Art

IT is difficult to know whether one should bring into the list of fine-art phenomena such a singular exhibition as that which was last month opened to the public at the Studio Building by Mr. H. C. Pratt, with the announcement of “sublime scenery in California,” etc. But the artist is evidently so in earnest, and, at the same time, so evidently mistaken as to the true ends of art, that it seems not wholly out of place to set his collection in its proper relations. The first picture on his list is a “ View of the Great Yosemite Falls in the famous Yosemite Valley.” It would involve a much ampler and more radical treatise than we are now engaged upon to explain why the painting is not worth a detailed criticism. We must be allowed to stop at saying that it is simply very, very poor. But we must distinctly object to the practice, first introduced, we are afraid, in the case of Mr. Bierstadt’s large works, of explaining in a catalogue or on a printed slip of paper precisely what elements in the subject of the exhibited picture are to excite us into awe and admiration. It is quite an illegitimate mode of assisting his paints, for instance, when Mr. Pratt announces in his catalogue that these falls are twenty-six hundred and thirty feet high, and that “Mr. Hatchings (the admirable proprietor and conductor of the first hotel in the Valley)” pronounces this picture to be “ the most truthful representation he has ever seen of that famous and sublime locality.” Unfortunately Mr. Hutchings’s reputation for correct and independent art criticism, however he may merit it, is not sufficiently well established here to carry conviction ; and it is altogether a mistake to suppose that because the declivity over which a stream precipitates itself is many hundred feet high, the pictorial representation of it should be classed as high art. There are eight other views in California and New Mexico, all of which are treated in the catalogue with a rich verbiage similar to that above quoted, and two of them Mr. Pratt endeavors to bring within the sphere of human sympathies by the statement that the Southern Pacific Railroad will pass near the points which his compositions include. Besides these he displays two large “ Allegorical Pictures ” of Night and Morning, “ from designs in marble by Thorwaldsen the Dane.” All these are very meagrely painted, and exhibit a very disorganized sentiment for the relations of colors. If he can free himself of these errors, and engage in an earnest attempt faithfully to portray beauty of form and hue for themselves alone, including merely so much beauty of idea as must come indirectly through every other kind of beauty, he will produce pictures which, though they may cover a smaller area, and offer thus a less extended ground for mellifluous catalouging, still cannot corrupt his own and the popular taste as these must.

It is refreshing to turn from these mountainous mistakes to the mention of a private collection of pictures recently sold by Messrs. Leonard & Co. Here were some ninety pictures, none very large, one fifth of which were finished water - color sketches. The average excellence of these last was by no means equal to that of the oils. We would especially remind our readers that such pictures as the two sketches among these, by S. Triscott of London, do not fairly represent the best English painting in this line. Though clearly drawn, pretty, and lucid in color, they neither exhibit the earnest realism nor the solidity of execution characteristic of the later school. But, indeed, if we are speaking of the lack of representation from which good English painters suffer among us, it is greatly to be regretted that our market cannot command some specimens of those among them who chiefly work in oils. Could artists as well as picture-buyers here interest themselves in this matter so far as to organize at least a loan-exhibition of pictures by such men as Mason, Barclay, Moore, Stanhope, Herny, and their followers, and, if such a thing were possible, a few pieces from Rossetti, Madox Brown, Millais, Whistler, and Leighton, we think both amateur and connoisseur would make material gains from the study of them. But until some such adequate audience shall have been given to the first men of the English school, those unfamiliar with it should be warned not to attempt characterizing it in their own minds from such minor and often vilifying fragments as drift into our galleries. It seems strange, indeed, that we who need so much all the education and inspiration we can get in art should remain in such ignorance of what is now going on in England, while we are familiar with modern French masters. An undertaking like the exhibition proposed, however, would call for ample funds and an unimpeachable, entirely disinterested management. It may be, then, that we can hope for progress towards the desired end only when the coming Art Museum shall get into operation and be in readiness with the proper enginery to assist the popular taste.

Among the oils, which were mostly French and Belgian, were to be found some quite well worth noticing. Of those by American painters but two attracted us. There were, indeed, pieces by Tait, Chapman, and Casilear, but whoever looks for vital and inspiring art would find himself at a loss to draw from these any inspiration whatever. But let us look for a moment at a landscape by Fuller, — a dark green hill sloping down to a pool in the foreground, where the sod hangs in a torn fringe over a little sandy bank. Towards this pool creeps timidly a foolish sheep, looking half scared as if at the reflection of himself which he perhaps already sees rising out of the water. In the left are trees ; behind all a pearly sky. The whole is modest, well balanced, not without a certain selfcontained mastery. G. N. Cass’s “ Spring ” displays elaborate handling, but without corresponding merits in the result. The hard, fine-grained texture of the sky and left background, where a river swims dimly into distant mists of May, is perhaps the most successful portion. The apple-trees bloom with a pink too much like that of the peach-blossom; and a drove of overlabored sheep in the foreground seem wallowing hopelessly in the unnatural brown of their shadows. There is something here that reminds us of Homer Winslow, though far less successful. The general tone is a striving for something true, but it rings with a falsetto quality that pains.

We cannot refrain from mentioning briefly certain of the foreign pictures: —

In C. T. Frére’s Encampment of a Caravan near Cairo, Egypt, the foreground and middle are occupied by white tents and groups of Arabs, some of whom are engaged about fires that send up a faint smoke. Three or four lofty palms lift on the right their slender heads of leaves, until they stand out against the upper portion of the sunset sky. A line of amethystine hills separates the plains and encampment from this sky, which in its even splendor seems all compacted from infinitesimal grains of gold. The hue deepens as it approaches the purple border of the hills to a solemn, glowing golden-red. At the left are two dotted lines of distant birds, describing in their flight an acute angle on the glowing background.

