not, to speak mildly, conducive of higher thought, either of religion or art. Mosaic and geometrical patterns are well adapted to this style, however, as also small pretty bits of flower, fruit, bird and cloud effects so often attempted ; but in pictorial or figure work, painting and staining judiciously used soften, beautify, and improve a window, giving it greater value as a work of art and, if for church decora- tion, better fitting it for the position it holds. The danger of goingto the other extreme and overloading with paint is also to be avoided. There is a series of windows in a beautiful home in Auburndale, Mass., where many dollars’ worth of otherwise fine work has been fairly or unfairly ruined by being so covered with paint as to exclude almost entirely the passage of light through the glass, thus losing all the sparkle and scintillant play of lights and colors that should give to the windows bright- ness and life ; the results are muddy, dull, and dreary, and in no way a credit to the artist who executed them, and more the pity, for many of his windows — not- ably some on Commonwealth avenue — if less ambitious — are beautifully free and sparkling. Speaking of mosaic work, an art dating back to remote ages, it is evident that from this the comparatively more recent art of glass staining sprang, the small pieces of glass being bound together by strips of lead, as the tesserae of a mosaic picture are bound together by cement. Springing from this source on the one hand, and on the other, from the necessity of glazing large openings — of binding together the small pieces of glass then used — we have a very plausible theory of the birth of stained glass, if indeed it were not a species of evolution brought about by these same necessities. Archaeologists differ as to the exact date. M. Jules Labarte assigns it with some degree of certainty to the eleventh century ; all that appears to be proven is that as early as the twelfth century the art existed in France, if not in England, in a fair state of development. The beautiful effects that are now labored for and diligently sought after, in those early ages were the result of crude and undeveloped material and a careless manner of producing the “ pot-metal,” leaving natural accidents of striae, bubbles, and roughness of surface. In bringing about these results the modern manufacturer, having first made his ” pot-metal” smooth and perfect, has resource to numerous expedients — among them, the introduction of arsenic into the hot mixture, causing it to boil up quickly from the bottom, filling it with bubbles large and small, and resulting, when run into sheets and cooled, in that rough quality so peculiar to the antique glass. At the present time, we are far in advance of Europe in imitating these antique effects, although in the beginning more backward in taking hold of them. The first pots of antique in this country were made by Mr. Paige, of Boston, during the years I 869-70, and the results were excellent, although during the present revival, the further results of experiment with this material have been wonderful, far exceeding anything since the days of the original ; and so infinite are the effects offered, by the studied accidents of bubbles, corrugation, striae, and unequal blending of the coloring matter, as to authorize the hope of more rare effects as yet unattained. The charming imitations of precious stones — old ruby, topaz, purple, and even moss agate and gold stone — literally put to blush the thin, garish, and crude material that was but a short time back dignified by the name of stained glass, that was not, strictly speaking, stained, but painted glass, a poor quality of clear glass covered on one side with a thin coat- ing of enamel paint, harsh, raw, and wholly unsightly as a decorative medium. It is no matter for wonderment that active and artistic minds should see the beauties and strive to imitate the rare examples of antique work found in the early churches and cathedrals of Europe. In the discovery of opaque glass Mr. La Farge did much to elevate the standard of the art in this country. This was, properly speaking, more of an adaptation than an invention, as opaque fusible porcelain existed long before he applied it to decorative uses ; but in thus adapting it, and in bringing out its peculiar and intrinsic qualities, he has so added to its value as to rightfully hold it under a patent. Its chemical qualities are the same as fusible porcelain. Phosphate of lime (bone dust), peroxide of tin or arsenic are the coloring matters that give the peculiar fire so resembling the opal ; a plain opaque white is produced by an even mixture of the parts in the melting pot, and if it be rolled or corrugated a shifting play of colors results, as well as different degrees of translucency. This material has added greatly to the value of glass, as it may be used with such rich and varied results in the composition of a window, and can be combined in the pot with the positive colored glasses with the same result as an opal backing, where a direct transmission of light is not desirable. Every possible and, in some instances, impossible resource has been brought to bear to bring about rich and eccentric effects in this material ; a notably good one is that of modeling or molding the hot metal into the semblance of a bird, flower, or other required form. An elegant window by Mr. La Farge has pond lily buds and flowers, molded in such a manner as to represent not only the form but the foreshortening as well, produced in part by inequalities in the thickness of the glass. Much more may be said of the beauties, diversities ot texture, and rare qualities of American glass, and of its combinations, both excellent and otherwise, than we have either space or time to give to it; for no one but a soft-hearted optimist will allow that these combinations are all good, beautiful, and harmo- nious, simply because they are the work of noted artists, for many of them are but experiments, stepping-stones to rare and idealistic results in days to come, and indicate a wider range of possibilities than did the mediaeval artists in this material even dare dream of in days gone by. The artists who have made this art a study are deserv ing of high praise for their untiring energy and persever- ance in dealing with a difficult and trying medium. So essential is the blending and harmonizing of tones and colors — “a knowledge of the relative value of colors,” as Viollet le Due says, — that artistic faculty of a very high standard is absolutely necessary, to insure their skillful arrangement and harmonious distri- bution, in the composition of these semi-transparent pictures. Such artists we now have, whose united efforts bid fair to give us soon a distinctive American school of stained glass ; and if the progress so far is but equaled in the future, it is safe to say that we may fear nothing from our foreign competitors in this beautiful branch of art industry. Edward Dewson PORTRAIT PAINTING; ITS DEMANDS AND OPPORTUNITIES O THP3 close student of the history of painting the thought might occur, that in the event of the gradual decay and ultimate extinction of the fine arts, the practice of portraiture would be found to have a greater vitality than any other, and be the last to disappear. As nearly as we can determine a point necessarily so obscure as the manner in which the arts of design were born, it is probable that the first efforts of man in this direction were employed in a description of the human figure. If no better sup- port for this opinion were furnished us, we might find something significant in the first exploits of the child with his slate and pencil, who, in saying to himself, as he invariably does, “ I will make a man,” is evidently doing nothing less than giving testimony to the important truth that the art of portraiture, in its very nature, makes the strongest claim upon human interest and endeavor. Observation will also show that this impulse of the child is seldom mastered wholly by the mature artist, who generally declares, by more or less persistent efforts in this field, even when it is far removed from his ordinary practice, that he cannot resist the fascinations which the human face and form exert upon him. If one were inclined to state rather broadly a principle which he wished should appeal strongly to his audience, he might even allege that very few artists of great ability in any line have ever existed who have not produced excellent work in portraiture. The old masters furnish us abundant support of this truth, and so, also, do most of the famous moderns, among whom, as at the same time an extreme and illustrious instance, may be mentioned Corot, who found even his dreamy and ultra-poetic style to be by no means an inappropriate medium for the expression of human life and emotion. The subject thus touched upon opens into attractive vistas for argument and speculation ; but in the scope of an article as brief as the present evasion necessitates, the merest allusion to it is alone permissible, and it must be dismissed after having served the purpose of showing how clearly related to all forms of art is the practice of portrait painting, and how, in a large sense, it influences, even when it does not dominate, an artistic nature. It would seem, then, from a consideration of the early and continued influence which it exerts, that the art of portraiture is likely to be held in high esteem as long as the members of the human race have the capacity to receive emotions, and the power to express them, through whatsoever media, for the pleasure or instruction of their fellows. We cannot conceive of an art more honorable than this, which in its lowest estate sets for itself the task of describing with literal exactness the face and form that are fashioned in the image of God, and in its highest has to do with giving expression to that supreme gift of the Creator, Thought, without which there can be no true life, either in man or art. Yet, like other arts that are rich in possibilities, this one makes exacting demands, and presents difficulties which not one painter in a score has the patience or knowledge to set himself about surmounting, nor one in a hundred that combination of sensibility and force which shall make him their master. One who devotes himself earnestly to the study of art soon learns that a good portrait painter must possess a great number of qualifications that are rarely found associated together. He must be something more than a draughtsman, although he should draw consummately, too ; he must be a colorist who is not only learned in the use of rich and brilliant pigments, but is able also to impress one quite as strongly of the vigor of his color-sense with a black, a white, and an umber ; he must understand the value of expression and know how both to evoke and describe it ; he must be a man of sympathy with human nature and appreciative alike of its pathos and humor — not to mention a modesty in the estimation of his own work, which, at the best, is always discouraging to one who can perceive how far behind nature the most ambitious and successful eflbrt lags. Yet no profession that has its roots in art is entered upon with less thought and hesitation. A slight experience in the simplest elements of drawing, a facility in catching a likeness, the merest rudiments of a knowledge of color or the effects of light and shade — these are the equipments with which, on every side of us, men and women are rushing into the practice of this difficult and exacting art. But in this matter they are not wholly to blame, for the schools that send them out, and the public to whom they appeal, share their ignorance of the fact that portraiture has concern in any other matter than getting a likeness, or that a recognizable description of a man or woman can be, in spite of its exactness, unworthy of consideration as a work of art. Likeness is, of course, an important thing in a portrait ; but it becomes worthless when unsupported by nobler qualities, as it is in the majority of the works that crowd our exhibitions. The value to all generations of such a portrait as Stuart’s “ General Knox,” in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which it were to be desired might be more closely studied both by painters and public than it seems to be, consists not so much in its likeness to the man (in which respect we have no means of knowing whether it is strong or not) as in the knowledge it gives of the mingled heroism and recklessness of his character, his love of living and his contempt of death, and the evident appro- priateness of his leadership among an heroic and indomitable people in the face of such a crisis as the War for American Independence. The present time is not rich in such characters ; yet a portrait is not valuable simply because a hero sat for it ; every man has a distinct relation to his time, and it is the business of an artist, and quite in his power if he has such qualifications as Stuart possessed, to find out what this is, and to express it as far as his opportunities and skill will allow. Beside making his picture characteristic, the portrait painter is bound, by a proper regard for his art, to make it beautiful. This he may always do, no matter what his subject is, if he has but carefully considered in what beauty consists. It is one of the greatest charms of art that it can beautify anything, and that, too, without doing violence to truth, which, if lost, makes beauty itself repulsive. The artist, however, cannot make his work beautiful by flattering his subject, for here he forgets his allegiance to the truth, and presents something for which he has no war- rant. It might seem at first sight that if he cannot replace that which is ugly by something which he draws from the stores of ideal beauty in his own mind, he must consent to have his picture ugly ; but this is far from being the case. Beautifying a painting at the expense of verity rarely achieves any other purpose than to show the inanity and insipidity of the artist’s mind, and can result in nothing more than a mere prettiness, which mildly pleases at first, but in the end exasperates. The true beauty of a portrait is that which shows the intelligence of the artist, and is manifested by the skillful employment of light and shadow, the submerging of the face in a luminous or sombre atmosphere, the relief of one texture against another, the modification of flesh- tones that are in themselves disagreeable by the appropriate use of adjacent tints or of colors in the background or draperies — nay, even by the sparkle of an eye, full of life and humor, which often reclaims and beautifies a face that is otherwise common- place and unengaging. A subject which mere literal description can make interesting does not appeal to the true artist, who finds more real beauty in the coarse cheeks, wrinkled brow, and weather-beaten skin of the sailor or husbandman than in the peachy complexion and melting contours of the court beauty ; so that it happens that the greatest portraits the world knows are not of the most beautiful women that have graced this planet, but rather of men upon whose living face we should not feel impelled to look twice, yet to whose presentment on canvas or panel the painter has given a hint of that which surpasses nature — the infinite beauty of truth when pro- claimed by knowledge and sympathy. There is a beauty which even those who are the least appreciative of intelligence and virtue can understand ; but there is in a good por- trait a psychological interest greater than comes from this, which appeals only to the few, but upon which the chief value of the work depends. Every year produces por- traits upon whose richness of color, exactness and suppleness of drawing, and life-like expression we love to linger, but which, nevertheless, cannot give full satisfaction to the mind that has inquired into the resources and demands of art. Not until the painter goes deeper than he needs to do in producing such results, and sees and analyzes the mind and soul of his subject, does the perfect portrait appear. It is at the two points mentioned above that most of the portrait art of our land and time makes failure. Much of the very clever and promising work that our younger men are now turning out with such surprising facility shows neither the thought of how ugly things may be made beautiful, nor the patience to study into the sources of those emotions which line the human face and give it all its lasting interest. Their work shows admirable dex- terity, and an enthusiastic labor, which make it interesting in spite of its defects ; but it is altogether superficial and shallow, and makes no account of that painstaking observation and refined and loving description without which no portrait can bring claim to recognition as an example of the noblest art. Here, as often happens in the discussion of matters of art, we find ourselves con- fronted with the question ; “How is this condition of affairs to be remedied?” A puzzling interrogatory this, and one which time, and the events that come with it, rather than words, must answer. Briefly, however, it may be said that the improve- ment which our portrait art needs — and not only ours, but much of that which is shown by the other nations of the day — can come only by the growth in advanced opinion of both the artists and the public. The artists, naturally, do not feel dis- posed to waste their time in painting pictures which the public cannot appreciate, nor are the public likely to advance more rapidly than the artists can lead them. Both, however, can accomplish much by improving their knowledge of the province and power of art, and learning to understand that, like all the other exercises of man, it is a weak and valueless thing if it is not the expression of thought. A higher moral, as well as intellectual, appreciation is also necessary, and this especially to the artist, for never yet did portrait painter live who did not show himself as well as his sitter on the canvas. No man can paint the beauty of character who does not himself possess it, and no artist’s work is better than himself ; it may be full of refinement and show supreme skill, while from its beauty leers the face of evil, as the eyes of the serpent looked from the Tree of Knowledge amid the peace and repose of Eden. Sidney Dickinson LANDSCAPE ART HE love of landscape is assuredly one of the most ele- vating passions of which vile man is capable. If land- scape is not the highest expression of the painter’s art, it is the sweetest, because the kind of pleasure which it gives is unalloyed, pure, and peaceful. Great pictures sometimes trouble the mind, and leave a sad impression ; but in landscape we get away from the tragedies of life, and renew ourselves in studying the eternal beauty of the sky and the fields, which have their messages of comfort for those who can read them. In the great picture galleries, when the mind becomes overweighted with impres- sions of history and character, we sit down before a Claude, and rest in the shadow of his trees, fanned by fresh breezes, and gently warmed by the rays of his glorious sun. Thus, the landscapist should be happy, in virtue not only of the great resources of his art, but also of the mission of his works, which is to bring peace to troubled souls, to show to eyes weary of winter how summer seems. The most wholesome study is the study of nature, for nature is never morbid. We were not made to mope indoors and pore over books the year round. Though we may say with Hamlet, “ Man delights not me ; no, nor woman neither,” the time never comes when we can quarrel with the Universal Mother. For the painter of portraits, o{ genre, or of historical compositions, landscapes are a recreation, in more than the conventional sense of the word ; he gets back to the right point of view by going out of doors, after being harassed by the meanness and the contradictions of men. The eternal freshness and youth of nature revive and console him ; its even temper stills his fretted nerves. This perpetual peacefulness shows him the folly of petty struggles. He loses the self-consciousness which is so fatal to good art, and learns the value of repose. Because landscape art is modern, its relative importance is often underrated. The Americans have every reason to feel that, in this department, they have already done more than in any other which is actually good enough to bear comparison with foreign work. Yet what has been done is only the beginning. All competent judges expect to see glorious achievements in landscape here; the signs of it are in the air. Landscape, as all art, must of necessity be a matter of tradition. Titian and Paul Veronese, Correggio, and the school of the Caracci used landscape to set off their figures, but their landscapes can scarcely be called backgrounds, for they played an important part in the pictures. For breadth, dignity, and sober richness of tone,, these have never been excelled. But it remained for the Dutch and Flemish painters, and the Franco- Italians, Claude and Poussin, to make a special study of landscape, in its real and literal aspects, and we may date the modern era of which I shall speak from their appearance on the scene. Ruysdael’s mountain cascades have furnished material for numberless compositions, and the same may be said of Hobbema’s wooded landscapes and canal locks, or Cuyp’s tranquil Dutch scenes with cattle and figures bathed in a golden evening atmosphere. The suggestiveness and dash of some of Rubens’s landscapes has never been equaled. Claude’s Mediterranean ports, with their balmy, soft, glowing atmosphere, and his affluent Italian sunset effects, still reign supreme in the popular estimation. The first English landscape painter of note was Richard Wilson, of whom his compatriots are justly proud at the present day, but so little was he appreciated by his contemporaries that he could not earn a living, and the Royal Academy had to make a situation for him as librarian. At the same period De Loutherbourg and others, now almost forgotten, enjoyed royal and aristocratic patronage and made large sums of money. Gainsborough, who painted landscapes as well as figures in a large, noble, and free style, was among the early great national painters of England. His cool, gray, silvery tones gave the key-note to Constable, who was the first to render the atmosphere, tone, color, and native character of English landscape with all the fidelity of the Dutch in their treatment of Holland. The massive gray clouds loaded with rain, with here and there a streak of sunlight breaking over the distant plain; the breezy atmosphere and peculiarly English vitality of the effect, were given by Constable as no one else had been able to give them. He carried realism further in some directions than any of his predecessors. It is beyond doubt that the great French landscape school of 1830 received a great impetus from Constable. The peculiar quality of Turner’s genius, and the exuberance of his fancy have conspired to produce a wide diversity of opinion concerning him. He valued landscape, as a poet values facts, only for its suggestions and as it fed his riotous imagination. In early life he fol- lowed Claude somewhat in landscape and the