IMPRESSIONS OF THE ART AT THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION CHRISTIAN BRINTON jjijil ■ • DUKE UNIVERSITY WOMAN’S COLLEGE LIBRARY i ■ ■ ■,V »*■ f, - . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/impressionsofart01brin IMPRESSIONS OF THE ART AT THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION OTHER WORKS BY CHRISTIAN BRINTON, M.A., Litt. D. Modern Artists. The Baker and Taylor Company, Xew York, 1908 Catalogue of Paintings by Ignacio Zuloaga. The Hispanic Society of America, New Y’ork, 1909 Ausstellung Amerikanischer Kunst. Konigliche Akademie der Kiinste zu Berlin, 1910 Die Entwicklung der Amerikanischen Malerei. F. Bruckmann, Munchen-Berlin, 1910 Masterpieces of American Painting. The Berlin Photographic Company, New York and Berlin, 1910 Catalogue of Sculpture by Prince Paul Troubetzkoy. The American Numismatic Society, New York, 1911 Walter Greaves, Pupil of Whistler. Cottier and Company, New York, 1912 The Scandinavian Exhibition. The American-Scandinavian Society, New York, 1912 Modern Swedish Art in Colour. Albert Bonnier, Stockholm and New York, 1919 La Peinture Americaine. Ilistoire Generale de la Peinture. L’.Vrt et les Artistes, Paris, 191,9 Constantin MeuniER. Published by the author. New York, 1911 Catalogue of the Swedish Exhibition. New York, loio {In Preparation) Francisco de Goya and His Paintings in America. Frederic Fairchild Sherman, New York Edouard Manet and His Paintings in America. Frederic Fairchild Sherman, New York Copyright, The Detroit Publishing Co. ■ Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Acadenij* of the Fine Arts Colour Plates. Ccurtcsy of The Centurj' Co. SKATERS BY GARI MELCHERS IMPRESSIONS K OF THE ART AT THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION BY CHRISTIAN BRINTON (member of the international jury) With a Chapter on the San Diego Exposition and an Introductory Essay on THE MODERN SPIRIT IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTING NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY i\I C M X V I ~1S<^ T Copyright, 1916, by JOHN LANE COMPANY Printed by Eaton & GETTiN(if:K, New York, L'.S.A. Engraving by Walker Engraving Co., New York. U.S.A. Colour Work by Ditt.man Colour Printing Co., New York, U.S.A. Binding by Grady Bookbinding Co.. New York. L’.S.A. Paper by S, D. Warren & Co.. Boston, L’.S.A. CONTENTS PAGE List of Illustrations 7 The Modern Spirit in Contemporary Painting 13 The Panama-California Exposition 31 The Panama-Pacific Exposition 43 Sculpture — Native and Eoreign 67 American Painting 87 Eoreign Painting — P art One 137 Eoreign Painting — P art Two 173 Bibliography 195 Index of Artists 201 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (PLATES IN COLOUR) Skaters. By Gari Melchers Frontispiece Air. The Windmill. By Frank Brangwyn facing page 52 Earth I. Dancing the Grapes. By Frank Brangwyn .... “ Earth II. The Fruit Pickers. By Frank Brangwyn .... “ “ “ Water. The Fountain. By Frank Brangwyn “ “ (PLATES IN BLACK AND WHITE) PAGE Lady in Pink. By Nikolai Fechin 12 The Panama-Calif ornia Exposition Tower and Dome of California Building 30 View from across the Canon de Cabrillo 32 Entrance Facade, California Building 33 Looking across the Esplanade 35 A Mission P.\tio, Southern Counties Building 37 Commerce and Industries Building 39 Entrance to the Varied Industries Building 40 The Panama-Pacific Exposition Sculpture at Entrance of the Festival Hall 42 P.\LACE OF Horticulture 45 Colonnade and Palace of Fine Arts 47 Discovery — Mural Painting. By W. De Lel’twich Dodge 48 Survival of the Fittest — Sculpture. By Robert I. Aitken 49 The Harvest — Sculpture. By Paul Alanship 50 Colonnade Fronting Palace of Fine Arts (Night Effect) 55 Part of the Court of the Four Seasons (Night Effect) 57 Rotunda, Lagoon, and Palace of Fine Arts (Night Effect) 59 The Tower of Jewels (Night Effect) 61 East Facade, Horticulture Building (Night Effect) 63 Court of the Four Seasons (Night Effect) 63 [ 7 ] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued Sculpture — Native and Foreign PAGE The End of the Trail. By James Earle Fraser 66 Young Girl with AYater Jar. By Joseph Bernard 69 The Outcast. By Attilio Piccirilli 71 Crows and their Young. By Dagfin Werenskiold 73 Count Tolstoy. By Paul Troubetzkoy 7.5 Aquatic Nymphs. By Leo Lentelli 77 Grandmother’s Idol. By Ermenegildo Lup[)i 79 The Foot B.