The United States

Almost one-third of the entire Fine Arts Palace is occupied by the art

of the United States, and considering the privileges it enjoys, we have

no reason to offer any excuses. One thing should be said, a fact which

must force itself immediately upon any careful observer - that we have

been very hospitable to the foreign nations at the loss of our own

physical comfort. The growing demand from some of the foreign nations

for more space than originally applied for has crowded the American

section in some instances into rather uncomfortable conditions. On the

other hand we do not seem to have acquired such attractive ways of

hanging our pictures as the Swedes, Hollanders, or Italians practice;

probably for lack of funds. At any rate the American section looks very

businesslike and very democratic, without all the frills and fancies of

other nations, where every psychological advantage has been taken in

order to make things palatable. We have even been criticized for our

lack of spaciousness in hanging, but let us not grieve over this, since

it does at least save steps in walking from one picture to the next.

Gallery 60.

Our historical section is largely a mausoleum of portraits which really

have no other excuse for existence than historical interest, unless one

excepts the always excellent portraits of Gilbert Stuart, who certainly

stands out in all that dull company of his fellow-painters of his own

time. He is about the only one who can claim professional standards of

workmanship as well as lifelike characterization of his sitters. His

group of pictures on wall A does his great talent full justice. The

mellow richness of the portrait of General Dearborn stands out as a fine

painting among the many hard and black historical documents in this

gallery. The Captain Anthony portrait above is not less important. I

think his technical superiority and breadth of manner must be doubly

appreciated when one considers the absence of any artistic inspiration

in this country in Stuart's time, although he had the advantage of

several lengthy visits abroad, where he was received with approval by

profession and public alike. Most other portraits in this gallery are

lacking in any individual note and are hopelessly stiff and academic in

colour. Not even the very apparent influence of the great English

portrait masters of their time could save them from mediocrity. The only

pictures worth excepting from this classification, outside of the

Stuarts, are Charles Elliott's "Colonel McKenney" and S. B. Waugh's

portrait of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor.

Gallery 59.

In an adjoining gallery toward the north, our chronological

investigations bring us into an atmosphere of story-telling pictures of

the most pronounced Düsseldorf and Munich styles. This period has always

been the source of delight to the populace, which has no concern in the

technical qualities of a picture, a contention which led, more than

anything else, to the healthy reaction we now enjoy as the modern

school. The sentimental tone of most of these pictures and their

self-explanatory illustrative motives no doubt make them easily the lazy

man's delight, but I cannot help feeling that most of their themes could

much more successfully be approached through literature than through the

painter's art. Most of them explain themselves immediately, and those

which do not are helped along by descriptive titles fastened to the

frames, as the taste of that school demands. The great men of this

school in Germany were primarily great painters. Men like Defregger,

Knaus, Vautier, Grützner, Kaulbach, and others will always command high

respect by their technical achievements, no matter how we may disagree

with their choice of subjects. The really worthy ones we have produced

in this field of genre painting are to be found in other galleries and

are represented by men like Hovenden, Currier, and Johnson. The only

real painting among the many figure pictures in this gallery is Peter

Frederick Rothermel's "Martyrdom of St. Agnes." Very rich in colour and

big in composition, it compels great respect.

We have now reached the middle of the last century, when the influence

of the Barbizon school asserted itself and caused increasing interest in

landscape painting, a field which up to that time had been mixed up with

historical motives, as in a typical composite canvas by Cole (Thomas),

who generally ranks as the most important of the Hudson River School of

landscape painters. There is really not enough artistic moment to this

American group to dignify it by the name of a school. For historical

reasons, however, this classification is very convenient. Cole's four

sketches for the "Voyage of Life" show strong imagination, giving the

impression, however, that he was more interested in mythology than in

the art of painting.

The first intimation of a really original step in American outdoor

painting, as based on the discoveries of the school of 1825, the

Barbizon school, one receives in this gallery in a number of small

canvases by some of the men we have chosen to classify as the painters

of the Great West. Into this group are put Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill,