Dutchmen, whom Ruskin so eloquently reviles, in the treatment of marine subjects ; but in wealth of imagination, vigor of execution, and robustness of texture he far excelled those by whom he was influenced. It is conceded that his later work, performed when many rivals thought him crazy, shows the greatest height of imagination and power as a colorist. He had not the great repose of Claude, but his power, like that of Tintoret, was peculiarly his own. Rousseau, with Jules Dupre and several others not so well known, were the pioneers in the French school of 1830, which has so strongly affected all modern art. Rousseau’s early works were full of a fiery impetuosity and daring which was utterly at variance with the smooth, facile elaboration then in vogue. He was a finished and accurate draughtsman, and had an elegant idea of composition and arrangement. Later in life his desire to make his pictures as complete as possible, and to sustain their market value, gave to some of his productions an appearance of laborious pains- taking and finish which detracted from their highest charm. Dupre, at his best, has painted with a boldness and nerve not often equaled. On the other hand, he has turned out many mannered pictures. Of Gustave Courbet it may be said that he created his style, and that no painter has more courageously grappled with the large aspects of nature. His manner of beginning his pictures by laying on a solid body of color with the palette knife gave uncommon firmness and solidity to his landscapes, which are destined to exert a more definite influence when he is better understood. Troyon, who was a severe student, at first painted landscapes in the classic style, with much elaboration of detail. These brought him a good reputation, but not much pecuniary success. It was not until he introduced cattle and figures, giving the reins to his nature, painting realistic and pastoral subjects, and drawing his inspiration from things seen, that he attained his great renown. Daubigny, one of the powers in modern art, was a man of great originality, who had more power in the presence of nature than ideal resource. He had many styles. His afternoon effects on the rivers of France are most poetical, true, and exquisite in their gray tones. Some of them are painted with a force, decision, and completeness which are extraordinary when it is considered that they were done at one painting off-hand. No one has the faculty in so high a degree as had Daubigny of giving a free, luminous, and vivid represen- tation of the most fleeting aspects of nature. Not so delicate as Corot, he had a distinctive genius, with equal love and reverence for nature. It must be universally admitted that in Corot the great French landscape school found its most genuinely- inspired man, a creative genius of the highest order. He could not touch anything without turning it into poetry. Subtle, modest, and true, the best examples of his later style have a charm which is as inexplicable in words as the charm of nature itself. Millet, though more widely recognized as a figure painter, had an extraordi- nary genius for the infinite in landscape. He essayed all effects, in all sorts of materials, — oil and water colors, pastels, crayons, and pencil, — and if his works wherein landscape forms the subject either wholly or in part could be brought together, they would show a depth of sentiment and a variety of subject and effect which is to most minds incomprehensible. There are other Frenchmen of whom it would not be inapt to speak, but I must hasten on to the Americans. Thomas Cole may be called the father of American landscape. He had a true poetic vein and an artistic temperament. In point of earnestness and talent he was preeminent among the landscapists of his time, and he had a genuine love for nature, especially the country about the Catskill Mountains. His more ambitious works, the “ Voyage of Life ” and “ Course of Empire ” were not so successful as his strong im- pressions of nature. A contemporary of Cole’s was Doughty, whose name will be recalled by a few of the elder generation as that of a delightful painter. He painted in a facile, picturesque manner, and employed a neutral tone which at one time was very much in vogue. It is said that the resident British minister at Washington paid him twenty-five hundred dollars for a picture — a great price in those days. A few years later came Durand, Kensett, and Church, who were very successful. Church, as a very young man, was hailed as a genius. It became the fashion to say that we had the greatest landscape school in the world. Church produced some fine twilight effects, and his realistic “ Niagara” made a sensation here and in England. He had great facility, but never grew out of a hard, literal style of manipulation and a fatal attention to minutiae, so that the extravagant anticipations of his admirers were never realized. Durand painted wood interiors and mountain scenery with close fidelity ; he was a good draughtsman, and had a considerable degree of sympathy with certain phases of nature. One of his ideal compositions, engraved by James Smillie, adorns an old book of poetry in my library, and I have always thought it charming in a cer- tain quaint way. Kensett, who had studied in Europe several years, also painted wood interiors with a certain poetry and delicacy of color. He treated the hazy, dreamy afternoons of the White Mountains and the beach at Newport, with a sympa- thetic, facile sketchiness that at first was most agreeable ; but his success was so great that he seemed to think more of getting a huge price at the Artists’ Fund or other sales fora mere sketch than of making a sturdy representation of nature. James Hart produced some original misty morning impressions among the Adirondacks that gave promise of something new, but early pecuniary success appears to have impeded his growth, and he became a mere picture-maker. McEntee began in a new vein with some very good Virginian subjects, but he has turned out little of late except some autumn scenes very much resembling those that first made him known. About 1850 Mr. Baker opened the “ Dusseldorf Gallery ” in New-York, with landscapes by Lessing, Gude, and the Achenbachs, which had a marked influence on the artists and art students. Many young men, including Hart, Bierstadt, Whittredge, and others, went to study in Dusseldorf The works of these men are well enough known, and Bier- stadt’s, at least, have received a full measure of criticism. Though taste is so con- stantly changing, it is not likely we shall ever return to the admiration of what may be called the Rocky Mountain school of landscape. Among the early landscape painters of New-York, of whom I have spoken, forming the “ Hudson River School,” Cole was the only one who really had a strong, vigorous method. Of Inness, who has lived in Boston and New-York and abroad, it may be said that he was one of the first to perceive the importance of the French renaissance represented by Rousseau, Troyon, and Dupre. His works have been very uneven in quality, yet he has always tried to represent a vivid impression, and his treatment of a composition is always picturesque. He seems to have been, even more than most other painters, bothered by the refractory nature of his materials ; but in his best landscapes one feels a striving after something large, noble, and dignified. Inness’s works, though they are some- times heavy and disagreeable in color, or wanting in textures, are of the kind that improve on acquaintance. Though William M. Hunt for many years painted portraits almost exclusively, he had always a great love of landscape, and was one of the first to appreciate Courbet and Corot as well as Millet. His own landscapes show great artistic resources and that he knew what is required to bring a work of this kind up to the demands of art. Since Hunt, many young men from all parts of the country have been studying in Paris, and have caught the inspiration of the great school there now passing away. Those students who went from New England have apparently seized its larger elements, as was abundantly shown by the Boston artists’ exhibition in New York in the winter of 1883. Having studied what has been done, they turn back to nature, knowing that it remains for each man finally to work out his own problems. Some of them are producing works of art stamped with their own personality, which will stand the test of time and intelligent criticism. Painters in the larger sense of the word, they do not think how much they are going to .receive for their pictures, but whether their works are well done and intelligent ; they do not paint to suit the whim of a small coterie of friends, but to satisfy the larger requirements of art. This is the true spirit of the artist. I conclude with the following words of lofty wisdom from Emerson, commending them as a precious expression of the creed of the idealist : “ In landscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know that the landscape has beauty for his eye, because it expresses a thought which is to him good ; and this, because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle ; and he will come to value the expression of nature, and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine.” William Howe Downes THE WEAL IN AMERICAN ART T IS frequently said of American art that it can never reach that which is best and highest ; that it may excel in technical skill, glory in richness and beauty of color, and skillfully touch the lighter moods of being ; but that it can never reach the artistic highlands, can never gain an elevation of motive and accomplishment that will give the American school a high and honorable place among the nations that have achieved much in art. And the reason that is given for this belief is the American life and char- acter. It is said that, being a democracy, the lower tastes of the majority will pull down and overrule the finer, higher desires of the refined and cultured few, demand that our art attend upon its pleasures, and, being unable to appreciate anything above mediocrity, mediocre art will be the result ; that even if this were not the case, there is nothing in our national life and character to furnish that deep but all important substratum of fine, intense feeling, that whole-hearted appreciation of beauty and grandeur from which only can high artistic genius be born and nourished ; that we are too volatile, material, and superficial to give birth to any- thing but a superficial and material art — an art that cannot send its roots deep down into the finest and highest meanings of life and nature, simply because art cannot go deeper than the life and character of the people who give its inspiration, who furnish its sustenance, and whose demands set forth the measure of its growth. In short, that the ideal cannot find representation and interpretation in our art, because it has no part in the hurried, turbulent, money-measured lives of our people. For it is in the ideal that art reaches its highest achievement and speaks its last and grandest word. Not the ideal in the commoner meaning it is too often coming to have, of the mostly or wholly imaginary, — served either with or without imagina- tion, — but that ideal which shows the deep realities of life and nature as they are revealed to the eye of genius. The art that is the most ideal is, at the same time, the most real. It takes the facts, the conditions, the results of life and character, and strips from them their disguise of the earthy and the commonplace, and shows that each is an eternal sphere-song of hope, or joy, or trust, or sorrow. It is only the highest ideal that can see the deepest real. Could art be more truly realistic than in Millet’s “Angelus ” ? And at the same time to such an elevation did the artist carry its significance, so truly and deeply ideal did he make it, that it fills the beholder at once with awe of its meaning. And it is this ability to take the common emotions and passions of life, throw off their disguise of the commonplace, clothe them in beauty and grandeur, pass them through the crucible of his own finer and higher nature, show them so elevated and intensified and purified that we see them only far up the heights, but yet still so universal and comprehensive in their meaning that there can be none to whom they do not speak, — it is this ability that is the highest and grandest dower of the artist, its results that are the finest and most beneficent gifts of art. And it is this that the pessimistic critic says we can never achieve, because we live on the lower levels, and because our art must be for the many, and not for the cultured few ; because in the dead level of a prosperous and commonplace democracy there can be no inspiration to such achievement. These are severe and sorrowful predictions, and if they could be believed to have the slightest likelihood of truth would be sufficient to put a damper on the aspirations and a bar across the achievements of every American artist. Nor is it a mere man of straw that has been conjured up ; for such a despondent tone, more or less pro- nounced, is met with very frequently. If one went no farther than the apparent manifestations of American character there might be reason for it. But a close inspection of our national character must show that, however hurrying and superficial we seem to be, we do not lack a deep, pervasive, warm, human sympathy. And, primarily, what is the genius which produces such art, what is the genius which produces any art or which sets forth any great achievement, but sympathy ? What was Millet’s whole being but one ever vibrating nerve of human affection, compassion, sympathy ? Whence does any artist, poet, novelist, receive inspiration but through his wealth of sympathetic feeling, which enables him to enter into all human life ? This fine, warm, universal sympathy is the first requisite of the artist, and the prime necessity, especially, of him who would portray the ideal. The American people are richly dowered with this, and their sympathies are easily wrought upon. So far not only is there that in our character to furnish such inspiration as is needful to make possible the birth of such an art, but the very same characteristic will insure appre- ciation of that art when it does come forth. Nor can the assertion stand that we are too material to give finest and highest appreciation to the lofty and the beautiful. It may have been true once, but is true no longer, for our aesthetic growth has been simply marvelous. We are accustomed to pride ourselves upon the rapidity with which we have developed our material resources, but this is no more striking than have been our magical strides through the finer products of civilization. Take the testimony of a well-known art critic and man of letters, who declares that after an absence of ten years in Europe he marvels at the evidences he everywhere sees of the increase of aesthetic taste, and he emphatically adds his belief that “ the American people will yet be the idealists of the world.” And as for the objection that democracy must be a hindrance to artistic progress and barren of inspiration, — if de- mocracy is a dead level, it is also an elevated plain and exalts life rather than makes it common. And whence does art receive its inspiration but from the sentiments. emotions, passions of life about it, and are not these eternally the same in any life and under any form of government ? Our art, too, seems to be growing in the direction of the ideal. It has reached the Stage of figure and genre painting with which it is now largely busy and to which the appreciation of the people is most decidedly given. And genre is but the unde- veloped ideal. It is life still seen through its disguise of commonplaceness. Who can say but that the logical development of our art will be through the elevation and idealization of the genre? At present that seems its direction, and with our aesthetic tastes, our appreciation of the grand, the lofty, and the beautiful, so rapidly growing, and with a national character so well fitted to give both inspiration and appreciation to the highest and finest in art, may it not be reasonably expected that art may yet reach that finest and highest achievement ? But art is the latest and most delicate flower of civilization, and cannot appear in its full glory until the nation has reached a high degree of progress and development. Remembering this, we must not expect too much early in our artistic progress and grow elated over a possible development that may yet be far in the future. Florence Finch Boston, Mass. THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN ART F THE nineteenth century be not remarkable for great originality in art, or an outburst of aesthetic feeling and expression in fresh and new forms of profound conception and invention, it can justly lay claim to a stirring eclecticism in the way of a tasteful revival of old art in muiltifarious ways and an eager desire to discover some new paths to fame for itself In what we may call the technique of art, i. e., its material means, handling, scientific aids, finish of execution, our best men are behind none of any age. Where they fail is in the comparative superficiality or extravagance and treatment of their themes in the ardor of their pursuit of originality, their intense realism in oppo- sition to idealism, and the preference of so called truth — which is really poverty and ignorance of choice — to the lofty idealisms of classical and renaissant art. But there is good even in all this ; for, where the true path to art is unknown, we can find it only by trying many, and erring often. Every obvious failure is a step in the right direction. We may shorten our way, however, by studying as they deserve the works of our pre- decessors in every branch and school of art, from earliest Egypt down to our own. In each attempt of humanity of every race to find its ideal of aesthetic happiness, there is a genuine contribution toward a divine result ; or in plainer speech, the discovery of universal beauty by which all sensitive and inquiring minds are made to enjoy life more here on earth and perceive its correspondence to higher planes beyond our skies. Transcendentalism, however, in art, is no more popular with the average mind than in literature. I must therefore descend to the plain ground beneath our feet and speak of things as I find them practically, leaving to my readers to say how far their eyes and thoughts agree with my experience. Setting aside ancient art, otherwise than as examples and standards in its various phases, and modern European art except so far as it stimulates and influences our own, I will confine my remarks to our native art. It cannot quite yet be dignified with the name of a national American school, in the sense of the Erench and others of older peoples ; but it is fast growing to that degree of unity of manner, motive and aim, and degree of technical excellence, as will entitle it to this distinctive characterization. It is growing, and growing rapidly — so rapidly in technique that even the French artists are beginning to look on the Americans as actual rivals in the market. In neatness, quality, delicacy, and brightness of touch, our wood-engravings, when at their best, excel the European. This progress is the serious work of a few years only. The American mind is inventive, but not imagina- tive. When its imagination is fully aroused, it will see sights and dream dreams that must carry forward our painting and sculpture into those lofty intellectual regions which favor inspiration from the highest sources and lead to motives that appeal to the universal mind, because they touch the deepest feelings of humanity and confess a divinity that shapes our ends to better purposes than we know. The broad, vigorous, enterprising, throbbing life of our new America, its ambitions, sympathies, love of nature and quickness of apprehension, its acuteness of observation and investigation, its very blunders as well as its successes, the multifarious types of men that stir and quicken its depths, its freedom of growth in every direction, the very evils as well as good that leaven its mass of vitality are all so much fresh food for art. When a master’s hand — soon to come — arrives to shape it all into new phases of art-language and beauty, we will be surprised to discover there is so much food even for high art in our midst. But no truth is seen until the spiritual eyes are opened to discern it. The primary defect of American art, thanks to foreign schools free to our artists, is rapidly disappearing. Italy, France, Germany, and England are all supplying the missing links of America in our art education in a most generous way, by their museums of old art, and the stimulating example and teaching of their modern schools, in which Americans have every privilege and advantage of their own artists. This generosity and privilege, to their credit be it said, our artists appreciate at its true value, and ask nothing more of our own government than to let them alone. If it will not provide, by museums of ancient art and other institutions, the means of a sufficient art training for them to compete with the artists of those nations that do, they ask simply that they be left to avail themselves of the good offices of foreign nations, and be put on precisely the same footing as to the sale of their works as foreign artists. If these must pay a heavy duty on importation, place those of American artists on the same footing; otherwise, the foreign nations that believe art is not merchandise, but incarnate thought, spirit, civilization, — in fine, mental food, — will tell our artists to leave their schools and go back to their own barren land for art instruction and culture. In some way or other, the sober second thought of our people must remedy this impediment not only to our own progress in art, but to the growth of American civilization as a whole. Old as I am, I expect to see the time when every genuine art object will receive at least as hearty and free a welcome to our shores as every ignorant, dirt-stained emigrant of lowest human types, speedily transformed by our careless legislators into governing voters. Our artists show both their willingness to avail themselves of foreign means of scientific education wanting in their own country and their appreciation of the fact, not known to Americans in general, that success in art depends on unremitting study of best means, as in every other profession. Their works now show the beneficial results of foreign study. What is now needed is, that they should fully appreciate the great world of motives and spiritual and ideal inlook as well as outlook, American life, history, and nature, in themselves, offer as motives for their best work. In sculpture, without desiring to be invidious, I would mention two men whose works seem to me to indicate sound advance in the right direction of fine art and poetical or profound motives. The first is the late Edward Thaxter, of Portland, whose “ Love’s First Dream,” now on its way to America, in delicate perception and treatment of a motive of pure fancy, is very striking for its originality and spirit — a work in the modern mixed romantic and naturalistic spirit of sculpture