\th. By Rene Quillivic 81 Sphinx. By David Edstrom 83 A in erican Painting Torso. By Arthur B. Carles 86 Mme. Gautreau. By .John S. Sargent 89 The Coming Storm. By Winslow Homer 91 Note Blanche : Study OF -Jo. By James McNeill AA’histler 93 Summer. By Frederic C. Frieseke 95 In the Sun. By Theodore Robinson 96 Poppies. By Robert AY. A’onnoh 97 AA’histling Boy. By Frank Duveneck 99 Spanish Courtyard. By John S. Sargent 101 YIother and Child. By Gari Ylelchei's 103 Paresse. By Lawton S. Parker 10.5 PoRTR.\iT. By Cecilia Beaux 107 The Ice Storm. By Allen Tucker 109 Y’outh. By Frederic C. Frieseke Ill St. Ives Fishing Boats. By Hayley Lever 113 YIother AND Child. Bj^ John H. Twachtman 115 Gates AT San Pedro Miguel. By .Jonas Lie 117 October Morning. By Ben Foster 119 The End of the Street. By Gifford Beal LJl The Emerald Robe. By Robert H. Nisbet l'-23 Y’outh. By Josephine Paddock l^J Polo Crowd. By George AA'. Bellows l'-27 My Family. By Edmund C. Tarbell 129 A Mother and her Sons. By RockAvell Kent 131 Tangier. By Alexander Robinson 133 Foreign Painting — Part One The Green Sha\vl. By (’amillo Innocenti 136 Binnenkant; AAmnter in Amsterdam. By AA'illem AA'itsen 139 [ 8 ] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued PAGE Winter in the Forest. By Anshelm Schiiltzberg 141 The Cripple. By Gabriel Strandberg 143 Longchamps. By Batthyanyi Gyula 145 Summer Night; Aasgaardstrand. By Edvard Munch 147 Countess Batthyanyi Lajos. By Vaszary Janos 149 Hungarian Home Altar. By Javor Pal 151 Autumnal Day. By Arnold Marc Gorier 153 Among the Birches. By Carl Larsson 155 A Frosty Afternoon. By Anshelm Schultzberg 157 The Shore. By Leo Putz 159 Rippling Water. By Gustav A. Fjaestad 161 Interior. By Rippl-Ronai Jozsef 163 Summer Night. By Franz von Stuck 165 In the Rhine AIeadows. By Heinrich von Zligel 167 W INTER Road. By Thorolf Holmboe 169 Foreign Painting — Part Two The Procession. By Ettore Tito 172 The Painters. By Felix Vallotton 175 Harbour of Rotterdam. By Albert Marquet 177 Seated Woman. By Charles Cottet 179 The Young Landlady. By Jorge Bermudez 181 The Bohemian. By Antonio Mancini 183 Bathers. By Maurice Denis 185 AIoulin de la Galette. By Vincent Van Gogh 187 The Communicants. By Lucien Simon 189 The Nightingale’s Veranda. By Jose Malhoa 191 Interior of Cafe. By Manuel Rose 193 [ 9 ] ■ '-V f r ■ ; ,^v - ■ - i ^ 1 *’ THE MODERN SPIRIT IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTING Internationnl Secti 07 \, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of ^ iiliam S. ^^timmel. Ksq. LADY IX PINK BY NIKOLAI FF:CHIN [ 12 ] THE MODERN SPIRIT IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTING* Jk CONSIDERATION of the more recent phases of current art presents an appeal not alone stimulating but possibly also dis- I ^ concerting. And yet the matter is not so complicated as it would appear at first glance. Those same principles that govern every field of activity are operative in the province of aesthetic endeavour. You will grasp the issue more clearly if you bear in mind the all-important fact that art is a social expression, that the perennial quest of beauty is not an esoteric pastime or an ingenious puzzle. It is one of the essential char- acteristics of human effort and aspiration. There never was a time when man did not seek to visualize his impressions of the outward universe or give form and semblance to those ideas and emotions that surge so per- sistently within. Art was at first the handmaiden of life. Each act in the initial stages of aesthetic progress was typically unconscious. In due course, however, the creation of beauty became an end in itself, and artistic production thus entered upon its second and more conscious phase. Throughout the serenity of the classic age, the inspiring exuberance of the Renaissance, and on down to modern times every artistic gesture possessed a special significance and responded to some specific need. If during the past century art has changed in aspect, it is largely because society itself has changed. We no longer, as did lordly patron, ecclesiastical or royal, command the artist to work for us. He works as a rule for himself alone, and one need scarcely scruple to term this