and Albert Bierstadt. They are so very closely identified with the West

that they are of particular interest to us. Their artistic careers were

as spectacular as their subjects. Stirred by the marvelous tales of the

great scenic wonders of the West, they heroically threw themselves into

a task that no artist could possibly master. They approached their

gigantic subjects with correspondingly large canvases, without ever

giving the essential element, of their huge motives, namely, a certain

feeling of scale, of monumentality, as compared to the pigmy size of the

human figure. Really great pictures of the Yellowstone, the Grand Cañon,

and the lofty mountain-tops still remain to be painted. The daring and

courage of these men has benefited our art very much in a technical

sense. The study of panoramic distances and the necessity for closely

observing out-of-doors new subjects which could not be studied in the

work of other painters, led to a facility in the handling of paint which

really constitutes the chief merit of these artists. In this gallery

(59) two small outdoor sketches by Thomas Hill give a good suggestion of

this Californian's great dexterity in handling paint. His career has

been so closely identified with the Yosemite Valley, where he lived and

died, that these two sketches will serve as a reminder of the very

faithfully studied larger pictures he for many years produced. Peter

Moran, a brother of Thomas, has a cattle picture in this gallery which

needs the backing up of the reputation of the whole Moran family to be

accepted.

Gallery 58.

Chronological order is not entirely maintained in gallery 58, where two

large Bierstadt pictures are in control. Bierstadt, with all of his good

painting, does not get any nearer the real spirit of the lofty

mountaintops than all the others of this school. Big and earnest as his

efforts were, they fall short of real achievement, not so much for his

lack of outdoor colour as for the misunderstanding of what is possible

in art and what is impossible. Another landscape in this gallery,

belonging to the contemporary school, however, is Henry Joseph Breuer's

"Santa Inez Mountains". It is a faithful study of a most difficult

subject and very successful in its big feeling, in spite of the

introduction of great detail. It is easily the best Breuer in the

collection. The note of variety in this gallery is maintained in several

portraits and genre pictures of unusual merit. On the right of the

Breuer, Thomas Hicks' "Friendly Warning" atones for a multitude of

mediocre genre pictures in the preceding gallery. Eastman Johnson's

"Drummer Boy" shows good composition, and J. H. E. Partington's study of

a man's head is as fine a piece of painting as was ever done in the

eighties.

Gallery 64.

In a big central gallery we meet the more meritorious work of our

painters dependent upon foreign influence. Portraits, genre pictures,

landscapes, and marines tell the story of many individual men working

out their salvation in more or less original fashion. I have spoken at

some length about the pitfall of genre painting, but Thomas Hovenden's

"Breaking Home Ties" redeems the entire school. Irrespective of the fact

that it is a picture very popular with the large public by reason of its

sentimental appeal, it is well painted, and it will always be considered

a good painting. It is devoid of colour, in the sense of the modern

painter, but its very fluent and simple technical character recommends

it highly. Hovenden was a master of his trade. Anybody who doubts this

from his large canvas can easily be convinced by studying the "Peonies"

to the left of it on wall C. The large area of this wall is covered with

six canvases by Thomas Eakins, showing a variety of subjects. His

"Crucifixion" is very good as an academic study but of no other

interest. In the "Concert Singer" he added an interesting subject to

very admirable painting. His other canvases are all sincerely studied

and well done, and they will always be sure of their place in the

history of American painting. Opposite the "Crucifixion," Church's

"Niagara" reminds one that the painting of water involves more than mere

photographic facility. All that one can say about this serious effort is

that if it had been painted under a different star than that which

guided the painters of his time in outdoor studies, it would doubtless

look more like water. Another canvas on the right, a marine by Richards,

has the same feeling for drawing without showing any understanding of

either texture or atmosphere. The old and the new overlap in this

gallery by the inclusion of some of Remington's paintings and also of a

few pieces of sculpture. Remington's paintings will never be classified

as anything but very good illustrations, and in the company of easel

pictures they look much out of place. Their interest is only of a

passing kind. His sculpture is lacking in repose and looks wild and

ill-mannered in the presence of the older things. Homer Martin's appeal,

in two big landscapes on the same wall, may not be very immediate, but a

serious contemplation of these big and noble landscapes will make them

reassuringly sympathetic. Martin's pictures are not exhibition pictures.

They suffer in an exhibition which is after all as much of a specimen

show of conflicting varieties as a display of canned goods in the Food

Palace. Martin, while never having enjoyed the popularity of an Inness,

will always rank as high as any of our best interpreters of the Barbizon

school.

Gallery 54.

We have to go over into this gallery in order to get the full meaning of

that great company of men who had something which is so difficult to

discover in many artists, namely, style. Inness and Wyant above

everything have style, a quality which carried their otherwise not very

original work above that of their fellow-painters. We shall never tire

of such canvases as "The Coming Storm," "The Clouded Sun," and the

limpid pastorals by Wyant. They maintain their position as classics.