Milne Ramsay’s Still Life shows, grouped upon a heavy-hanging white tablecloth, a copper water-jug, from which the light slips as if it were real metal, green Dutch hockglasses, a punch-bowl, and a lemon with the skin split and curled off at one end. The cloth has been drawn away from the right-hand portion of the table, and there on the wood lies the burning stump of a cigar, its glow perceptible through the accumulated ash, sending up a straight thread of smoke that expands as it ascends. The painter seems to have thoroughly imbued himself with the nature and meaning of his materials. Nothing can be more copperlike than his copper, more lemon-like than his lemon, nor more cigar-like than the smouldering weed in his picture. This latter adjunct, too, gives the painting a kind of evanescent human interest, — a most agreeable relief to the dead quietude of most still-life subjects.

Japanese Still Life is a companion picture to this, and would set it off to advantage by the richness of its coloring. The table is here draped with a red covering of plushy texture, and holds a Japanese earthernware teapot, two porcelain cups, and a white silk fan, all painted over with mimic Japanese decoration in deep blue, crimson, red, green, straw, yellow, and gray. It offers an ingenious study in the matching of a number of distinct colors.

The Ideal Head, by T. Lobrichon, is a woman’s head, tossed back, the face of a faint, yet warm, red temperature, subdued with pale brown shadows, and wearing a somewhat wanton expression. Only the upper half of the figure is shown. The dress is a hunter’s green, with puffs of bright red, suggesting the pomegranate and its greengold rind. The head is crowned with auburn hair, and the heavy tresses are bound by a broad fillet of green and red as in the dress. This strange scornful head seems, in its half-fantastic yet harmonious coloring, fairly to flit past us in front of its background of deep red-brown.

The small landscape by Corot, is made up, after the manner of Corot, out of strangely few materials. On the left is a little hill bearing a clump of trees that thin out, as they descend its slope, into a single line of aspens, apparently, standing against a thick white heaven, their trunks leading the eye to a pool in the foreground wherein the cloudy white gleams again. To the left of the pool is a dauby old woman in red kirtle, bending down to the grass ; to the right a reddish-brown cow, grazing. A hint of blue sky, melting through the incrusted white in the upper right-hand corner, saves the composition from a certain lassitude which might otherwise have marked it oppressively.

A landscape by Lambinet is almost of the same size as the Corot, and we could greatly fancy these two arranged as pendants to each other. But the Lambinet is a more elaborate composition, and seems to us to have something more like a soul than the other. We cannot help suspecting that Corot is fooling us, when we find ourselves admiring his spattery foliage, his general indistinctness, and slender evanescence of material. To be mainly suggestive, indeed, is his forte ; but suggestiveness, both in painting and writing, may become too vague and airy to be quite excellent, and we are not sure that Carot always keeps bounds in this direction. However, here is the Lambinet; and, allowing the description of the two to be about on a par, let the reader decide as to his preference. A group of cottage roofs rising from behind a grassy mound, the tiling pervaded by crimson lake sparingly dispensed; on the left, a glimpse over fields and woods and hills, with birds dashing about against a sky full of gray clouds, lilac-flushed ; over the cottages, again, a clump of poplars. In the right, a pond reflecting the crimson that lurks in the roofs, and perhaps something of that distant echo of sunset on the clouds. To the left of the water two women in reddish garments, behind them two cows; and in the distant field another reverberation of their duality in the shape of two more brown animals, horses or cows. The green of the meadows, which also spreads over the bank that divides the roofs from the pool, crops up with a freshness as if it were newly sprung.

A chief transaction of late on our local art-stage has been the first annual exhibition in Horticultural Hall, of drawings from the free industrial drawing-schools established during the past year in this State. The merit of the work here displayed must naturally be determined by a due regard to the fact that some of the classes represented have been very lately formed ; that of Lowell, for instance, dating its organization from March 7, 1872. Keeping this in mind, we shall find the different degrees of progress in each school, as compared with their opportunities, very encouraging indeed. It is evident from this collection that the materials among us are plentiful for producing experts in both industrial and other kinds of drawing ; and an examination of the cards affixed to all the drawings, giving the name and occupation of each pupil, shows that the response to this opportunity for education is enthusiastic, — the persons represented being students, machinists, engravers, photographers, etc., and one at least of even so uninspiring a calling as that of letter-carrier. The town of Lynn has the highest proportion of awards of merit, six out of its eight drawings having been marked by the committee. But Boston naturally contributes the largest number as well as those intrinsically the best. The Appleton Street class presents an imposing phalanx of large drawings from casts, models, and flat copies, the best of which are in black chalk. Those finished in pencil do not reach nearly so high a level, leaving still much to be accomplished. Boston and Taunton give the most attractive and excellent of the machine-drawings and architectural designs ; but perhaps the most interesting piece of all the works is an original design for an Axminster carpet by F. C. Swann, æt. 18, late of Kidderminster Art School, England, and now of Lowell. Altogether the exhibition is a success, and we may look forward to its yearly repetitions with hopeful anticipation. In the upper hall were shown, simultaneously with these, drawings from the Boston public schools, interesting as showing what a broad and admirable basis is here being laid for a future popular appreciation of art. It is only from such careful training of large bodies of the young, and from the gradual identification of the artist with the artisan, through the agency of the industrial schools, that we can hope to reach a period of truly healthy art in this country ; a period when grace and beauty shall make themselves felt in common things — in the shaping of furniture and utensils, in the decoration of our walls and the external aspect of our dwellings — to such a degree that our daily thoughts may he led easily and gladly back to nature and the delight of living. And now at last the day seems dawning when life shall thus be sweetened for us.