the third or self-conscious phase of artistic development. For various reasons painting is that particular form of aesthetic activity which is most sensitive and responsive to external influences. With but few exceptions the canvases to which we are accustomed have not been produced with any aim or end in view other than to appease the individual * Copyright, 1916, by Christian Bnnton. [ 13 ] IMPRESSIONS craving for graphic or coloristic expression. Rightly or wrongly the painting we encounter upon exhibition wall or in the studio has won its release from all explicit social obligation. It stands before us free and autonomous, and must be judged upon its own proper merits. That it has gained not a little by this change of status is evident. That in certain of its more acute manifestations it is paying the penalty of isolation is equally apparent. Modern painting as such begins with the dawn of modern society, with the breakdown of the aristocratic order, the rise of democracy, and the rapid ascendancy of the scientific spirit. Timid and perturbed by the transforma- tions which the Napoleonic regime wrought in his beloved Paris, Fragonard stands as the last of the old masters. He attempted, with pathetic futility, to adjust himself to altered conditions, but the task proved beyond his en- feebled powers. He did not possess the nervous vitality, the splendid, spas- modic virility of his Spanish contemporary Goya. It was David, ruthless and dictatorial, who dominated the early decades of the last century. After the rigid classicism of David came the impeccable academic propriety of Ingres and the eloquent romanticism exemplified by Eugene Delacroix. They each epitomized the temper and tendencies of their time. Painting was no longer content to minister modestly unto life; it had learned to echo in theme and treatment the social, political, and intellectual complexion of the age. In the special sense in which it here concerns us, contemporary art did not begin with classicist, romanticist, or even with the sturdy terrestrialism of Gustave Courbet. It started with that prince of moderns the mundane, militant, Edouard Manet. iManet won two imperishable triumphs. He demolished the sterile prestige of academic tradition, and he taught us the possibilities of painting as a thing existing of, and for, itself alone — as something independent of history, allegory, or anecdote. With him the artist cast aside Roman toga and peasant smock. He was neither imperial like David nor a humble proletarian such as Millet. He stepped before us clad as anyone in frock coat and silk hat. Still, it was not reserved for the eager, ardent Manet to complete the emancipation of painting from the trammels of the past. He remained to the end a transitional figure. While he freed art from the tyranny of subject, he was not a true child of sunlight and atmosphere. All that Paris could offer he avidly absorbed, yet there [ 14 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING was something more to be gleaned by watching haystack change subtly with the hour of day, in studying the cloud-flecked bosom of pool, or the fresh bloom of springtime garden. Although the impressionistic impetus emanated from Manet, it was the patient, salutary Monet who carried the doctrine to its logical conclusion. And close upon the heels of Manet and Monet pressed numerous converts who flooded studio and gallery with a radiance ever near at hand though until then so strangely neglected. The story of contemporary painting in its first, or analytical stage, resolves itself into the struggle for light, and yet more light. For centuries figure and landscape had been bathed in brown sauce and blackened by bitumen. With but few exceptions all artists beheld nature through the subdued tonality of the old masters. Though Correggio saw the tender evanescence of atmosphere, and Velazquez felt the magic of its respiration, they stand almost alone amid a sombre assembly. With the moderns the conquest of light and air was by no means confined to the great, palpitating out-of-doors, to smiling field or iridescent stretch of water. It was also carried on within. Degas watched it filter through the windows of the foyer de la danse or flare into the faces of his ballet girls. Besnard caught its