that is every way remarkable and strikingly beautiful. But Mr. Thaxter’s life was not spared to bring forth the full harvest of rich promise this genuine American work suggests of his genius. The other sculptor is Mr. F. Simmons, of Rome. His genius, for I may venture to say he possesses it, is of a larger, broader, and longer training. Its fruits, as well as the underlying insight into fine art, which are evinced by the entire char- acterization and motives selected, are of a high standard, based on a true feeling for the best points of Greek idealism and modern love of nature, devoid of a sense of mere imitation. I find this sentiment and execution in his late works, both ideal and portrait, that I have seen, with a play of imagination, like the locks of the beautiful and youthful Medusa just beginning to change into the serpent form and attract her notice, that points to a poetical grasp of no common order. Hitherto I fear our artists have thought more of pecuniary success than of the honor and growth of their profession. When this dominates them, joined with clear- ness and independence in the choice of motives, signs of which in a number of painters and sculptors and perhaps in a few architects already appear, we shall be astonished at the rapid development of a school of which the proudest American will not be ashamed. In the minor arts growth is evinced even more conspicuously. There are no art- tiles in Europe equal to Low’s, in depth, purity, richness, and variety of glazes, and picturesqueness of composition. This is peculiarly an American triumph, which sur- prises every European of taste. The same may be said of the Lafarge and Tiffany glass, and of some of the Chelsea iron- work of the Magee Furnace Company, and particularly a cast-iron, polished frieze of passion flowers for a private house, which is largely and spiritedly executed in correct style of work of this character. The fast-spreading craving for beauty in all things, however crude and unin- structed at present, in America, is a most cheering symptom of our growing civiliza- tion. The limits of this article forbid my expanding on a theme so inviting and hopeful ; therefore I can only say, in closing, that to me the signs of the times are very auspicious for American art and artists in general, and none wishes them greater success than the writer. James Jackson Jarves Florence, July i, 1883. NATIVE PAINTERS HAVE little patience with men and women who repeat stale cries against the literature or the fine arts of the United States. Hearing their mournful talk, I in turn grow unjust and think harsh things of the speakers. Suppose, by way of example, we take the art of the painter, and look about us. At Philadelphia one finds good painters in historical, in genre, in figure and land- scape, painters not the equals, it is true, of the dozen greatest living artists, but excellent of the second rank. In Boston the average among painters is very high, as the average is wont to be whenever New England sets herself a task. Boston has nourished several artists of the first rank ; Boston is moreover in a fair way to develop other workmen of the highest class owing to her intelligent encouragement of native schools and' native art. Half a dozen other great cities have each their band of hopeful painters, male and female, in this case starving from lack of support, in that retrograding from unwise local patriotism, but now and then receiving just that middle term of encouragement and repression which is needed to bring out what is best in the character and work of an artist. Were the city of New York utterly lacking in good painters, the situation in the United States would be far from hopeless ; quite unwarranted would be the melancholy of those critics for whom, by a singular perverseness of things, Raphaels and Titians will not grow on every bush. New York, favored by her position in the current of trade and emigration, has had, and possesses to-day, painters second to no artists at work in this or other lands. Because in some instances their methods differ from those who have great followings abroad, one must not hurry to the con- clusion that the foreign master, having disciples who make a noise in the world and bear his name and mannerism to this side of the Atlantic, is the better man. One must protect one’s self against the contagious enthusiasm of young painters with a propaganda. Always in danger of accepting artists on the footing they themselves demand, we often yield too far to their technical self-assertions and forget to maintain our own rights as a public. Beware of being overborne by the ardor of the profes- sional through sympathy ! Absorbed in his delightful creations, he is prone to egotism; he talks as if the public had no rights which he need respect. Since France is at present the attractive center for the fine arts, it is usually the painter who has taken his course in Paris who returns to his own land most puffed up with the self-confi- dence of youth, with fixed beliefs in his master’s methods as the only way of work, and with that ignorance of the world at home and the world’s needs which rendc'rs the recent graduate of college a joke to his friends and a burden to himself He pooh- poohs the established painter who has laboriously made for himself a circle of patrons. Having been taught to see a few things very distinctly, he is color-blind to every- thing else. Too often the ardor and the sincerity of his unbelief in native or estab- lished forms of art find a listener and mouthpiece in the art-critic, and the latter attacks with severity when he should discriminate with fairness. On the side of innovator and critic is the grumbler by constitution ; on theirs, too, the man who has the habit of assuming wisdom at second-hand cheaply and swiftly by comparing the very best in art, selected from all the past, with the slightest of modern work, a comparison which would be plainly unfair between the best of two given epochs, for it leaves out of sight the entire change of life between then and now, the increas- ing multiplicity of pleasures and aims offered at present to the public for which works of art are created and the consequent scattering of the attention of tlie public in modern times. It would be a merciful thing if some professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts would lecture to American students on nationality in art, and assure them that America has a genius of her own, which inevitably must, and really does, appear in the fine arts for good or for bad. He should tell them that no Frenchifying of themselves, beyond what may be called the student’s saturation-point, will avail to give them a niche in the national temple of fame. As a college is a place to get, not ideas but methods of working, so foreign art-schools are places to learn technique, not art ; and it may be seriously questioned whether the native schools have not already greatly diminished even such usefulness to American students as the schools abroad have had hitherto. Now, though no professor has said this publicly, yet we find other Frenchmen inveigh- ing often enough against American artists for being un-American, for copying the Europeans. Their ignorance of the United States, however, and especially of the complicated relations that Americans bear to Europeans as parts with the latter of the same civilization as their own cause their strictures to be of no avail. But those people in France and England who realize that America cannot evolve a purely red- skin literature and art begin to suspect that, in the fine arts at least, she has something more to show than bald imitations of European masters. It is a fact that New York has developed painters of strong original genius from men scarcely touched directly by foreign schools ; certainly not influenced permanently by residence abroad. And, moreover, in New York battles have been fought which are of the utmost importance to the health of American art. In no other city of America has the guild of painters been so large ; in none so much convulsed by faction. The newspapers have softened rather than exaggerated the bitter feeling between old school and new ; between Academician and Society man ; between Art Leaguer and Academy scholar. Strange to say, a quarrel with the illiberality of the Royal Academy appears to have developed in London of late years, and may be considered a novelty, unless the establishment of the Grosvenor Gallery be looked upon as a protest earlier than the similar movement here. In New York it is now possible to look back and survey the battle-field with equanimity ; and as one does so, there comes the teaching which is pretty certain to such looking-back, that on both sides there was some justice, on both some injustice. The newspapers who had the public’s ear have sufficiently upheld the cause of the younger association ; it is the Academy of Design which has lacked defenders. The abuse lavished on it may have been merited in part ; but generally the attacks were without discrimination ; pretty nearly always they were short-sighted. How- ever illiberal one may regard its bearing toward the youth of the profession, it may be asserted that the course of the Academy resulted in good. At first it did little but good, because it united and encouraged the scattered artists and brought them and the public face to face. Later, the narrow spirit which seems a part of such organizations kept some painters back until they became ripe for better work. Some young artists it has harmed irretrievably by encouraging them in wretched work, but others it has stimulated and steeled by rebuffs. Of the latter, some have learned to pluck the rose of progress from the thorn of neglect. The Academy has been called a stumbling-block in these latter days. But suppose it is; the best way to develop some artists is not to smooth their road. Perhaps an association like the Academy would have been perni- cious in a community where it could entirely suppress rebellion and crush out rivalry; but in New York, at least, the somewhat Boeotian inertness of the Academy served only to whet the energies of painters and writers Like the rivalry between two great magazines, that between Academy and Society of Artists improved both sides ; though the popular test of success, in the shape of money returns, has told strongly in favor of the Academy, while the men of the Society have had the consolation of bear- ing off the honors of criticism. With all this stirring of ideas, with all these battles of art fought on our soil, with the newly-won triumphs of our etchers, wood-engravers, and water-colorists in the foreign capitals, is it not amazing to hear the croakers croak ? Colonial America gave Great Britain a Franklin and a Rumford in science, a West in painting : good men for their day. At present, the artist of London who is the most artistic of his compeers is an American by birth and education. Whistler, one of the founders of the impressionist reaction against pre-Raphaelitism, learned to use his tools in France, and practiced his profession in England. It is also true that our Academy of Design contains painters as opposite to Whistler as black to white. Indeed, the list of American painters will furnish the believer in every conceivable shade of art. We have our religious painters and our humorous painters. When one comes to examine the matter, the diversity and wide range of American work will surprise. That “ Hudson River School ” on which contempt has been heaped should not, and hereafter will not, bear the evil reputation it has to-day. It was local and yet national ; it satisfied a real demand for a time. Moreover, from it sprang many a good artist, like Homer Martin, George Inness, Winslow Homer, Elihu Ved- der, Sanford and Swain Gifford, and others yet, whose names will occur to those who look. The country damned by Talleyrand for having thirty religions and only one white sauce continues to show variety in the fine arts, a field which for many lies next to, if it does not usurp, religion itself The conflict of tongues and pens, the jealousies and heart-burnings, the rivalries and obstructions among the painters of New York have been signs of health rather than illness. They have had this result, — that no one man, no one association has ruled the public taste. While calling attention to painting as in no other way was possible, they have allowed artistic “natures” to be developed according to their inner forces. One may seek in vain from one end of Europe to the other for an artist with the color-imagination of John La Farge, or for a painter of the landscapes of fairy-land like the idealist Albert Ryder. What Englishman, what Frenchman, or German equals Homer Martin in those landscapes which are real, in that they transcribe the actual, but are, besides, filled with a gentle ecstasy of color? Where do we find the equal of George Fuller in his special field ? Thinking of these and other marvelous artists, and the little worldly success the greater number of them have obtained, one is surprised and indignant. Is this the way the United States looks after its men of finest sensibilities ? Anger at a public so forgetful of its artistic prophets is natural enough — but this is not a matter for the passing of hasty judgments. Were I asked what the Average American is like, I should say a hickory- nut ; he is so hard, unget-at-able, unsympathetic outside ; so soft and savory within. Witness his treatment of wife and children. Your American who talks dollars and crops is a great sentimentalist; and though he denounce Europe, has a very weak spot for the old country in his heart. Only Englishmen rendered insane by good living and the pride of place, ignorant and vicious legislators, oppress- ors of their tenantry, greedy and coarse merchants, could have driven the loyal colonists of 1775 into the ranks of the rebels and pulled their own empire about their ears in the way they did. In spite of a defiant outside toward things European, our people are kinder to English, French, German painters than to Americans of equal parts. Perhaps here and there has been an artist who wondered at it. But what is more natural to be looked for than a sentiment in favor of European scenes and views, of European peoples and actions, surviving for many generations among colonists from Europe ? Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow felt it and interpreted it ; they were rewarded by popular favor. Yet for obvious reasons an extreme of this sentiment was thought undesirable if not absolutely foolish ; it aroused jealousy and suspicion ; even so lately as during the recent legislation which trebled the tariff on objects of the fine arts, the national temper toward those who go to Europe to live was accurately shown. The bad effects that legislation would be likely to have on American students of art in Europe was not ignored ; but the movers were of the same opinion as thousands of other Americans, that students become denationalized by long residence abroad. The anxiety lest Europe should prove too attractive shows that the sentiment is there, and that it is strong. A further reason for the preference shown to foreign work, and one that is common to humanity, lies in man’s love of the distant and unknown. Eldorado is always just beyond the mountains or across the sea. The same faculty which makes one man delight in poetic landscapes causes another to be pleased by views from foreign cities. The difference is one of degree, not of kind. The picture of Vesuvius is valuable as a memento, or the record of a fact, without regard to the art that may be shown in its making ; the picture of home scenery is chiefly, if not entirely, valuable for that amount of art it may possess. There is need of a higher cultivation to enjoy the latter and, what is more important to remember, it needs a far higher kind of artist to produce it. Of course there are other more obvious reasons for preferring foreign pictures ; for instance, because they have or are presumed to have the approval of European connoisseurs, more numerous, more skilled than American. Finally, to cite no more, there is the American woman, fair conservative that she is ! While apt to talk very patriotically, and indeed act so when the need arises, she is drawn toward Europe more powerfully than her partner. All her hereditary instincts are in favor of the class distinctions and ease of household life which are found there. Who knows how much her influence may be cast to the good of foreign art ? Not so much, probably, as transatlantic observers are eager to assert, but still to an appreciable degree. All this will have been said to little purpose, if it is not clear that, according to one opinion at least, the painter’s art in the United States is in a very promising state. To bring it to absolute leadership among the nations, what is now needed except a widening of encouragement, a deepening of the popular knowledge of and sympathy with the higher aspirations of our painters ? To the person who likes the pictures of French or German or English artists let us say ; Very well; but do not be deceived ; their equals are here in the persons of your fellow-citizens ; yes, perhaps their superiors. To the tribe of the morally weak-kneed, who hold their hand to their ear to catch the faintest whisper of disdain or approval over seas, let us say this by way of encouragement : Europe is beginning to appreciate, nay, even actually to buy American pictures ! And to the critic who complains that American painters avoid American subjects, let us rejoin : Art has no fixed locality, no one country; as soon as the public calls for American pictures of whatever sort, they will be forth- coming, good of their kind. This last, indeed, is the key of the problem. It is the band of active picture-lovers, continually recruited from the great mass of the indiffer- ent, a band composed in part of rich men, but mostly of young men at their life-work who are willing to sacrifice something to own objects of art, which must furnish the encouragers of native work. Not the very rich men are to be looked to so much as those who earn a little more than they spend on necessities. But water cannot rise higher than its source. The more the art patrons of this class cultivate themselves, the more will they exact of painters and the higher will be the quality of the supply. The artist is only another phase of the artisan ; he comes from the people ; he is the people’s finest tool. If anything can be sure, one thing is certain: V/hatever be the task set him, wisely, and with proper sympathy on the part of his employers, that the American artist can do. Charles de Kay THE ART TAR /EE HE recent increase of the tariff upon all works of art is chiefly important according as it affects the progress of art in this country. Upon this point the diversity of opinion among those most interested was curiously illus- trated. It was due to an effort to have all duty removed that the existing tariff of lo per cent, was raised to 30 per cent. Various motives are attributed to the Virginia Congressman who was mainly instrumental in effecting this result. But careful inquiry cannot prove that he represented any considerable number of artists, as did Mr. Belmont of New York, who presented the names of the most prominent artists of his State in favor of free importation. The action was probably due to the super- ficial view of the subject that natures having no percep- tion of art feeling, would naturally take. Similar natures were in turn easily stimulated to take the same view. That wealth should be made to pay for the enjoyment of its luxuries is a cry well calculated to carry con- viction. It is not to be doubted, too, that the growing numbers of American artists resident abroad was another incentive to this result. Certain persons are more prone to devise methods of force than methods of persuasion. The latter arise from thorough investigation of causes which must be reproduced in kind to insure like effects. Among the artists, a minority only favors the increased duty. A majority of the leading men have signed various petitions to the next Congress asking for a repeal of the present law. They comprise nearly all the Americans abroad and those who have studied, and are studying, there. They are accused of being actuated by feelings of obligation to foreign art schools and fear of suffering personal slight by foreign artists because of their nationality. Such feelings are natural, and probably have their due weight. But it would also be reasonable to suppose that broader views as well are entertained. These men may have learned in the countries giving special patronage and encourage- ment to art that their advancement is due to causes which do not exist in this country, and which cannot exist under present tendencies. Few of those who believe in an art duty confess that it is necessary for the same reasons that manufacturers desire protection of their interests, namely, that the cost of production is greater here on account of the greater cost of living. The advocates of art tariff assume that cheap foreign pictures are largely imported, and that their sale is encouraged by dealers in preference to American works, because of the greater profits obtained from the former. They say that the lO per cent, duty had no effect in keep- ing these works out, and that a higher duty would be more effectual. There is truth enough in this general assertion to carry the false deduction. Art dealers probably strive to sell what they can sell most easily and with the best pecuniary result to themselves. But the weakness of the case is palpable. If picture buyers are so ignorant that they cannot see the superiority of a good American picture over a poor foreign one, then clearly the American artist needs a better educated public, so that he shall not be at the mercy of a purely mercantile spirit. Art dealers make no pre- tence to be public educators, or benefactors, although up to the recent establishment of our few art schools and museums they were indirectly the means of disseminating all the art knowledge we had. Small as the protectionist minority is, yet it lessens still more its importance by lack of harmony. It is not united in opinion as to what is the best kind of protec- tion. The thirty per cent, duty is unsatisfactory, because it bears hardest where all would agree that it should bear the lightest — upon valuable and educational works — the Rembrandt, for instance, for which Mr. Marquand recently gave 5,000 guineas. To such an expenditure 30 per cent, adds materially. It might well be feared that so great a tax would have a deterring effect to even a generous and philanthropic person. Two other propositions are therefore made. One is, to put on every impor- tation the specific sum of $100, which will bear as hard upon small works, which may be good of their kind, as the 30 per cent, on the important works. The other is a proportional per cent., decreasing according to the increasing value of the work. Undoubtedly this last is the least objectionable of the protective methods thus far proposed. But these different suggestions prove how little agreement of thought there is among this class of artists upon the application of the principle which they claim is