Winslow Homer occupies a position all by himself. An entire wall full of

specimens by him shows the evolution of the man, his struggle with the

problem of the choice of subjects, and his technical development,

culminating in that one really great theme in the center, showing his

studio in an afternoon fog. Homer's colour is always disappointing, even

in his best, but his sense of design and a certain simple restriction to

a few essentials make up his chief claim upon distinction. Dennis

Bunker's "Lady with a Mirror" would scarcely be believed to belong to

the older period of American art. One of the finest pictures ever

produced by an American painter, it yields a most unusual degree of

artistic pleasure. There is real distinction about this picture, not

only in the graceful idealization of the lady, but also in the refined

colour scheme. Currier's art is very much like Duveneck's, an

observation which is made emphatic by the fact that each one's

masterpiece is a whistling boy, of great simplicity. After a discussion

of Duveneck's work, Currier's artistic antecedents will easily be

established, so no more need be said of his work.

Gallery 85.

Across the hall more of our academic school of painters are grouped.

There is George de Forest Brush, the painter of the "Boston Madonna", in

some of his earlier illustrative canvases and a very fine pre-Raphaelite

"Andromeda". Brush is so contradictory at times that this small group is

quite insufficient to do him full justice. Horatio Walker clings

persistently to his conviction of the supremacy of the older methods,

without giving any indication of contact with modern art. His

superiority depends largely upon the human-interest stories he tells

with wonderful breadth and sympathetic understanding. Charles W.

Hawthorne's canvases seem fumbled rather than painted. They are very

hesitating in a technical way and are not sufficiently endowed with

interest to grip one.

Gallery 57.

In another gallery in this neighborhood, Edwin Abbey's art is presented

very comprehensively in a number of large and small illustrations -

canvases of more than passing interest. While they are largely

illustrations, their interest is made permanent by reason of the

subjective note which all of them have. Abbey's intense imagination

allowed him to carry a convincingness into his work which is largely

responsible for the very high rank he attained. His art is not the art

of an American in any sense. It is true he was born in Philadelphia, but

a long and successful life spent in Europe has left on his work the

imprint of an aristocracy foreign to our interest. In design, in colour,

Abbey's work is always supremely interesting, and with the astonishing

development of illustration in America, it seems incredible that we

should not have been able to make him return to the land of his birth.

Galleries fifty-five and fifty-six are modern in aspect and their

contents came into this part of the building for practical reasons.

Wedged in between older periods, it is difficult to combine them with

the rest of modern American art, largely represented in the north side

of the Palace.

Gallery 56.

Here two interiors in distinctly different styles stand out among the

multitude. Marion Powers and Elizabeth Nourse add considerably to the

achievement of our women artists in these well-painted canvases. Miss

Powers is very original in an older school, while Miss Nourse displays

all the technical dexterities of the present day. Hitchcock's "Dutch

Tulip Beds," with figural staffage, remind one of a most original

American who after a long struggle established himself with these

colourful designs. His recent death came entirely too soon.

Gallery 55.

This room is intensely animated by Potthast's six seashore sketches,

which are composed and very sympathetic in their fine sunlight. Evelyn

McCormick's "Monterey Custom House" is no less sunny, and

conscientiously studied in detail.

Gallery 65.

Of particular interest are the pictures in this gallery, constituting an

achievement which few other nations could rival. Devoted exclusively to

the work of living American women artists, it contains convincing

evidences of the good results which the emancipation of women in this

country allowed them to accomplish in the field of art. The standard in

this gallery is very high, and one must admit that Mr. Trask's daring

innovation of putting all the women artists in one big gallery was

justified. They do hold their own, and they do not need any male

assistance to convince one of their big part in the honors of the

exhibition. On two opposing walls, Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux give

full expression of their very vital work. Miss Beaux's work is

compelling in its vigorous technique, fine colour, and daring

composition. Her study in purple and yellow is bold and unusually

successful. On other walls more portraits by Ellen Emmet Rand continue

to hold our attention, particularly the little girl and the black cat.

The portraits of our women painters are all far more original in

composition and colour arrangement than those of the men. Mary Cassatt's

reputation is so universally established as not to need any

introduction. Her art is more French in the many tone gradations of

atmosphere than that of her American colleagues who are more decorative.

Among others Jean McLane, Mr. Johansen's wife, and Annie Lang excel in a

certain breadth of style; while Mrs. Richardson charms by the

sympathetic rendering of the pride and happiness of the young mother.

The composition of this picture, while it is unusual, is successfully

managed. The impression one gains from this large gallery is most

satisfying in every way. The many portraits done by men seen in various

galleries of the exhibition would scarcely make as good a showing in a

group as the work of the women, and it was very wise not to attempt it.