The exhibition which followed in April was one of those things which
happen to fortunate souls--a complete flowering out before the eyes of
the world of its feelings, emotions, perceptions, and understanding. We
all have our feelings and emotions, but lack the power of
self-expression. It is true, the work and actions of any man are to some
degree expressions of character, but this is a different thing. The
details of most lives are not held up for public examination at any
given time. We do not see succinctly in any given place just what an
individual thinks and feels. Even the artist is not always or often
given the opportunity of collected public expression under conspicuous
artistic auspices. Some are so fortunate--many are not. Eugene realized
that fortune was showering its favors upon him.
When the time came, M. Charles was so kind as to send for the pictures
and to arrange all the details. He had decided with Eugene that because
of the vigor of treatment and the prevailing color scheme black frames
would be the best. The principal exhibition room on the ground floor in
which these paintings were to be hung was heavily draped in red velvet
and against this background the different pictures stood out
effectively. Eugene visited the show room at the time the pictures were
being hung, with Angela, with Smite and MacHugh, Shotmeyer and others.
He had long since notified Norma Whitmore and Miriam Finch, but not the
latter until after Wheeler had had time to tell her. This also chagrined
her, for she felt in this as she had about his marriage, that he was
purposely neglecting her.
The dream finally materialized--a room eighteen by forty, hung with dark
red velvet, irradiated with a soft, illuminating glow from hidden lamps
in which Eugene's pictures stood forth in all their rawness and
reality--almost as vigorous as life itself. To some people, those who do
not see life clearly and directly, but only through other people's eyes,
they seemed more so.
For this reason Eugene's exhibition of pictures was an astonishing thing
to most of those who saw it. It concerned phases of life which in the
main they had but casually glanced at, things which because they were
commonplace and customary were supposedly beyond the pale of artistic
significance. One picture in particular, a great hulking, ungainly
negro, a positively animal man, his ears thick and projecting, his lips
fat, his nose flat, his cheek bones prominent, his whole body expressing
brute strength and animal indifference to dirt and cold, illustrated
this point particularly. He was standing in a cheap, commonplace East
Side street. The time evidently was a January or February morning. His
business was driving an ash cart, and his occupation at the moment
illustrated by the picture was that of lifting a great can of mixed
ashes, paper and garbage to the edge of the ungainly iron wagon. His
hands were immense and were covered with great red patched woolen and
leather gloves--dirty, bulbous, inconvenient, one would have said. His
head and ears were swaddled about by a red flannel shawl or strip of
cloth which was knotted under his pugnacious chin, and his forehead,
shawl and all, surmounted by a brown canvas cap with his badge and
number as a garbage driver on it. About his waist was tied a great piece
of rough coffee sacking and his arms and legs looked as though he might
have on two or three pairs of trousers and as many vests. He was looking
purblindly down the shabby street, its hard crisp snow littered with tin
cans, paper, bits of slop and offal. Dust--gray ash dust, was flying
from his upturned can. In the distance behind him was a milk wagon, a
few pedestrians, a little thinly clad girl coming out of a delicatessen
store. Over head were dull small-paned windows, some shutters with a few
of their slats broken out, a frowsy headed man looking out evidently to
see whether the day was cold.
Eugene was so cruel in his indictment of life. He seemed to lay on his
details with bitter lack of consideration. Like a slavedriver lashing a
slave he spared no least shade of his cutting brush. "Thus, and thus and
thus" (he seemed to say) "is it." "What do you think of this? and this?
and this?"
People came and stared. Young society matrons, art dealers, art critics,
the literary element who were interested in art, some musicians, and,
because the newspapers made especial mention of it, quite a number of
those who run wherever they imagine there is something interesting to
see. It was quite a notable two weeks' display. Miriam Finch (though she
never admitted to Eugene that she had seen it--she would not give him
that satisfaction) Norma Whitmore, William McConnell, Louis Deesa, Owen
Overman, Paynter Stone, the whole ruck and rabble of literary and
artistic life, came. There were artists of great ability there whom
Eugene had never seen before. It would have pleased him immensely if he
had chanced to see several of the city's most distinguished social
leaders looking, at one time and another, at his pictures. All his
observers were astonished at his virility, curious as to his
personality, curious as to what motive, or significance, or point of
view it might have. The more eclectically cultured turned to the
newspapers to see what the art critics would say of this--how they would
label it. Because of the force of the work, the dignity and critical
judgment of Kellner and Son, the fact that the public of its own
instinct and volition was interested, most of the criticisms were
favorable. One art publication, connected with and representative of the
conservative tendencies of a great publishing house, denied the merit of
the collection as a whole, ridiculed the artist's insistence on shabby
details as having artistic merit, denied that he could draw accurately,
denied that he was a lover of pure beauty, and accused him of having no
higher ideal than that of desire to shock the current mass by painting
brutal things brutally.