all important, not only to their individual welfare, but to the advancement of our national art. And now as to free importation ; what can be said ? Firstly, that America, in art confessedly behind the great European countries, is the only one that levies a duty on art importations. Secondly, that open competition is the life of art as well as of trade. Artists need constant stimulation themselves, or they will get into ruts and retro- grade. How are they to get this stimulation except from the public demand ? How is this public demand to be developed except through education ? Shut out works of art, whether exceptional or ordinary, and the amount of art is lessened. There is then less to be seen, less to be compared, less to be talked about, and consequently less feeling for art generated. The greater number of artists in a place the better for the individual artist. Each is forming a constituency ; each educating a class ; each calling into existence a force that soon moves and grows because of its own momentum and adhesiveness. New York is a good example of this growth. The great number of artists that have congregated in this metropolis recently has created an atmosphere of art which is fast overshadowing the famous art culture of Boston, where, at times, the best artists of the country have been found. But it is said that to allow free entrance into the country of all works of art will result in an influx of trash that has no claim to the name of art. There is a possibility of this result. And yet there is another consideration : The trash will be bought by persons to whom works of merit would make no appeal. Like the chromo, it will become the forerunner of art, going where the latter would find no welcome, but preparing the way for its ultimate acceptance. We do not despise the school-girl who takes delight in Mrs. Southworth ; nor the boy who finds all his imagination craves in a dime novel. Experience teaches that these things are stepping-stones that surely lead up and on. Even the art collector goes through his formative stages. From the time of the pur- chase of his first picture, throughout his life, he is engaged in weeding his art garden. Those things beyond which his taste has grown are rooted up to make room for others that will later meet with the same fate. The process of cultivation in art is not rapid. Constant seeing and comparing are the only means of education. Few, as yet, in this country have been surrounded from youth by such standard works as make taste an inheritance or a matter of unconscious inhalation. The weakness of American art is obviously its lack of direction. Our govern- ment, unlike those of France, England, Germany, and Italy, takes no cognizance of the fact that art is a constantly growing profession ; that it affords relief to the many crowded avenues of labor; that its influence is enlightening and refining, and espe- cially needed in this young country, where the tendency is practical and prosaic. While we confess the supremacy of France in all artistic pursuits, we see how much of her wealth is due to these sources. But we do not seek to know the secret of her advancement, nor strive to benefit by her example. Not more than a month or two ago, an article appeared in a leading English journal, which called attention to the fact that, outside of London, England was doing nothing for art education. It cited the activity of France in contrast. It pointed out that, to keep pace with the times and arrest her backward inclination, England must follow in the wake of her neighbor. In France the knowledge of art is not monopolized by the capital. The provinces have their art museums and schools. These are not independent weaklings, but dependencies of a great central organization — a part of the government system of education, so broad that it aims to give nourishment to all the seeds of industry and learning. Not to foster and develop the germs of artistic taste under this system would be a waste of the national resources. Compare this mode of thought and these methods of national development with our recent display of legislative ignorance. Is it reasonable to suppose that in any other country of the importance of ours such narrow views could prevail. A law is passed ostensibly for the benefit of a class, with the result that the majority of this class repudiate the action and ask for a repeal of the law. Protection of this sort is misnamed. If a republican government can- not render the aid to art that monarchies and empires do, it might be expected to abstain from harmful interference. Otherwise the prayer of our artists should be, “Save us from our friends.” But it is not without the bounds of hope that we shall rise to better things — perhaps to a commission appointed for the consideration of such matters as the encouragement of art in the United States. If it could not be brought about on the ideal ground of raising the standard of culture, it might, on the mate- rial argument of increasing our prosperity, and adding another to our full and successful professions. L. C. Knight E TCH INC AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MODERN ART, AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. HY is etching practiced so extensively to-day ? As I have before endeavored to find an answer to this ques- tion, I must ask the reader to pardon me if I repeat myself in what follows. The truth being the truth, its statement must always be essentially the same, and it will not do to depart from it for the sake of variety or of entertainment. The causes of the manifestations which we class together under the general term “ art,” are deep-seated. If we define art as “ the capacity of man to conceive ideals and to give tangible shape to these ideals, so that it may be possible to communicate them through the senses,” its significance and the various phases of its history will at once be understood: Crude ideals — crude art; unanimity of views — unanimity of art ; fervent belief in the ideals of the age — an art well defined, confident of itself, and well supported ; doubt in the ideals still officially assumed to be current — art timid, desultory, and at last apparently aimless ; a breaking away from what was supposed to be central truths, and every man trying to hew out his own “ road to salvation ” — art individualized as the expression of personal views, desires, or convictions ; trans- cendentalism — an art which slights form and color in its attempts to express that which exceeds earthly experience ; a resolution to be content with this world, and to make the best of it — art realistic on the one hand, or decorative and somewhat sensuous on the other, and degenerating in its worst manifestations into the embodiment of brutal egoism. There is no doubt that ours is an age in which personality asserts itself, that the ideals which have ruled the world are losing shape, that beliefs are no longer accepted unchallenged, that creeds are changing, decaying, ossifying, dying. Art must necessarily feel this condition of things. Hence its intensely personal character, and hence also the fitness of etching as a means of expression. For etching is the most personal of the reproductive or multiplying processes, enabling each artist to disseminate the work of his own hand to a much larger extent than if he were limited to the brush or the pencil. And as the personal element is the charm which is valued above all others in the art of our day, it follows that etching should be in favor, also, with the public. Few people nowadays ask for a statue of the Madonna, or a picture of Christ Crucified, or of Truth Vanquishing Falsehood. What we want is a specimen of Mr. Smith’s or Miss Jones’s work. It is this desire which leads to the establishment of rich men’s galleries, while even the less wealthy can satisfy their longings by a collection of etchings. Discordance must necessarily spring out of this singing of a melody of its own by each voice. Possibly the time may come again when all will sing in unison, or rather in harmony. But the process of change will be a slow one, and the grand chorus will rise more and more perceptibly above the din only as voice after voice falls into place, and subordinates its own little personality to the grand whole. Mean- while, let us enjoy what the passing moment offers, and let us draw gratification from the fact that the artists of the United States have taken part so vigorously, although somewhat tardily, in this modern movement, which, whatever phases it may pass through, must necessarily lead us onward and upward. It would not be very far out of the way to say that etching was not employed at all by American artists (except as a day laborer, in “forwarding” the work of the engraver) thirty, or twenty-five, or even twenty years ago. That is nothing to be extraordinarily surprised at, for the French Etching Club was not organized until 1863. One of the earliest American etchers was Mr. J. G. Chapman, who was also probably the first native artist to give an account of the technical processes of etch- ing, in his “ American Drawing Book,” published many years ago. A plate entitled “ lanka,” engraved by V. Balch, but with a border etched by Mr. Chapman, is dated 1843. The Exhibition of American Etchings, held at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1881, brought out a number of other plates executed by various hands before the year 1850, none of which had any artistic merit. Mr. Geo. L. Brown’s plates, dated 1853 and thereabouts, are best known among the early American productions of the needle. But his etchings, as well as those of Mr. Chapman, would be more likely to be classed with and mistaken for engravings by the present generation. Their characteristics are careful, delicate execution, with frequent recourse to the ruling machine, and their aim is subject rather than effect. According to M. Castagnary, who wrote the introduction to the fourth volume of the publications of the French Etching Club, which appeared in 1866, the birth of etching in the United States dates from the year named, and M. Cadart, of the then firm of Cadart & Luquet, to say the least, stood godfather to the infant. M. Cadart came over here as a missionary, to show Americans what Erench art was (of which they had never heard until then) and to preach to them the gospel of etching. The hold of the vessel which carried the apostle was filled with a precious cargo of Corots, etc., etc., and with an immense store of etching tools and materials, among which even old rags had not been forgotten. “ One might have called him [f. e., M. Cadart] a sort of artistic Lafayette, coming, after the lapse of a century, to complete, upon the same ground, but with other ambitions, the work of emancipation and progress begun by the political Lafayette.” M. Cadart, we are told, “did so much and so well with his tongue, his fingers, his person, his tools, and his cargo, that when, at the end of four months, he re-embarked for France — the Americans are quick in doing — schools of etching had been founded in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Still better, steps had been taken toward the organization of a vast Society of Etchers on federal territory, with a view to the closest connection with our own [i. e., the P'rench Societe des Aqiia-Fortistes], And thus it was that, within this present year, through the unassisted efforts of the firm of Cadart & Luquet [dealers in etchings and etchers’ materials], the whole of a new continent" was conquered for the cause of etching.” This is fiction, however, on but a very slight basis of fact. Some few American artists did take lessons of M. Cadart, and some few plates were produced. There is a fine architectural etching, by Mr. George Snell, architect, of Boston, in the volume of the French Etching Club for 1866, and Mr. J. Foxcroft Cole, of the same city, also made a plate, which was not regularly published, however, until it appeared in the ‘‘American Art Review” in 1880. Mr. Edwin Forbes, who was elected a member of the French Etching Club, was likewise, I believe, inspired by M. Cadart, and so was Mr. J. M. Falconer, who had, however, made his first essay as far back as 1849. These are all the traces left by the P'rench missionary that I have been able to find. We shall be compelled to assume, therefore, that the conquered continent was lost as quickly as it had been won. Etching did not really take lasting root in the United States until the influence of the P'rench school made itself felt among our artists in general. It came, however, in this special instance, by way of lingland, through Mr. Whistler, — whom we may, I presume, still claim as an American artist, in spite of his expatriation, — and among the first to practice it assiduously was a young man of English birth, Mr. Plenry P'arrer, who began to etch in 1868. The isolated efforts of several other artists, such as the plates executed by Mr. R. Swain Gifford in 1864, 1865, and 1868, greatly helped by the writings of Mr. Hamerton, the first edition of whose ” Etching and Etchers” appeared in 1868, finally led to the establishment, in 1877, of the New’-York Pitching Club. It is to the efforts of Mr. James D. Smillie and Dr. L. M. Yale that the organization of this club is principally due. Its influence for good has been marked, and its example has led to the formation of similar associations in other cities, of which, however, the Philadelphia Society of Etchers, organized in June, 1880, seems to be the only one of real vitality. The exhibition, before alluded to, which was held at the Boston Museum of P'ine Arts, in 1881, and the several exhibitions of the New York and Philadelphia clubs have given ample evidence of the wide diffusion of the practice of etching, and of the numerical strength and the enthusiasm of its devotees in the United States. At the Boston exhibition alone, between five and six hundred works were shown by over one hundred etchers. The breadth of the current is not a guarantee of its depth, or of the clearness and salubrity of its waters. It may be said, therefore, that the facts and figures here given prove nothing for the quality of the work done by our etchers. Nor would our own testimony be admitted as unbiased in a court of law. It is quite justifiable, therefore, that we should look to the testimony of Europe, to whose judgment we are so ready to submit in things artistic. That testimony has been given, willingly and unhesita- tingly, in favor of the etchers of the United States. Nearly all the American artists who cared to apply have been admitted to membership in the Society of Paihter- Etchers, of London, which is meant to embrace all the best talent, and only the best talent, of the world ; and wherever our etchers have exhibited in Europe, their works have commanded attention and elicited comment. They have thus done their share bravely toward securing for American art the standing which it at present enjoys abroad. • S. R. Koehler S L/C CESS IN ART RETROSPECTIVE glance at the art progress of the past few years, reveals the fact that there exists the usual duality of success which is common to all the other professions. Money-makers on one side and conscientious painters on the other, constitute this twofold division. That a large sum of money is annually invested in paintings and fine art products, though it may be small in comparison to the vast expenditures of other lands, is shown by a perusal of the account sales of exhibitions. That the greater part of this money is divided among one class of painters also becomes evident. That the character and merit of the pictures produced by these men are not such as will ever raise the standard of American art to that eagle’s height where we are anxious to see it soar. Facts assure us that to a great extent this class has secured public confidence : — First. By honest effort, which in many cases has been very stupid. Second. By continually exposing, in every possible exhibition, numbers of their works, thus obliging the public to become familiar with their names. Third. By clinging to time-worn subjects, which, however indifferently painted, are certain to be received and paid for by the public, on account of the attractiveness of association. Fourth. By the prestige arising from their connection with art institutions, which they had secured years before art in our country attained even the advanced position which it now occupies, but which by no means indicates real merit. This class seems to have held the purse-strings of the public in times past ; and unless we are greatly mistaken, there are several movements on foot whereby they propose to unloose the said purse-strings again during the coming season. We might call them “the mercantile painters.’’ We have abundant proof, which we could easily produce, that the other class of artists in this distribution, who receive by far, the smaller share of pecuniary return, are few in number and occupy a small place in the minds of the art public. In fact, they are appreciated by a mere handful of art patrons. Yet, every work sent out by them is characterized by real merit, is original in composition, color, and subject. They work carefully, but seldom become popular, caring little for empty honors. These are the. men who paint for the satisfaction which stirs the inmost soul, when an appeal from nature is indelibly fixed on their canvas. These are they who will carry our art to the grand position it is destined to hold. The sooner that our art patrons become aware of this fact, the sooner the stars and stripes will wave apeak. This lack of appreciation of thoroughly serious work, on the part of the art public, is the great disadvantage against which the American painter has to labor. The young painter, having finished his preliminary studies and ready to begin his professional life, finds himself immediately confronted with a fork in the road. He must at once decide between two paths, and his decision is not based on uncertain speculations at all. The sign-boards are clearly written, and substantially they appear thus : — The larger and most attractive one is placed in a conspicuous position, on a fine bronzed standard, which rises from a pedestal of brick and mortar, skillfully wrought to imitate stone. The board is decorated with attractive lettering and ornaments in gold-leaf The heading can be seen from afar, and is so interesting that one must stop first before it: To financial success ! The tempting index points down a magnificent roadway lined with costly build- ings — both dwellings and stores. The stores are well stocked with paintings, and attended by glib-tongued, shrewd salesmen. The purchasers in them know nothing of art. They go to these magnificent magazines because the works offered for sale are recommended by the shop-men as being the proper thing to decorate their palaces. They never sit down before a picture with any other feeling than that inspired by its cost ! In the fine avenues are magnificent studios, inhabited by the artists who paint for these people. Every delight is here which the mighty dollar can accumulate. The occupants are expensively dressed, fed on the delicacies of the land, and their business is so large that they are obliged to have agents to attend to their bank accounts. The pictures they paint are immensely clever and attractive for a time. The painters do not love their art, except fo^ the delights which the bountiful remunera- tion may afford them. They hate to work because it is so methodical, so absolutely soulless. Their pictures are but repetitions of each other (for such repetition of what is found to be popular is the key to financial success). One must not do anything unlike his stereotyped style, else his work will not be desired. Mrs. Jones wants a picture just like Mrs. Brown, you know, and Mrs. Smith follows suit. Mrs. Green wants two companion works by Mr. Snip, because there are two spaces, exactly the same size, on either side of her parlor door. Therefore, Mrs. Jones concludes to have her door arranged the same way, because she wants places for two of Mr. Snip’s companion pieces just like Mrs. Green’s, you know. The young painter looks for the other sign-board : There is no noisy attraction here. He will have to hunt some time, perhaps, before he finds the quiet old monument. It is tried and storm-beaten, because it has stood years and years. It has witnessed the returning back of many a young man who had chosen the road to true greatness in art, and, after a few years of hard toil, was starved out. Broken down and thread- bare, he has been obliged to turn back and seek gilded fortune down the jeweled road, or famish — friendless, forsaken, and unappreciated by the way. The road thus indicated is comparatively unfrequented. An occasional fine resi- dence is found, whose owner welcomes the painter in. His grasp is cordial, and his thorough appreciation of the painter’s subject and efforts is most encouraging. He loves serious things, and seizes your work with eagerness. But, alas ! these men are are too scarce. There are but few such as yet in America, and happy is he who finds them. It is not generally until after the man who strives for truth is put away among the dead and gone that he becomes appreciated. A post-mortem success is his ! There are two phases of art life which every young painter will do well to con- sider before he pushes ahead : — The one will give him the inferior satisfaction which arises from such pleasures as money can secure. He will also be a favorite with the art public ; for every painter whose works sell readily is sought after and appreciated by connoisseurs more intelligent than we have among us. The other will give him the truer and deeper satisfaction, and, although the luxu- ries of life and the plaudits of a shallow public may not be his lot, he may be sure that a striving for the serious will bring him out near the head when at last his hair begins to whiten and his eyes grow dim. It is with our young men to establish American art firmly. Will they do it? 'It is a long and hard trial, beset with snares and clogged up by obstacles. Will they get themselves in condition for the struggle, and work to the end for the prize ? The great future of America’s art would be close at hand if a united effort could be made in the right direction. It depends upon the painters to make this effort. If the public is to be educated, the painters must be at it. There is already much of the right seed sown, and a careful cultivation will pro- duce a hundred-fold, aye, a thousand. Frank T. Lent COLOR IN WORKS OF ART 5 HEN we speak of certain works by Rubens or Titian or Delacroix or Corot as having “color,” we mean that they display a certain harmony of tones — a harmony difficult to analyze or reason about or even to describe. It requires a delicate and healthy nervous organization and a mind untroubled by other matters to perceive and appreciate it. “Tone,” itself, is something that is not readily definable. And as for laying down rules by which it may be judged that a picture or other work of art has or has not color or tone, that is altogether impossible. But by speaking, first, of color in good decorative work, always simpler than the coloring proper to pictures, it may be possible to arrive at practical definitions of these terms and others like them as they are commonly used. And, in this way, we may also get at some idea of the general principles of coloring. These latter will not include every- thing that an artist should attend to, to be a colorist, yet they are by no means unimportant. It should be worth while to state them shortly, if only for the purpose of showing how little there is that can be positively said about color and how much in relation to the subject is matter of feeling and individual taste. It has been assumed that the laws of color might be derived from an analysis of nature. So, no doubt, they might if it were not far more difficult to analyze nature than the works 'of Rubens or Delacroix. Attempts have been made to evolve a science of coloring from measurements of color-vibrations and from the little that is known concerning their influence on the nerves. Nothing that is of any importance to art has come of such efforts. The experiments of a more elementary sort carried out by M. de Chevreuil resulted in the adoption of a nomenclature that is sometimes serviceable; but that is all. We knew that orange looked more brilliant in the neigh- borhood of blue than it did elsewhere, before we had learned to speak of these colors as the “ complementaries” of one another, and we knew that red gives a more power- ful sensation than brown before we had begun to talk of the first as a “ primary ” color and of the other as a “tertiary” one. In fact, all the principles of coloring now known were known and practiced many centuries ago ; and it is much easier to demonstrate them in fine decorations than to deduce them from scientific data. It may be set down, to begin with, that bright and strong colors are more pleas- ing than dull or weak or dark ones. The testimony of all great colorists is to that effect. It should not be considered vulgar in a person to like vermilion and lime-white and sky-blue. It is as natural as it is to prefer sweet things to bitter. When people really like dull colors best, they must be in an unenviable state of body or of mind. As a rule, they are merely tired, for the time being, of the brighter tints. It must be admitted, though, that strong and brilliant colors, if used over large surfaces and unmitigated in any manner, soon become fatiguing. In periods in which splendid decorative work was produced, they were used mainly in the temples or churches or other places seldom entered, where they were, moreover, tempered by shade and by distance or, as in Egypt, almost effaced by the glare of light. In ordinary habitations and on things that were constantly before the eye, it has been the almost universal practice to use a lower range of tints, which, besides being less trying to the eye, were perhaps more cheaply got. Rather dull reds, purples, and orange-browns were used Instead of the purer colors, grass-green instead of emerald- green and turquoise-blue instead of cobalt and, above all, some tint of gray instead of pure white, as the ground. But this was felt to be an inferior kind of coloring. There seems to have never been a time, until the present, when people did not discriminate between one blue and another, and between one red and another, though they were equally bright and deep. The preferred tint w'as one that had some variety in itself, due to a barely perceptible shading of some other color or to texture or transparency. This is what we call “ quality.” Though plenty of crude color was used by the Egyptians, and also, most likely, by the Greeks, rich and varied tints were greatly enjoyed. To form a proper idea of the magnificence of ancient Egyptian coloring, we are told by a high authority that we should imagine not a combination of ordinary coarse pigments, but rather of lapis lazuli, red and green jasper, ivory and ebony and gold ; and Mr. Poynter assures us that the greatest pains were taken by the Graeco-Italian artists of Pompeii and other Roman towns to obtain fine texture and a soft harmonious tone in the mere ground of white stucco on which they were to work. In this way, without descending too often to a low scheme of color, the eye was afforded a rest. In the coloring of the ancient Egyptians, every tint used has a distinct “value” as a dark or as a light. Beginning with black, they had next a deep blue, then red, a turquoise-blue or blue-green, yellow or gold, and white. The last was in fine work a little grayish or of an ivory tone. The contrasts of darker and lighter thus afforded were used, as they have always been by decorators who understood what they were about, principally to bring out the design ; but they have an influence on the color effect as well. There is another difference between some of these colors and the rest. The red, the white, yellow, and greenish-blue of the above scale and, generally, all yellowish or reddish tints have a lively and warm appearance. The blue, the black, and grayish white, when tinged with blue, look cold and funereal. Differences of purity again, if not sought for, were not avoided. When all these shades and hues and tints were used together, the dark shades made the light ones seem paler, the cold colors made the warm ones warmer, the dull added brilliancy to the purer. Those effects it is the business of a colorist to manage, so that the contrasts shall not be shocking nor be so crowded as to become confusing. When this result is attained and the general effect is harmonious, although each color is clear and distinct, we have the finest example of what is called “color ” as distinct from colors or coloring. It is a result that it is extremely hard to arrive at. Even the Egyptians, as a rule, sacrificed the purity and the brilliancy of some of their colors to secure harmony. Their expedients of using only one or two strong colors in any quantity in a composi- tion, the others in much smaller amount and more broken up, balancing and separating the groups with black and plenty of white, did not always succeed well enough to satisfy themselves. Most often, all their colors were assimilated to one, commonly yellow ; so that, on a yellowish ground, we find an orange-red, a dark greenish gray, and a very greenish turquoise, instead of the red and dark and light blue already mentioned. Such a plan, when successful, gives “tone” not “color.” A fine picture by any of the great masters of color is sure to contain several “ tones,” forming a harmony among themselves. In a picture by Corot those tones would be obtained as just described by the blending of the pigments on the palette or the canvas, or by glazing; in one by Delacroix, by the juxtaposition of touches of pure pigment that seem to blend at a little distance. Thus, one part of a picture may have a bluish tone and another a yellowish, each tone being made up of a multitude of tints or even pure colors that blend harmoniously to the eye ; but though these “tones” agree among themselves they do not blend at any distance at which the design can be traced. The picture has, therefore, the same quality that belongs to the Egyptian decorations of the finest character. It is composed of separate masses, each having its own proper color effect, but all agreeing to form a harmonious whole. It has “ color.” There have always been many more great designers than great colorists. At the present time there are but few who can be said to be colorists at all. In most cases, painters of the modern French school are satisfied with obtaining a rather poor and cold tone. The Germans, who aim, as a rule, at a warm tone, are very apt to miss tone altogether — to be discordant, “ foxy ” or “bricky.” America can claim her full share, or more than that, of the modern colorists and tonists. The late Wm. M. Hunt, John La Farge, Sargeant, Whistler, S. Coleman, Swain Gifford, Winslow Homer, H. D. Martin, Alden Weir, etc., etc., are as good as any that live. To find better, we must go back to the artists of the late romantic school in France, and to the single ^ example of Turner in England. R. Riordan PHOTOGRAPHY SOMETHING OF ITS PROGRESS, AND ITS RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS. CANNING the photographic horizon of to day with one of the most approved of modern instruments, and listening to the rumors which fill the air of the new things to come, I can- not perceive that there is anything new — absolutely new — of which to make mention ; in fact, since the discov- eries of the alchemists who noticed the action of light upon silver chloride, and experimented with the sun- prints of over a hundred years ago, though there has been much development, there has been nothing abso- lutely new in photography, and all the new life has sprung from preexistent factors. The first crude prints upon surfaces that had been sensitized to the action of light, for aught that has been discovered since, possessed the germs and indicated the powers and relations of all future photography. From time to time new ideas have been ingrafted on old ones, the quality and durability of work, as well as the time taken to produce it, have been very much improved, until the old-time profile, the silver-type, the picture on glass, and the daguerreotype have nearly all disappeared in their turn, and given place to the more modern photograph. The simple camera obscura, invented by Porta in the year 1650, served for photographic experiments so long as the art remained in its infancy ; but as the art progressed, it was soon found that this instrument was too imperfect to satisfy the increasing demands upon it, and a most material improvement was effected by Petzval and Voigtlander ; other and still more valuable improvements have been made within the past few years by Voigtlander, until to-day the apparatus is well- nigh perfect, leaving little or nothing to be desired. It now gives a large-sized picture, correctly drawn, equally distinct in all its parts, commands a most intense light, and is equally adapted for portraying as for taking views of architectural objects. Eminent experimentalists, on the science side, have been engaged for years in researches on the chemical alterations and modifications produced in various bodies by the action of light, endeavoring to ascertain whether other compounds than silver might not be used in photography with the same degree of success — whether or not the accidental results of color, reported to have been produced by Biot, Becquerel, and others, might not be more thoroughly understood, and reduced to something like a law of definite mixing proportions. But further than some very interesting variations, of a decidedly transitory nature, that have been produced by combinations of different metallic salts, there have been no important discoveries in this direction. There has been a radical improvement, however, in the methods of preparing plates ; indeed, the wide range of possibilities within reach of the camera has never been so clearly demonstrated to the world as in the dry plate or emulsion processes of to-day. The physical characteristics of the sensitive salts used in the preparation of these dry plates are wonderful, and it is their sensitiveness and quality that constitutes perhaps their greatest charm. When it is said — and said truly — that a plate can be prepared which needs but one-sixtieth part of a second to secure a soft and har- monious negative, when a view is fairly lighted, there is a feeling that the era fore- shadowed in the discoveries of the past century has at last dawned. Instantaneous views are now possible under circumstances which were hitherto impossible, and we may now have that motion, life, and expression from nature that have heretofore been wanting. Perhaps no one of the numerous civilizing and educational agencies of the nine- teenth century has received so little encouragement as Photography. Indeed, its difficulties and varied capacity are but little understood by the general public to-day, and, until within a very few years there has been no disposition to look upon this beautiful art otherwise than as a sort of phenomena, a curious result of certain chemical combinations, wonderful enough in its way, but altogether too fleeting to be of any particular value to the human race. The profession having also been founded by mechanics is still weighed down by the shackles inflicted upon it at its birth, and a strong prejudice yet exists against its recognition as an art. Many of the soi disant critics or connoisseurs will express unbounded admiration, and work themselves up to great enthusiasm over portraits, bad in drawing, poor in color, flat and meaningless in light and shade, and devoid of character and expression ; yet these same dilettant will totally ignore a splendid photographic work, masterly in treatment and con- ception, effectively and brilliantly lighted, dignified, intelligent, and refined in pose, and faithfully transferred to paper-canvas by the camera, instead of the too often treacherous hand of the draughtsman-painter. Thanks, however, to the achievements of the chemist, the optician, and lovers of art generally, photography has been elevated to a position among the fine arts, where it has ample scope to demonstrate its ability to please, instruct, and elevate, taking a place next the chisel and the brush. It is not decreed for humanity to give a visible expression of the higher, or ideal, conceptions of men without the assistance of matter, and matter cannot appeal to the finer senses without the direction of the mind. Thus it is possible, if taste and culture are brought to bear, to reconcile the ideal with the real, so that they become mutual aids to harmony. A great deal of idealistic conception is born and cradled in realistic nature, — the germ often taking root in human sentiment, and depending for develop- ment upon our power to appreciate the beautiful whenever and however it presents itself to us. Nature, though beautiful in detail, is not necessarily so in combination, and requires a fine discriminating understanding to group its parts into a harmonious whole. It is given to many to admire a good picture, but to few the gift of concep- tion. This exalted excellence cannot be attained by the most subtle combinations of science alone ; opticians and chemists labor in vain unless the same power of idealistic conception of the beautiful, the same refinement of mind which pervades the works of the old masters join hand in hand — the only essential difference being the mode of record. Under the direction of the master-mind photography is capable of giving the truest and most subtle expressions of nature, and is naturally an art by which its beauties can be most faithfully recorded. With this power in his hands, the photographer becomes the disseminator of a true art ; not forgetting that on his ability as an artist, and not as a scientist or mechanic, will depend the fineness of the art he produces — in the proportion that he learns to rely less upon his chemicals and mechanical appliances and more upon him- self. The demands of modern photography will not allow of mere mechanical manip- ulation in any department of the photographic studio. Artistic pictures cannot be manufactured by any fixed rule ; every scene and every face must be treated accord- ing to its own peculiarities and according to well known principles in art ; harmony, contrast, and distance — which enter into the composition of every picture, — must be taken into consideration. Scarcely any other branch of photography has enjoyed so much popularity as that of portrait-taking. Most persons conceive, under the term photographer, only a portraitist, and only a few are aware that photography is good for something else. The photographic portrait owes its popularity to its extraordinary cheapness, to its rapid mode of execution, and to its relatively greater resemblance when compared with the drawings from nature. Imperfect photography can reckon, on account of these circumstances, on greater support than the drawing of a clumsy artist. In fact, photography has driven the mechanical portrait-painter out of the field ; only the genuine artist having been able to hold his ground against it. Portrait-photography makes greater demands than any other branch of the art on the good taste of the operator, his capacity to give a natural or, at least, apparently a natural, picturesque, unstudied pose to a person ; it requires him to show the best side of the sitter, to conceal, so far as possible, any defect that may exist, to bring out all that is advan- * tageous, and leave indistinct by a clever adaptation of light those points which would injure the effect of a picture. He is required to take the portraits of persons for the most part unknown to him, often seeing them in the operating-room for the first time; and upon the work he produces under circumstances like these he stands or falls in the estimation of the public as an artist. In order that photography may keep pace with the rapid progress of art ideas in this country, and demonstrate its right to a place in the sisterhood of fine arts, it is necessary to free it from many of the weights of conventionalism, and instill into the minds of its devotees higher ideas of art. All workers in any department of art should strive to be teachers and exponents of progressive ideas, rather than mere caterers to the public taste. Photographers should be fully alive to the necessity of a more thorough and general art study in connection with the practice of their profes- sion. They should look toward as thorough instruction as possible in the general principles of art, especially as applied to portraiture. In fact, it is not only desirable but essential to a high degree of excellence that a course of drawing the human head, as well as a study of the general principles of light and shade, be made the foundation of a course of photography. They should associate themselves with some one of the many amateur societies throughout the land, organized for the purpose of promoting the art, getting in this way the personal benefits to be received by occasional contact with minds engaged in the study of experimental photography. Let American photog- raphers awaken then to a sense of the progress that has been and is being made in the other branches of the fine arts ; let the work they produce be more suitable to this age and nation ; let it constantly evidence the desire for a higher, more artistic char- acter ; let them aim to develop the rich capacities of this art, and we may yet hope to raise a standard that shall be universally followed. Edward A. Robinson MEMORIAL ART have been two periods of sculpture, the Greek and the Italian ; all others have been derivative or preceding. Egyptian, with its colossal symbolism typifying eternity, still strikes us with wonder, but it is crude if it is mighty, an abstraction too vague to embody life in its essence. The Greek was living, — an organism, if you break it, it is still living in its parts. Like nature, structure shows in every fragment. The Italians put naturalistic expression and motive into art. Florence was the most vital city> in its genius, of modern times, — a lesser Athens, touch- ing other keys of feeling. Michael Angelo in his David gave a new note. We can- not look at it without thinking here is the embodiment of modern times, — alert, springing forward, ready to leap over mountains. Nowhere is the life better given. It would fly. It is the youthful Christian as distinguished from pagan calmness. The head is full of meaning. See the cast of it, as it has lately been reproduced, and you have a world of feeling the Greek never knew. Michael Angelo created the new world. All that Gothic architecture had done for sentiment and religion he summed up in his mystic works. He left a world to grow on forever and pointed the way. Donatello saw nature also in the mirror of feeling, and other Tuscans and Italians. This was something superadded to Greek art. The Greek was perfect, because he was limited ; the Christian could not be perfect, because he felt more than he could do. The feeling in the renaissance sculpture on the tombs in Italy is as sincere portraiture as has been seen : refinement, delicacy, poetry itself In its low-reliefs the tender marble blushes into life. It had passed through the Gothic and got its inspiration there. That remarkable race set the fashion of all modern art as of all modern science and civilization. The Italians first modified ancient architecture to suit modern requirements, and it is an interesting study to observe the growth of detail and inventions under the hands of Bramante, Brunelleschi, Michael Angelo, in houses still inhabited and colossal piles built with Etruscan solemnity. No people have built so majestically. Coming by the Cornice road the door-ways grow, and the sense of loftiness, generosity of area pervades all the commonest structure. The Florentines were the first in the field — the bridge, the link from antiquity to modern times, although Venice was earlier with her sweet and perfect Gothic style. Italy did work all over Europe in its palmy days, and was the master of all countries. Italians still can manage large compositions, toss the figure about, do decorative groups better than other races. Realism is now their cue. The Napoleon statue, the soap-scrubbing mother have been popular at great exhibitions, and gone round the world. Races retain their old mastery. The Spaniards are still masculine, the Belgians historic, the Dutch sturdy — the best marine artists, with the Scandinavians. Our country is covered with monuments off-hand when there is no genius in the air. As architecture patterns itself on all previous ages, eclectic and imitative, still seeking for results out of all known styles, expressing itself by none exclusively or adequately, sculpture ransacks all possible motives ; but the designs of soldiers’ monuments savor of the carpenter rather than the artist. Design is the rarest and greatest of artistic gifts. It sums up all others which are tributary to it. It is creative. We may not look for it yet. The arts are beginning this side the water — scarcely on their feet. Clever men are not imaginative men. It is an American mistake to consider so. Smartness is not genius, but we commonly think that talent will do everything, even to Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. It is the current conviction. The space that separates genius from commonplace is not dreamed of This is natural in a commercial country. All art is ideal in some sense or it is nothing ; but fancy merely, or prettiness have been our motives, and in art and poetry they have been believed to be imagination. Ingenuity has been taken to be creativeness ; the faculty which invents apple-parers and mowing-machines, the same faculty which does poetry and art. Let us try to see what there is, in Boston, of merit in the monumental way, if there is anything. The most important is the most cheap and conventional, the soldiers’ monument. Borrowed from Rome, it is lacking in dignity and nobility. The site saves it. At sunset, gleams of the sinking sun strike on the masses behind the trees, and the effect is tender and impressive. The subordination of the statues to the impression of the whole is not achieved. They are not incorporated in it, but meager and unconnected. There is absolutely