"Mr. Witla," wrote this critic, "would no doubt be flattered if he were
referred to as an American Millet. The brutal exaggeration of that
painter's art would probably testify to him of his own merit. He is
mistaken. The great Frenchman was a lover of humanity, a reformer in
spirit, a master of drawing and composition. There was nothing of this
cheap desire to startle and offend by what he did. If we are to have ash
cans and engines and broken-down bus-horses thrust down our throats as
art, Heaven preserve us. We had better turn to commonplace photography
at once and be done with it. Broken window shutters, dirty pavements,
half frozen ash cart drivers, overdrawn, heavily exaggerated figures of
policemen, tenement harridans, beggars, panhandlers, sandwich men--of
such is _Art_ according to Eugene Witla."
Eugene winced when he read this. For the time being it seemed true
enough. His art was shabby. Yet there were others like Luke Severas who
went to the other extreme.
"A true sense of the pathetic, a true sense of the dramatic, the ability
to endow color--not with its photographic value, though to the current
thought it may seem so--but with its higher spiritual significance; the
ability to indict life with its own grossness, to charge it
prophetically with its own meanness and cruelty in order that mayhap it
may heal itself; the ability to see wherein is beauty--even in shame and
pathos and degradation; of such is this man's work. He comes from the
soil apparently, fresh to a great task. There is no fear here, no bowing
to traditions, no recognition of any of the accepted methods. It is
probable that he may not know what the accepted methods are. So much the
better. We have a new method. The world is the richer for that. As we
have said before, Mr. Witla may have to wait for his recognition. It is
certain that these pictures will not be quickly purchased and hung in
parlors. The average art lover does not take to a new thing so readily.
But if he persevere, if his art does not fail him, his turn will come.
It cannot fail. He is a great artist. May he live to realize it
consciously and in his own soul."
Tears leaped to Eugene's eyes when he read this. The thought that he was
a medium for some noble and super-human purpose thickened the cords in
his throat until they felt like a lump. He wanted to be a great artist,
he wanted to be worthy of the appreciation that was thus extended to
him. He thought of all the writers and artists and musicians and
connoisseurs of pictures who would read this and remember him. It was
just possible that from now onwards some of his pictures would sell. He
would be so glad to devote himself to this sort of thing--to quit
magazine illustration entirely. How ridiculous the latter was, how
confined and unimportant. Henceforth, unless driven by sheer necessity,
he would do it no more. They should beg in vain. He was an artist in the
true sense of the word--a great painter, ranking with Whistler, Sargent,
Velasquez and Turner. Let the magazines with their little ephemeral
circulation go their way. He was for the whole world.
He stood at the window of his studio one day while the exhibition was
still in progress, Angela by his side, thinking of all the fine things
that had been said. No picture had been sold, but M. Charles had told
him that some might be taken before it was all over.
"I think if I make any money out of this," he said to Angela, "we will
go to Paris this summer. I have always wanted to see Paris. In the fall
we'll come back and take a studio up town. They are building some dandy
ones up in Sixty-fifth Street." He was thinking of the artists who could
pay three and four thousand dollars a year for a studio. He was thinking
of men who made four, five, six and even eight hundred dollars out of
every picture they painted. If he could do that! Or if he could get a
contract for a mural decoration for next winter. He had very little
money laid by. He had spent most of his time this winter working with
these pictures.
"Oh, Eugene," exclaimed Angela, "it seems so wonderful. I can hardly
believe it. You a really, truly, great artist! And us going to Paris!
Oh, isn't that beautiful. It seems like a dream. I think and think, but
it's hard to believe that I am here sometimes, and that your pictures
are up at Kellner's and oh!--" she clung to him in an ecstasy of
delight.
Out in the park the leaves were just budding. It looked as though the
whole square were hung with a transparent green net, spangled, as was
the net in his room, with tiny green leaves. Songsters were idling in
the sun. Sparrows were flying noisily about in small clouds. Pigeons
were picking lazily between the car tracks of the street below.
"I might get a group of pictures illustrative of Paris. You can't tell
what we'll find. Charles says he will have another exhibition for me
next spring, if I'll get the material ready." He pushed his arms above
his head and yawned deliciously.
He wondered what Miss Finch thought now. He wondered where Christina
Channing was. There was never a word in the papers yet as to what had
become of her. He knew what Norma Whitmore thought. She was apparently
as happy as though the exhibition had been her own.
"Well, I must go and get your lunch, Honeybun!" exclaimed Angela. "I
have to go to Mr. Gioletti, the grocer, and to Mr. Ruggiere, the
vegetable man." She laughed, for the Italian names amused her.
Eugene went back to his easel. He was thinking of Christina--where was
she? At that moment, if he had known, she was looking at his pictures,
only newly returned from Europe. She had seen a notice in the _Evening
Post_.
"Such work!" Christina thought, "such force! Oh, what a delightful
artist. And he was with me."
Her mind went back to Florizel and the amphitheatre among the trees. "He
called me 'Diana of the Mountains,'" she thought, "his 'hamadryad,' his
'huntress of the morn.'" She knew he was married. An acquaintance of
hers had written in December. The past was past with her--she wanted no
more of it. But it was beautiful to think upon--a delicious memory.
"What a queer girl I am," she thought.
Still she wished she could see him again--not face to face, but
somewhere where he could not see her. She wondered if he was
changing--if he would ever change. He was so beautiful then--to her.