no design in it, architectural or monumental. The Ether monument avails itself of Gothic, but, leaving out its grace and its flexibility, is cramped. The sculpture on it is the only masterly bit in the city. The group of Lincoln is totally without design. Sumner is weak, Everett starched. The Hamilton statue, august in presence ; but like a terminal figure, it has no form. The statue of Samuel Adams is the best design, strong in character, but mastery is sadly lacking. The equestrian group, for so difficult a subject, is fairly well handled. The horse and rider are too picture-book as we see them across the garden. The rider is stiff. The horse has much merit in the fore parts. The Erench, with talent, have done effective work ; the Germans correct, cold work. Perhaps the best modern work as a monument is at Berlin, the Frederick the Great. The effort of the English at Kensington Gardens is but a partial success. There is merit in the bas-relief of distinguished men banding the over-sumptuous pile. The statue of Prince Albert himself is execrably wanting in life and plasticity. It is not a free or chaste design, and derives its effect from profuse magnificence rather than original conception. Gothic can be imitated, not reproduced. Imitation of Greek or Gothic or any great style, which was once the life of an age, is always sure to be dead in literature or art. We wait for new styles. They have married ancient and modern in the so-called Queen Anne style, whose masses are Gothic, detail, renaissance : the best civic style of later times, having the suppleness of one, the emotion ; — the grace, and sweetness of the other. So far as we know, the Farragut monument is the best, because the most truthful and searching, reaching out after nothing but fact, but treating it artistically and with mastery. True, the base is scratched rather than modeled. Let there be mastery in portraiture or sculpture, the rendering of the life, and we have art. It is rare. The old masters did it with directness; hence portraits are as great art as there is. Velas- quez, the greatest of realists, Rembrandt, the most original of imaginative men, find their great fame here. We do not need a cheap invention, ideality, or sentimentality, substitute for living work. It would indeed be impossible to erect monuments all over an immense country, as we have been doing, and all in one epoch, and have them anything but fantastic and common as they are. The Greeks themselves, the embodiment and module of all art, the old Italians would have shrunk from such a task, hesitated at such a manufacture. The Farragut statue is the expression of the time in art, nature done with truth, with simplicity and feeling, — direct as greatest work always is, if we subtly seize character and achieve life. It is the conviction. Nature is enough, an incessant mira- cle if we are equal to her. But we do not master her, and here is the defect of Bos- ton work. Mastery has not been in our art. It is tame and lifeless all over the city, insipid in feeling. Perfect mastery is greatness. Michael Angelo’s, Da Vinci’s work, Botticelli’s is mastery, vital. The supreme master creates a new life ; subordinate men do spirited and effective work. The French seemed to be alive in sculpture at Munich four years ago. Yet at Paris, the previous year, the exhibit was profuse rather than great. Two monuments in Savannah please one. The one, a simple unornamented shaft of various blocks, keeps green a nameless memory. It is enough that it is enshrined in the people’s hearts. This is the monument to General Greene, of revolutionary fame. There is no inscription on it, not even a date. It is the most touching thing in the country. Every orator should be led up to it to cure his mortuary eloquence. How could we be so silent ? The other is to Pulaski, done about fifty years ago, and it shames the tawdry and contemporary work raised to the soldiers of the Confederate army. Some wave of taste and simplicity got into Savannah, for there are a banking house and a church of conspicuous elegance. Of English modern work, Wilberforce, in Westminster Abbey, illustrates the merit of simple life-likeness and truthfulness, character. Chantry’s children at Litch- field delight one with their innocent feeling. Houdin’s Voltaire in France recalls the life with extraordinary vividness. It is where everybody sees it — in the theater. Let us console ourselves that the result is not worse but better than the buckram men in bronze, which confront one out of countenance by the side of Westminster Abbey. We have at least preserved our refinement in Boston. In monuments there is a quiet taste, if no spirited design. Ostentation and conventionality do not charac- terize the architecture, but intelligence and education. Genius ! where is it to be found in this eclectic and historic-seeking age ? Perhaps nowhere is the performance better as far as it goes. It is a tentative, an imitative, a transitional age. We know all past styles and works. They are brought home to us. It is an cinbarras de richesse. We do not express for ourselves, but through past ages. The ancients did form because they saw nature as personality, and we see it as symbolism, suggestion. They culti- vated the body, we the soul. The soul is not hostile to the body, although for long ages the Christian religion made it so, setting one over against the other, the Puritan aiding in this joyless extinguishing of delight in beauty and in nature. The Greeks, the Romans lined their public ways with houses of the dead ; monuments where friends assembled to commune with the departed. Stone benches were curved around the ashes. They did not stuff them away in the moldy earth, and horrify the spirit with ghastly cross-bones and hideous emblems of mortality. Cheerful symbols met the eye. It was enough that they were dead. They did not need to accentuate the desolation and the harrowing of grief. They visited their tombs, they sat beside them and with them, and daily passed their last abode. In this way the dead were kept with them and in their sight. It is touching yet to see the relics of a nation passed away, unknown families, once mighty in their day, whose history is forgotten, a buried people obliterated in their tombs. Pompeii is approached by a street of tombs. Athens they have lately uncovered, to discover fresh instances of the matchless refinement of the Greeks. Refinement outshines the most elaborate sumptuousness. In architecture this quality goes farthest, and will tell when in the other arts it is powerless to redeem poverty of invention or scantiness of performance. Let the proportion be perfect and design appropriate, and enrichment is an intrusion, a superfluity. Old Gothic is sumptuous, but it was with the genius of the time. Gothic in itself was intricate, and rivaled nature in complexity. It was the expres- sion of ages when no literature existed, and all feeling and life were in it. Men built their hopes, their fears, their creed, their aspirations into it. It arose like an exhala- tion of prayer and praise and adoration, and flew along the air to heaven. It aspired to touch the sky. Death, immortality, homily, home, life and all it bore, signified, or sought were written in stone. The modern feeling for truth which science has taught, that verity which shames pretense and affectation and show, is the basis of contemporary art, a worthy motive. We are moving along new lines to see and to prove the significance of things as they are, the wonder of life and being. Farragut’s statue at New York illustrates this. We want the man as he lived, not posed for posterity, a bust done to the life, a native, a portrait figure; notone in a hundred can invent ornament or decoration that will please. Do not let them try. Like a portrait in painting, let it be done with truth, sympathy, mastery, a certain elevation ; not familiar, not excited, not conscious, but with dignity and repose, naturalness — but with life, that is indis- pensable. We need nothing m.ore to impress us. Nature is worth all feeble ideal- isms, if we can achieve her. They are cheap. It is enough such a person lived and wrought for his fellows, the monument consecrates his memory ; but our statues in Boston are insipid. The life has not been achieved. If it is worth to perpetuate in stone or bronze the memorable men who have stood out from their contemporaries and deserved this memorial, let it be done with sentiment, with power. It is at any rate a heroic thing, a statue put in the open to meet all eyes, through the genera- tions, salient against the sky. According as it is grand, or true, or impressive, or vital, will it mold many a growing fancy and appeal to many an ardent heart. It should be done with a sense of this requirement. The ancients owed much to such surroundings. They were saluted each day by great ancestors, and lived in an atmosphere of imagination. Where would the Roman history be without its stimulus of heroic achievement? We have lived hitherto in an atmosphere of bustle and com- monplace. Washington is our only impressive city, planned on a basis not commer- cial, heroic ; and it is fortunate that it is so. In the kindred art of portraiture, a remarkable instance of this consummation was presented to us in Mr. Sargent’s figure of a lady. Here was mastery, and it told with singular force and fire and made other attributes superfluous ; the miracle of presence, of spirit was before us, the canvas breathed, the likeness and movement were ethereal. We take to sculpture by a kind of instinct, as we do to oratory. Whether we shall be great in it remains to be seen. It can scarcely be said to be a living art. Music is that and a great one, greater than ever before. Perhaps there should be, must be, prentice work before the master comes. Warner is subtle. The bust in the late exhibition at the art museum shows it. We have almost alone in his work the promise of refined classic with modern feeling. lerichan at Rome did something of the sort. Mr. French has done very sweet things in fancy, as we do in poetry. Ability in portrait statues our sculptors have shown, busts of fineness and character produced. Ideal and historic work has been ambitious. Ward has shown a robust mastery with- out imagination; Preston Powers, some of his father’s skill in treating the marble; Mead, spirit ; Story, poetry ; Ball, purity ; Dengler, who too early died, a historic sense. That passion, basis and soul of inspiration, which has been lacking in poetry has failed us in the kindred and heroic arts ; yet it is likely to be given to us first in art rather than in literature. Our profuse, rich, recent country will be artistic before it is poetic. To poetry and its quiet contemplation and abstraction and feeling, everything is hostile, as mercantilism is to imagination. But the rich republics were artistic — Genoa, Florence, Athens. They spent more than aristocracies. Never was so much money spent as at Athens. Aristocracies are selfish, and not really public-spirited. It is impossible they should be. We have no rank to support, no foolish court. Money will create great things in self-defense. It has nothing else to do. E. A. SiLSBEE AMERICAN ART JOURNALISM . PUBLIC interest in art matters increases every year throughout the country, and the newspapers and peri- odicals become sensible of a growing demand for art information from their readers, they endeavor to supply this dem_and, and their efforts, it seems to me, are, as a rule, based on such an erroneous conception of the true quality of this demand that the results they arrive at, in reality, retard rather than aid the progress of art among us as a people. Much mutual misunderstanding and misapprehension exist and seem to increase every day, in consequence of this fact, between art writers as a class, on the one hand, — the men and women whose life and work form the chief materials for their articles, — and that large and rapidly growing class of our citizens who are interested in art matters, on the other. The methods pursued by the newspapers will illustrate this fact. The art season begins, and the publisher of a journal sends word to the managing editor, for example, that it would be w'ell to pay some attention to art matters, as advertisements of dealers are coming in or are to be solicited, and there are frequent requests for articles on art subjects. The managing editor, generally an individual in whose existence art is an unknown quantity, save that he knows there is such a subject, says, “ We must have an art critic.” That is the first idea he has. To him the word “ critic” expresses no definite conception, save that of a person who can write “stuff” unintelligible to him but demanded by a certain portion of his readers, and so an “ art critic” is installed and sends in his views, which are duly printed. Some writer may be obtained who is sufficiently versed in the subject to give able and valuable criticisms ; but such a one is rarely found, and, in the majority of cases, it is simply a person, having some smattering of art knowledge and of facile pen, who wanders over so many pages of paper with his or her often absurd ideas on this or that painting, etc., or in an essay on some general art subject. This is not what my observ^ation and experience tell me that the public demand. They want art information rather than art criticism, and at present are really not much better acquainted with the subject than the editor spoken of above ; but, unlike him, they have a taste for art and are anxious to learn more, although they are often in sad doubt as to what course they ought to pursue to secure this information, and are consequently frequently led astray by designing and incompetent teachers. Feeling in this way, they will throw aside a deeply critical article or elaborate essay which they cannot understand, but will read with avidity a good column of art news, fresh and accurate ; telling what the artists are doing, when the exhibitions are to open, the prospects and news of any that are in progress, and describing, not criticis- ing in technical terms, the pictures or other works of art in this or that gallery, studio or exhibition, so that the intending visitor may know what he is going to see, and he who has visited them may have the object seen recalled to memory. In this way the present system does harm, for it assumes a wider and higher degree of art culture than in reality exists, and just so much retards instead of aiding the art interest and education of our citizens. “ What then,” a reader may say, “ are the class, if it is a small one, who can understand deeply critical or technical articles to be ignored, and are the few able critics we have to find their occupation gone ? ” By no means. This class of cultivated and educated art lovers may be large enough to support an art journal which shall contain only articles of an able critical nature from well-known pens. There are one or two art periodicals now published which could be easily changed into a journal of this kind, and when any remarkable art work or exhibition is on view, even the daily and weekly newspapers could give an exhaustive critical article upon it, which would amply satisfy the demand in this respect. We should then see both classes, those proficient in the subject and those just beginning to learn, provided for. Take the New York National Academy’s annual exhibition for example, and if the method I have suggested should be followed the newspapers would treat it as follows; On the morning of the opening, the “ Press View ” having taken place the day before, the dailies would contain a pleasant descriptive sketch of the exhibition, the number of works, etc., which would state in general terms how it compared with previous exhibitions, etc. There would be no severe condemnatory or highly enthusiastic expression of editorial opinion on individ- ual works or upon them as a whole, which are generally apt to be unjust when made the following day, from the fact that the writers have not really had proper time to study the pictures criticised. Two or three days after the opening or even a week afterward, a good elaborate critical article might be printed, and that would be sufficient to meet the requirements of the artists and the special class of educated readers, but every week an article describing the works further and giving the news of the exhibition might appear, and would be widely read. The weekly journals, meanwhile, could follow the same plan, with the modifications required by their less frequent publication ; and if we had a special technical art journal, it could give one or two critical articles from the best pens obtainable. If this plan were followed I venture to assert it would be of vastly more benefit, not alone to the Academy Exhibition, but to the cause of art among us in general, than the many different ones now pursued, of which the favor- ite seem to be, either dismissing the whole subject in one hastily written condemnatory or foolishly praiseworthy article; a series of deep technical articles, uninteresting and almost unintelligible save to a few ; or two or three elaborate essays on art subjects in general, suggested by some one work or works. And the same faults now exist and could be remedied in the same way, nmtatis mutandis, in the present method of treating all art works which are worthy of attention and description. To bring about this result, which seems to be so desirable, the impressing of an evident and generally forgotten fact on the minds of not alone managing editors, but of the public as well, is first of all necessary, and that is, that we are too young a country as yet to have reached the point in general art education and intelligence that we imagine we have. Education in art matters is as yet limited to a comparatively small class. We have abundance of appreciation and latent talent doubtless; but “ Ars longa, tempus breve est ” is not as hackneyed a quotation among the enthusiastic Americans in our art circles as it ought to be. Our art schools, our exhibitions, in many respects, are improving every year, but there is still a great lack of proper opportunities for art education. We are better off in this respect in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, perhaps, than elsewhere, but we have still room for larger schools and better opportunities, and are, as a public, still in the infant class. So we want to be taught our primers, to be led gently upwards, to be given abundance of simple facts, pleasant descriptions, and freed from technical explanations. When we can realize this, then we will be the more willing to abandon high-sounding ideas and names. We will be willing perhaps to abolish the term “art critic,’’ save in a few instances where wide education, good appreciation, and more than ordinary judicial talents entitle a writer to it; and the managing editor need no longer cast about to find his “ critic,” but — securing a person who has a genuine love of the beautiful, and can consequently, if he or she has at all studied the subject of art, write intelligently upon it, and has facilities in acquiring the news of the art world — intrust the art department to such a one’s hands, assured that in this way the space devoted to the subject will be read and enjoyed by and will be of vastly more benefit to his readers than in any other. We cannot have too many art writers ; but we can have and do have too many so-called critics, whose work does more harm than good, and who in the majority of cases have as little right to their appellation as a car-horse would have to that of “ Iroquois,” “ Eole,” or some other swift fiier of the turf James B. Townsend THE PRESENT CONDITIONS OF AMERICAN ART THAT ARE TO ITS DETRIMENT, AND A POSSIBLE REMEDY. LOSE scrutiny of the art affairs of the United States dis- closes some extraordinary facts not apparent to those who regard art progress only as one of the many great interests of the day, to which some attention is given by the daily newspapers and which, as there presented, seems to be acquiring new importance continually. If in fact our ideas of the stability, vitality, and merits of American art, were gathered from the reports in the journals, there would seem to be little to deplore and abundant ground for satisfaction. At all times — excepting possibly the warmer months of July and August — the papers contain an almost endless series of notes as to the movements of artists, work that is in process of com- pletion at the studios, pictures at the galleries of the dealers and the art asso- ciations, exhibitions of every conceivable kind, new schools, societies, and clubs, illustrated art journals that are enterprising and have become established in an incredibly short time, exhibits of oils, water-colors, etchings and black and whites that are sent to foreign galleries, and teaching art becoming a recognized pro- fession. Besides this, it is evident that within a few years all our manufactures, all our articles of domestic use, our dress goods, and our interior decorations manifest a perceptibly higher conception of good taste in design and color. The art idea has taken deep root in popular liking and worked many good results. And such being the fact, it may seem absurd to state that art is to-day making com- paratively but little headway in our country, and that we have arrived at a point where the subject of a healthy development in the immediate future becomes of first impor- tance. With this statement it may be well to take another view of American art — one that will be found less gratifying. All the newspapers give information of what is being done in various parts of the country. The signs of energetic action every- where are indubitable ; but the practical experience of those most intimately concerned with the permanency and prosperity of art — the class that wins its bread from art, the hard-working artist, designer and draughtsman — is that, notwithstanding all the noise about art, he personally does not thrive, his purse is lean and life a burden. He knows that figures show that, though there are more annual exhibitions each year, the aggregate sales of American pictures are diminishing and that the general quality of the exhibitions is deterioratin.m The schools of art are thronged with men and women who, excepting a few smatterers, work hard with the one end in view of becom- ing teachers, and when half qualified they begin their dreadful task of disseminating erroneous art notions. This certainly does not benefit art ; and with all the schools and cheap lessons, there are very many bitterly disappointed students who, after spend- ing their savings for poor instruction, discover that remunerative art work is far beyond their reach, and that, while public interest in art increases, they for some mysterious reason do not prosper. To indicate some of the possible causes of these curious facts — the conjunction of public interest and apathy, of worthy effort and meager recompense — is the purpose primarily of this article. Besides that, it is to urge the advisability, or the actual necessity, of adopting one measure that has had beneficent effect when resorted to in similar straits, the subject only differing. If the art movement in our country were to be described briefly, I do not know of any more adequate way of doing so than to denominate it as lacking all cohesiveness. It is disjointed, without aim or purpose, ungoverned by standards of any kind, hap-hazard in all its incidents, and continually battling with itself Every large city has a local organization that places its reputation above all other objects. In the months of September, October, and November of this year, art exhibitions are to be held at Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. None of these depends exclusively upon local contributions, but all clamor for exhibits from the artists of the whole country. The natural outcome is that none of them are as good as they should be nor as might be expected, in consideration for the work devoted to them by art committees or of the generous amounts of money subscribed by liberal patrons. Conversation with any artist of reputation will confirm this state- ment. He will admit having been importuned for months to contribute to this or that display ; he will show you a dozen or more polite letters from the same com- mittee, which he does not even take the trouble to answer. In sheer desperation at the impossibility of exhibiting in all, and no one being preeminently good or an honor to appear in, he finally paints nothing new, merely dispatching at random, here and there, some hack works that hang on his hands unsold. The autumn exhibitions ruin one another; their multiplicity disgusts the artists ; the money spent upon them does little real good. At New York in the spring the situation is not much better. Two rival societies compete with one another, and do not materially help each other, while an exhibition is held at the Metropolitan Museum that is without any special reason for existing, — except as a pleasant thing to regard. Representation there signifies but little. In the metropolis, art is without a standard of value. I could easily enlarge upon the liberality of art patronage. It is something ex- traordinary how much money is given for this purpose, and how scant are the returns in actual progress aside from the erection of buildings. The management and endow- ment of the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Arts is in this respect truly remarkable ; still Philadelphia cannot point to much that she has accomplished as an art center. At Chicago and at Cincinnati the same facts arise, though Boston seems to have done more practical good. In no place, however, are the results commensurate with the expenditure. The subject of art instruction is almost too broad for me to touch here, and it can only be adverted to in a few words. At the least calculation there are twenty thousand art students in the United States, and there are hardly ten thorough schools. Still, these students hope to live by art work, and very nearly half, or more than half, expect to support themselves at first by teaching. The impossibility of much good coming out of defective training, such as poor schools give, is manifest. Some of these students, it is true, appreciate that there is a mechanic side to some art work which calls expertness, inventiveness, and experiment into play, and, to which some valuable method or discovery may apply that is convertible into income. Of this class are those who have studiously practiced the decorative arts, and make them profitable by secret processes, as, for example, the discovery of a new glaze for pot- tery, which, it is needless to say, has nothing whatever to do with fine art, and ranks as any mechanical invention might. Teaching such things is legitimate for all stu- dents, but very few are so fortunate, and do but little more than promulgate as teachers their own weakling ideas of art when they should be receiving instruction in a primary class. Immaturity, want of direction, and the absence of all good standards are some of the first obstacles to our art progress. As a possible solution of these many difficulties, I have suggested in other publications what I would propose here — the holding of an art convention in some agreeable place, where delegates from the numerous art asso- ciations could attend to arrange a schedule of exhibition dates, to promote the establishment of some large annual exhibition of primary importance, to formulate the practical requirements of art that intending donors may know what objects appeal to their bounty, to discuss current questions of policy such as the tariff, in short, to give to American Art some body, some robustness, some cohesiveness, none of which are its marks to-day. Arthur B. Turnure JOURNALISM AND ART OST of my readers know what it is to visit a large picture exhibition — to pass in review wall after wall and room after room hung close with canvases good and bad, tedious, exciting, or perplexing. They will, I think, remember the experience as sometimes delightful, some- times depressing, but always and under all circumstances among the most exhausting our human lot includes. They will recognize that there is a peculiar form of weariness, like none other in kind and in degree, that ap- plies to all haunters of foreign galleries, all students of current art at home — a weariness which affects body and mind alike, and the body through many a different set of nerves. Of course, there are people who stroll through a gallery as they stroll through the street, and examine pictures much as they examine the contents of the shop-windows they may pass. But I speak of those who really look at what they see. I wonder, however, how many even among these last can realize what it means to “do” a picture exhibition with the object of passing a detailed verdict upon its con- tents ? It is tiring enough, perplexing enough, to look only in accordance with one’s own tastes and fancies, with the mere desire for amusement or for self-instruction. But how much worse to look in accordance with one’s obligations to the reading public, one’s duty to one’s self, to art in general, and to some hundreds of its votaries ! In such a case the observer, after getting a general idea of the tenor of the exhibition, must pass every individual canvas in review, guided by no personal predilections, still less by any help a catalogue can give. The most familiar painter must be judged afresh lest some new development present itself ; the most unfamiliar and unattractive must be scrutinized lest, perchance, the new genius for whom we wait should here make his first faint essay toward successful doing. Ej^es and brain are kept busily at work over the most diverse things of the most varying degrees of interest — the impression of the one last seen often subsisting long enough to militate against an easy judgment of the one next to be considered. The memory must be charged with a hundred dif- ferent decisions, till the pen can give them form and permanence ; and a thousand other things must be recorded mentally for one’s own instruction or for use on some future possible occasion. Nothing must be overlooked, nothing must be misjudged, no slightest thing must be forgotten. A hard task, you will say, under the best con- ditions — with plenty of time and quiet at disposal, with repeated visits and long reflection possible ere one’s final judgment need be given. But how when the critic is a journalist — when his audience cannot wait for patient judgment and cool expo- sition, but must be served next morning with a long detailed report ? How when there is but an afternoon hour or two in which to see hundreds of new canvases, an evening hour or two in which the exhausted brain must formulate its swiftly-made decisions ? The mere receiving of vague impressions costs the average picture-lover dear ; but as I have said, all the impressions in the world will serve the critic little unless he can go further and instantly translate them into definite ideas, with valid reasons to support them. Supple indeed must be the mind, ready the pen, well fur- nished with the fundamentals of art-criticism the brain, that can always do this work as it should be done ; for the journalist cannot, like other writers, chose his text, can never know what kind of task will be next in order. Even outside the general exhibitions, he cannot confine himself to such works as appeal to his sympathies or lie within the range of his especial studies. The artists of all countries must be familiar to him in their development and the stages of its progress, their chief works known by name and reputation — for in this country, at least, where the importation 5f foreign works is so unceasing, it is only half his task to comment on the productions of his countrymen, good, bad, or to him indifferent. He must see all things and must judge all at an instant’s notice, with rarely the chance to prepare himself beforehand — to read up so much as a biographical detail or a necessary date. These are some of the difficulties with which the journalist has to deal, which should be remembered in passing judgment on his work ; but his peculiar lot has its charms as well — charms which to some of us far outweigh all that is fatiguing or annoying. The very rapidity of production that is required, while it hampers him in one way, inspires him in another. He must write at once — that means often while he is tired, perhaps uncertain, but also while he is interested, while his first vivid impressions have not had time to grow pale and unprovocative of effort. What he writes one day he reads the next, with a feeling of interest much greater than had his text lain for weeks or months in an editor’s desk, to come before him at last almost like the work of another. The rapid change of subject, the swift dismissal of one theme and swift succession of another, may bewilder him at first, but should prove tonic and deligiitful in the end. The flexibility of his work prompts to keen interest in all things great and small. Nothing need be too trivial a text to serve the journalist who thinks he can speak a vital word from the stand-point it affords. The all-embracing columns of the daily press give him a chance to say his say — be it brief or long, be it serious or sportive — such as he can never get through any other medium. It is only important subjects, only serious, accomplished works, only themes of more than transient interest, that can be discussed in the slower, statelier pages of book or monthly magazine. But valuable engines of influence as are these when rightly used, it is certain that the daily press, with its more constant speech, its wider range, and its more general audience, may be made still more useful in the interests of art. Its work is so direct, so immediate, so easily turned to any point and to any purpose, that those who, like myself, have been fortunate enough to serve under a trusting and indulgent “ chief,” may be pardoned if, when parting with our newspaper, we feel as though we had given up our best weapon, our most interesting and, with all its drawbacks, often our most thankful task. But to use such opportunities of service with force and with discretion is no easy thing. The work of the journalist, like the conditions under which it must be done, is peculiar in its character. He writes for the most diverse of readers, for all sorts and conditions of men — from the artist who seeks the mention of his own name, down to the subscriber whose eye would never light, except by chance, upon the column given to art. If the critic is in earnest with his work, if he -desires something more than to butter his own bread or attract attention to his own person and his own crotchets, he will strive to put in a word for each and all of these — to write so as to satisfy the few real judges who will read his chapter, and so as to instruct the most careless portion of his public. And in journalistic writing, moreover, no instruction can be given didactically or bluntly. It must be wrapped in a pleasant, easy style ; must be presented casually as it were — in allusions, in brief asides. It must be art education made easy for the masses, who may be won, but not coerced, into following the lesson. It is a great as well as a delicate task the journalistic critic sets before himself If our artists of to-day have a noble work to do in building up what we hope will grow to be a truly vital and a truly national art, if our essayists and book-makers can supplement their efforts by teaching thoroughly those who seriously wish to learn, such endeavors, to be really fruitful, must be supplemented by an earnest and intelli- gent journalism, which will turn the most potent educational force of this our century into a channel running parallel with theirs, the channel which alone can bring the water of life to the lips of the vast and, alas ! indifferent public. I cannot here, of course, go into the details of what a journalist’s work should be, but upon one important point I must at least briefly touch. It is important to every writer on art of whatever kind, but most important to him who writes for the daily press, since his audience is of all others the most ignorant and the least likely to listen to any words but his, to supplement his lessons by those of other sorts. It is there- fore a double necessity, if his work is to be rightly influential, that he should always base and refer his decisions to the deepest and most fundamental truths of art. No matter how slight the occasion, how transitory the theme, how brief the treatment, the import of his words should never end with the mere matter beneath his pen. It is never enough to say that “ this is good and that is bad.” He must always say why with the greatest definiteness and the greatest clearness, and explain himself in such a way that he will not only give his readers a key which will guide them in presence of the picture of to-day, but the memory of which will help them before the picture of to-morrow. His mind must be stored with the knowledge of all that has been done in other days by other men, and with much that the great critics of the world have said, so his illustrations and comparisons may be ready and suggest- ive. He must write so that those who follow his teaching will be not only instructed in what passes beneath their eyes, but instructed in art — so that right principles will be impressed upon their minds and right aims explained to them ; so that their knowledge of historical developments and time-honored names will grow with their knowledge of the men who are working in their midst. He must, I say — perhaps I might better write he should ; for it is a tremendous task he has undertaken, one in which the clearest brain, the subtilest pen, the widest knowledge, would have more than enough to do. But this is the aim he should place before himself ; and only the existence of this aim, together with a constant effort to render himself more capable of its realization, can excuse the man who dares to set himself up as teacher in so wide a field and before so large an audience. M. G. VAN Rensselaer WATER COLOR PAINTING: POSITION AMONG THE FINE ARTS, AS ESTABLISHED BY ITS CAREER AND DEVELOPMENT. N LESS than a single century the modern aquarelle school has grown from infancy to the full stature of ma- turity, and has established itself firmly and permanently in the affections of artists and art connoisseurs, until now, with oil-painting, water-color is recognized as one of the two great graphic arts. This result is the more remarkable in view of the fact that oil-painting, fully V developed as it is practiced to-day, had the start by nearly four centuries and the prestige of use by the greatest masters that the world has ever known or is likely to know again, while water-color, though able to boast of a greater antiquity, had lagged behind in its development and progress. In the exceptional art activity which followed the Renaissance, when, next to war and side by side with religion, art occupied the attention and engaged the powers of the civilized world, this single art was almost alone neglected. If, however, there is any argument to be drawn from antiquity of usage, it rests with water- color painting, for we find that the use of pigments tempered with water, long antedated the knowledge of oil-painting, the decorated tombs and public buildings of Egypt, the early Greek paintings, the Pompeiian frescoes, the decorated catacombs of Rome, the works of the earliest mediaeval painters, and the cartoons of Raphael, all giving conclusive evidence of this. But tempera, fresco, and encaus- tic painting was far removed from modern water-color, in that it was based entirely upon solid, opaque pigments instead of transparent washes. At the same time artists, seriously feeling the limitations and imperfections of the material with which they were forced to work, and constantly experimenting in the hope of attaining to some- thing better, naturally enough held that their opaque pigments were the prime essen- tials, and must be retained as the only true basis from which to develop a new color medium. Thus, oil-painting seems to have been evolved in a branching off in one direction from these older processes by a change of diluent, just as later on water- color was evolved in another direction by a change in the character of the pigments. What wonder that the new art, so full, so grand, so satisfying in all its results, should engross the attention of artists and public, to the exclusion for the time being of all thoughts of anything better, or even different? The richness, strength, and beauty of its work captivated all minds and hearts, and it ruled supreme. Still the world was not without those in art who were feeling in other directions, and the work of the mediaeval illuminators and the English miniature painters came nearer to modern water-color than anything which had preceded it. A few of the early Italian and German painters, and the miniature painters even, began to use transparent colors to a slight extent. All these practices were significant precursors of modern water-color painting, but do not seem to have been its actual progenitors except as a familiarity with them may have more or less affected the early water- colorists. Between these works and the stained drawings of the English artists of the last century, there is no appreciable connection, and the line of descent has been lost, if, indeed, it ever existed. Stained drawing, however, is the proven legitimate parent of water-color ; from one to the other was merely an advance in color. The early practice of laying in the whole picture in monochrome, generally Indian ink, over which the local tints were placed, gave way rapidly to the present method, where the monochrome is discarded, and the true local color in shadows, tints, half tints, and all gradations, is put directly upon the clear paper, each object being laid in in its own true color, shaded off in individual tints in their just relations to each other. The prominent features of the new school were a true feeling for artistic composi- tion, a superior brilliancy and purity of tint, an effective power in expressing the transparency of the atmosphere, and a rare delicacy and grace in rendering distant landscape, ocean, or sky. These have continued to be the characteristies of water- color down to the present day, and so far give it a marked advantage over oil-painting. Without vaunting the one art at all above the other, it is undeniable that there are qualities in either that are absent from the other, and results obtainable in the one that are impossible of realization by its rival. There the controversy respecting the relative value of the two must end. Eor richness of tone, boldness and vigor of expression, and the fullest and most powerful renditions of character and of various phases of nature we must continue to look to oil-painting ; but for brilliancy, subtlety of feeling for the more delicate suggestions in nature and for the imagination of the artist, and fine atmospheric effects, water-color must ever remain preeminent. A strongly controverted point in regard to water-color is that of the use of opaque pigments. The practice has the support of precedent, for nearly all the early water- colorists used Chinese white, and even other opaque colors. Since the essential characteristics of water-color are brilliancy, purity of tone, and clearness of atmospheric effects, it was but natural that these points should be particularly studied, and experi- ments made in methods of intensifying them. The use of Chinese white was found to be very effective in securing brilliancy, contrast, and variety, and in sharply accenting the lights in a picture, and so came into pretty general use. Even Turner, though at first opposed to it, afterward adopted it, though he always used it with a great deal of moder- ation and care, and took particular pains to conceal the practice as much as possible. Three kinds of water-color are now generally recognized and accepted — the transparent, the opaque, and a third in which transparent, semi-transparent, and opaque colors are used freely in combination. The two first named are accepted without much hesita- tion, but the latter is compelled to face a great deal of opposition and intolerance. There seems to be slight justice in this, for no practice in art should be per se con- demned ; it should be judged solely by its results, and in this case some of the happiest results accrue from the combined use of opaque and transparent colors. Still, the practice is very liable to grave abuse, inasmuch as it gives certain superficial effect- iveness with the minimum of labor. It saves a great deal of time that would other- wise be expended in carefully wiping out or scraping for lights, and is therefore a temptation to the lazy artist or one who is pressed for time. Used honestly and in moderation, it is perfectly legitimate and even desirable ; but care must be taken lest what should be a slave shall not become the master. The artist must know, like Turner, when to leave off, and should stop there. Many of the leading English artists of to-day put on opaque pigments to place the lights and then scrape down to the paper — a laborious task, but well worth while. Our American artists are more in- clined to the use of opaque in connection with transparent color than are their English brethren, and not always with the best results. The criticism upon water-color is frequently made that it is not as serious or as durable as work in oil. Nothing could be further from the truth. As regards serious- ness, let Hamerton speak. He says ; “The dexterity and knowledge required for work of this kind are such that, instead of being an easy art, as many people imagine, water-color is really a very dif- ficult one, for nobody can have the certainty of hand that it requires until he has practiced it long and assiduously, with a complete analytical knowledge of the natural forms and effects to be interpreted. There may be some temerity in deciding that one art is easier than another, — I am sure that the popular opinion is rash and wrong about the supposed facility of water-color, and I do not wish to fall into a similar error about another art, — but if both water-color and oil-painting are to be done well, I believe that oil is the easier of the two.’’ That is undoubtedly the general experience of artists who have worked in both mediums. After all, the question of the relative merit of the two arts is best settled by considering what it is that we most desire in a picture. Is it not a transcript of nature vivified by the imagination of the artist, the harmonious association of realism and idealism ? The work that expresses this to the fullest extent and most faithfully is the best work, no matter in what medium or by what method it is produced. Every art has its peculiar field wherein, by reason of certain excellencies, it stands unap- proachable ; and the award of seriousness and importance cannot be given to any single one, to the exclusion of all others. It is a question of personality entirely, and not at all of materials. If an artist feels that he can accomplish better results by working in water-color than in oil, that work is what the world needs from him, and it is entitled to its just meed of praise as being more serious, more important, and more valuable than as though the artist had unwisely allowed himself to be ♦:empted into the use of oil. There is no good reason why a landscape in oil should sell for five hun- dred dollars, while a landscape in water-color hanging next to it, equally if not more meritorious, judged by the best standards of art, goes begging for half that sum. Cer- tainly, the water-color represents as much work, as much imagination, as much strong personality, and as much keen artistic sense as though it had been done in oil ; and are not those qualities what we want to buy, rather than so much oil and opaque colors, and so many square inches of canvas ? It is about time that we overcame this absurd fetich-like -worship, alike of a something or a nothing, simply because it is a “ real oil- painting.” In the matter of durability, the argument is strongly with water-color. Water- mixed paints are the purest colors obtainable, and are the least liable to chemical change if properly protected. In this respect they have a decided advantage over oil pigments, which too often contain in themselves the elements of. their own obscura- tion. The works of the old masters have undergone changes, though whether that which we affect to call “the ripening process” is to be altogether deplored or not, there is here no space to consider. But, in many instances, it is quite apparent that the blackening and other discolorations and the cracking of oil paintings effectually ruins them. Even in modern times we see the perishable qualities of oil paintings. Many of Millet’s works are already turning black, and what Munkacsy’s pictures, heavily loaded with bitumen, will be in another generation, no one need predict. Here, at home, quite recently, Schoff’s engraving of Hunt’s “ Bathers ” — so faithful to the original as it now is, that the engraver seems almost to have been lost in the artist — revealed to the startled eyes of those who were familiar with the painting when it first appeared, how its shadows are deepening and the whole canvas darken- ing. Turn an oil painting to the wall for a few weeks and it will change in color; let it be exposed to the direct rays of the sun for a length of time, and it will bleach. All mundane things are perishable, but a well-painted water-color protected by a glass from the dangerous gases and from dirt, and kept from the sun and the damp, will live as long if not outlast any oil painting. Certainly it will retain its original char- acter and its pristine freshness of color much longer. It would not be easy to exaggerate the value of water-color for sketching pur- poses. No other medium lends itself so readily and happily to the fresh and free expression of the fleeting impressions of the moment. There seems to be a natural affinity between it and certain phases of nature. Cloud and water effects, in particular, always so rapidly changing and elusive, can hardly be caught except by water-color, which thus becomes all important to the painter who seeks the most exquisite refine- ment of truth, while the readiness with which it responds to the most subtle and delicate feelings and sentiment of the artist, gives it a rare intellectual quality. That water-color painting has attained to its fullest possible development is probably true. This is not necessarily to say that the finest water-color paintings that ever can be done are those of the past, though one is half impelled to qualify this qualification, with the thought of Turner, the Raphael of water-color, in mind. But it is certain that the province of water-color is well defined, its materials and methods firmly established, and its possibilities and limitations well marked. There does not seem to be anything essentially new for it to take hold upon in the future, and whatever excellence it attains to hereafter must be, at the best, in following out and amplifying present practices. It is curious and important to notice in this connection that nearly, if not all the methods of to-day, were in use by the earliest water-colorists. They seemed, as if by instinct, to strike the whole gamut of the art at once; and as they made it, so it prac- tically stands to-day. The period of their experimenting was very brief Papers and pigments were at once improved to meet their necessities, and they invented such practices as taking out color for high lights, 'washing, streaming, dragging for texture, grinding pigments in honey, stippling, brown hatching over solid color, putting in shadows in red chalk, the use of tinted paper, and many others. The theory that legitimate water-color painting means the exclusive use of transparent color on white paper never prevailed with them. They were eclectic in the best and broadest sense, and such the art that they cultivated and built up has remained ever since. The English water-color school still continues to lead the world. Its artists fol- low closely, but by no means slavishly, the traditions of the elders, and accuracy of drawing, beauty of composition, and faithfulness and delicacy of color, with perhaps a tendency to over-elaboration of details are the characteristics of their work. Water- color on the Continent, although practiced by many great men, has never attained any notable degree of excellence. Leaving out of consideration the work of a few masters, whose names will readily occur to the reader, the rest is hard and raw in color, inclined to meretricious showiness, loose in drawing, and without much delicacy or refinement. The Dutch are, of late, however, showing some very admirable work. Here, in this country, the comparatively young school of water-color has already done some creditable work. It is not thoroughly trained, nor quite thoroughly in earnest. It is, however, pervaded by an original spirit, is healthful in its tone and in its indications, and more independent of precedents and theories than would naturally be expected. In this is its surest sign of promise and the assurance of its future greatness. As yet, most of our artists only indulge in water-color as a recreation, or a rest from what they consider their more serious work. Comparatively few men are giving themselves up unreservedly and earnestly to water-color painting alone, but it is significant to notice that from among these are coming our best American water- colorists. We need many more such, and in them is the hope of the American water-color school of the future. Lyman H. Weeks AMERICAN FLOWER-PAINTERS ■LOWER-PAINTING belongs to the decorative side of art, as floral subjects themselves belong to the deco- rative side of nature ; and remembering this, it is easy to understand why so few paintings of flower-subjects are altogether satisfactory, or come within the range of thoroughly good art. The knowledge of decorative effect is not by any means one of the early things in a painter’s education, unless, indeed, his eye has been trained in one of the world’s greatest schools of art, and he has learned to look for this quality in all painting. It follows, then, that our best flower-painters are not alone, or even chiefly, flower-painters, but are found among those whose breadth of study and large. experience of all subjects include the knowledge and practice of deco- rative effect. Successful treatment of flower-subjects demands, first of all, beauty and harmony of color ; after which come picturesque arrangement of form, massing of light and shadow, and free and able rendering of all the transitions which lie between the splendor of color in light and the same splendor toned by positive shadow. The painter who cannot paint a group of flowers without unconsciously applying to it the knowledge gained in assiduous life-study, of composition, general harmony of tone, distribution of light and shadow, and picturesque effect, will give, in a few masterly touches, more of the meaning and capacity of real flower-beauty than the most pains- taking portraiture can interpret without that knowledge. One gives facts, and the other the result or effect of facts. The value and interest of the occasional flow'er- studies of such painters as William M. Chase, Lafarge, Porter, Wier, the Misses Greatorex, Miss Bartol, and others, is due to the unconscious knowledge which has assimilated facts of nature and changed them into laws of art. Even when these studies are incomplete in detail, there is a sense of completeness in the whole which almost persuades one that detail is a defect rather than a merit. They may be mere patches and blotches of beautiful color when near at hand — bits of gray, and green. and rose, and flame-color ; but when in proper or favorable light and place, they translate themselves to one’s inner sense as essence and element of flower-life. This is especially true of flower-studies as accessions by Mr. Chase. The beauty of them is hardly more a delight than the sense of skill in handling. Patches of yellow and blue, laid upon the canvas with a palette-knife, persuade one presently that they are veritable daffodils leaning from an old, blue Indian jar; or careless- looking smears of lake and vermilion, dragged into a paste of grays and greens, will presently flame into summer roses or azalias, with their setting of rose-tinted green. The experienced eye of the painter notes only the points of color and form which are emphasized, leaving the imagination to fill the spaces of fine but ineffective detail. The things which the flower-subjects say most strongly are written down for you to read, and all the beautiful mystery of nature follows to your awakened imagination. Something of this quality of selection and suggestion is to be found in the water- colors of the Misses Katherine and Ellen Greatorex. They are admirable in method, and possess also, and almost invariably, that peculiar beauty of color which is a thing much more of feeling than of method. This feeling for color has adapted itself most kindly to the French habit of using pure and unmixed tints in flower-painting — tints which flow into each other only at point of meeting, and result in a brilliancy and force which is positively exhilarating. To come across one of these sheets of color, in the midst of the depressing monotony of half-tints without force or meaning which one sometimes finds in a picture-gallery, is like a trumpet-call to the tired attention. The flower-studies of Mr. Alden Wier appeal to the interest and challenge the admiration upon very different ground. They are characterized by peculiar delicacy both of texture and color ; especially of color in shadow. Each leaf has the grained look which gives such a sense of intricate and fragrant circulation in the flower ; an effect which is not the result of laborious manipulation, but rather of a certain skill or trick of handling. There seems to be an unconscious selection by the painter of pale, undemonstrative flowers for delineation ; of roses grown in shadowy places, whose fragile beauty needs a champion and an interpreter. They are as unlike as possible to those mysteries of flame and gloom with which Mr. Lafarge delighted the color- loving public, before he learned to apply the same combinations and produce the same mysteries of tint in church and cathedral windows. His early reputation as a colorist was undoubtedly made by his studies or paintings of flowers. Indeed, there are lessons to be learned from these color-pots of nature which would go far toward making colorists of many a careful, able, figure-painter, whose dull and cloudy canvases fail to please the public eye or appeal to the popular sense of beauty. The meaning of flower-painting is the satisfaction of that most constant joy of seeing — the enjoyment of beautiful color. Other art may appeal to the intellect, to the various forms of emotion, to the different effects of education upon the mind, to the affections, or to the hobbies and fancies of humanity ; and these may be affected without the use of a single tint of color, sometimes even in a greater degree by the very absence of tint ; but flower-painting, as a recognized form of art, exists only upon its possibilities of color. Every artist must give this one common quality of flower life, although he or she may make it peculiar by individual appreciation. They may even add a sort of personality, an aroma of character which marks the human consciousness of the painter. As, for instance, in Mrs. Dillon’s flower- paintings. These are strongly characterized by domesticity. One cannot help being conscious of the room which they for the moment beautify, and of the person who had to do with them. They are curiously individual, also. Each flower makes its single impression, and could not be mistaken for any other in the group; but no matter how individual they may be, they and their dainty surroundings never fail to melt into a beautiful whole. It is interesting to contrast these flower- paintings — perfectly true as they are to the artist’s habit of indoor life — with flowers ; with the paintings of Miss Green and Miss Bartol, whose flowers invariably give an impression of surrounding nature. Light and shadow, color and motion, seem to quiver around them, linking them to the beauty of the outside world, even when they have become only a bit of color hung upon a wall. There is a strength and freedom of handling in the work of these two painters which is very masculine ; but the intuition, the understanding of their flower-subjects, is purely feminine. The characteristics are clearly given, but with broad, free hand- ling, and the constant reference to decorative effect, which belongs of necessity to the subjects. The painting of flowers must always be a temptation to artists who are women, because the flowers themselves enter so closely into the enjoyments of a woman’s life. Consequently there are, and always will be, more women than men who confine themselves to flower-painting, even when they have studied broadly. As a rule, the very first use a woman makes of brushes and color is to paint a flower ; and although she may be led into the highest and most difficult walks of art, unless she is more than commonly successful as a figure or landscape painter, flowers will continue to be her favorite subjects. The very fact that women seek so constantly the com- panionship of flowers, and owe so much happiness to that companionship, should make them their truest interpreters. That they are not is perhaps partly due to the fact that, until within the present decade, few women have studied art as thoroughly as men have studied, and possibly because they regard them too intimately to choose the one or two aspects of flower life which are really paintable. Their minute knowl- edge prevents the power of abstraction from the subject which would enable them to paint its impression upon the mind, rather than the actual thing. The flower is before them, and they paint it with every physical fact of its existence, because their intimate knowledge and close observation impress these facts upon them. They paint it as the eye sees it, but not as the eye passes it on to the mind — a simple whole of beauty. In short, the individual flower is literally rendered ; but the sweet suggestion of its changeful life is wanting. It is a portrait which might go down to flower- posterity or, perhaps, a group of portraits ; but its effect as a beautiful and decorative whole is unrecorded. A flower piece should be a decorative blot of color, with as much of the character of the particular plant which makes the color as can be truth- fully given and not destroy the oneness of impression. Characteristics indeed are indispensable, for the human mind is so constituted that it rarely finds complete satisfaction in beauty which lacks truth. If a flower-painting is not true to the characteristics of the flower which is its subject, even beauty of color will not make it acceptable to the general mind. Of course, we are treating of flower-painting pure and simjale, and not of flowers painted as accessories to subjects of intellectual or emotional interest ; for exactly in proportion as this is done, we link it to higher art and make it subject to other laws. Decoratively treated alone, there is a large and growing field for flower-painting in the life of the present. It is the fashion of the day to create beautiful and luxurious homes, and this fashion, or tendency, encourages every form of art which is peculiarly adapted to the beautifying of interiors. This form of art, therefore, which appeals directly to the natural love of color, and neither taxes the imagination or requires the training which goes to an intelligent appreciation of a more intellectual form of art, must always be popular. A flower picture, in a harmoniously decorated room, connects itself with all the gradations which space and light and shadow may make in its various tones, and emphasizing them in one glowing block of color, calls and rests the sight, as a group of blossoms in a hedge attracts the eye from all the soft monotonies of greens and browns in leaf and stem. Such a picture has the effect of a beautiful piece of stained glass, and is in the best and highest degree a satisfaction to the senses. It is true, a piece of glass has the gift of diffusion, as well as concentration of color, and can by diffusion of color almost make an ugly room beautiful ; but it can add no more to a room already beautiful, and does not minister as simply to simple tastes. As a part of the wonderful development of the decorative arts in the New, as well as in the Old World, we may certainly look in the near future for better flower- painting and better flower-painters than the world has yet seen. C.WDACE Wheeler WOMEN AS ART CRITICS N ART, as in life, the ultimate results, the strongest influ- ence on humanity, is the meter by which the work- must be judged, and by which it must stand or fall. In all creative work it is not merely the blind and indefinite impulse to bring into being, but the worth of what is created, that determines the true power of the artist. Neither literature nor art is an ultimate and final end. Paintings and statuary are not suf- ficient in themselves, but are the means to that end, which consists in the cultivation of the finest elements of life. In that proportion to which they contribute to this end they are a success; wherein they do not, they are a failure. “ All high works of art,” says Goethe, “ are expressions of humanity.” The relation of the critic to the artist should be that of the interpreter to the master. “ True communion of thought,” says Margaret Fuller, “is worship, not criti- cism.” And the significance involved in this expression holds for us the clew that may lead us into that labyrinth of mystery — art criticism, and even hold an illumina- tion on it. The amateur critic conceives the dignity and vindication of his office to lie in the detection of faults. To him criticism is the record of errors. He must establish his fancied superiority of pointing out failures. This method is the destruc- tive, never the constructive. Too often he utterly lacks that delicate power of divina- tion by which alone he may be able to perceive the artist’s ideal, which is the only true standard for the measurement of his work, — and instead he constructs an ideal of his own, to which he endeavors to adjust the creation, and failing, he declares its signal faults. Insight is the key to all true criticism, work must be judged by what it is rather than by what it is not. With this standard of criticism, which is, in its way, an almost absolute standard, we may ask the question. Are women eligible as art critics ? Is there anything in the greater sensibility, the emotional power, or the susceptibility to impressions, which are popularly supposed to especially characterize the feminine mind, that shall unfit women for the office so often conceived to be one of retributive justice alone. Admitting insight to be the key to all true criticism, the qualities of swift perception of the artist’s purpose, of sympathy with a recognized aim, of exquisite suscepti- bility to its inner meanings, should lend to their possessor a deeper power for the important office of criticism. Yet just here we rise to the impersonal in critical ability, as we do in the ability for artistic creation. The artist and the critic should know, in their true and exalted sense, no distinction of man or woman ; but simply the impersonation of the gifts and the qualities that confer upon the individual the power to become either artist or critic; for between the two offices there is in reality no antagonism. Artistic creation and artistic appreciation — using the term in its finest and most discriminative sense — should complement each other. The critic is not the natural enemy of the artist, although a degraded and perverted criticism may often make him appear to be so. Art is a unity, in which both meet. In Pater’s “ Studies of the History of the Renaissance,” he includes a chapter on Winckelmann, in which he quotes Goethe’s feelings toward that critic. “ Goethe speaks,” says Mr. Pater, “ of Winckelmann as a teacher who had made his career pos- sible, but whom he had never seen. He conceived him to be a man of an abstract type of culture, consummate, tranquil, withdrawn already into the region of ideals, yet retaining color from the incidents of a passionate intellectual life.” Hegel, also, in his ‘‘ Philosophy of Art,” gives this striking judgment on Winckel- mann’s critical writings, when he says of him : “ Winckelmann, by contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients, received a sort of inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit.” Mr. Pater says of this passage from Hegel, that “ the highest that can be said of any critical effort is, that it has laid open a new organ and given a new sense.” If women in entering the field of art criticism, can hold themselves amenable to this standard ; if they will, above all things, seek the divine guidance of truth and of that insight which reveals truth ; if they will hold themselves responsive, first, to the true ideal in art, and secondly, to the individual ideal of the artist in his creations, and realize that criticism is discrimination, appreciation, and interpretation : feeling this, and attuned to sympathy with that moral purpose involved in all artistic creation, women may surely contribute to the finer interpretation of art in America. Lilian Whiting » » J- ^ SiT'^^iSv^ vflini mr^^ f^^ih jUp^OvuI