mellow flicker from lamp or fireside. Renoir adapted something of the chromatic opulence of Rubens to the requirements of the new creed, and even Gaston La Touche, in his St. Cloud villa, bathed his delicate, eighteenth-century evocations in this same fluid ambience. Paris of course proved the spot from whence radiated this new gospel, just as, a generation later, it was from Paris that was launched the propaganda of the Expressionists, who to-day represent the inevitable reaction against Impressionism. Simultaneously there sprang up over the face of Europe, and also America, countless acquisitive apostles of light who soon changed the complexion of modern painting from black and brown to blonde, mauve, and violet. The movement seemed spontaneous. In Spain it was Sorolla and Rusinol who popularized the prismatic palette among the vineyards of Val- encia, along the plage of Cabailal, or in the gardens of Andalucia. Far up among the peaks of the Engadine, Giovanni Segantini, the solitary, heroic- souled Italian-Swiss painter perished in endeavouring to apply the principles of Divisionism, as he termed it, to simple and austere mountain scene. Dark- ness was everywhere dissipated. Under the direct inspiration of Degas, Alax Liebermann undertook the task of injecting purity of tone and swift- [ 15 ] IMPRESSIONS ness of touch into the Gothic obscurity and linear severity of Teutonic paint- ing. Claus and Van Rysselberghe in Belgium, Thaulow in Norway, Krbyer in Denmark, and a dozen or more talented Swedes witness the widening acceptance of the Impressionist programme. Apart from George Clausen, Bertram Priestman, Wilson Steer, and a scant handful of the younger men, it cannot be claimed that Impressionism has made commensurate headway in England. The Scotchmen, to the country, have proved more sensitive and open-minded, and, in modified form, the feeling for atmospheric clarity has become one of the characteristic features of the Glasgow School. In America conditions were favourable owing to the efforts of certain of our abler men who lived and studied in Paris during the early ’eighties of the last century. The pioneers in this particular field were Theodore Robinson and Alexander Harrison. Still, it must not be assumed that American Im- pressionism and French Impressionism are identical. The American painter accepted the spirit, not the letter of the new doctrine. He adapted the divi- sion of tones to local taste and conditions and ultimately evolved a species of compromise technique. Only one American artist, Hassam, went as far as Monet, yet he has managed to individualize his brilliant, vibrant colour appositions. In addition to Hassam the main exponents of the new movement were Weir, who has passed with distinction through divers transitions, Met- calf, the sweet-toned lyrist of the group, Simmons, Dodge, and Reid who applied the method to decorative figure composition, and the late John H. Twachtman whose work soon became an essentially personal manifestation. Associated with the foregoing men in the general aim of giving freshness and verity to native vision are Melchers and Hitchcock, who painted chiefly in Holland, Miss Cassatt, who has long been identified with Paris, and the Boston artists, Tarbell and Benson. That certain of them evince more craftsmanship than conviction is not a matter to be deplored, for they have done much toward revealing the possibilities of the modern palette and proving the necessity for a more painterlike and less provincial conception of their profession. It has been necessary to recall the general diffusion and wide-spread vogue of Impressionism in order to indicate the significance of an achievement which, in the history of painting, ranks only second in importance to the discovery of perspective. The realization that there is no such thing as absolute colour, that what we see is not the actual object, but that object conditioned by [ 16 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING varying effects of light and shade, and that, in certain circumstances, line and form themselves disintegrate, are facts which brought about a veritable revolution in pictorial representation. Artists became eager analysts of nature and natural phenomena. The hitherto undisputed predominance of subject-interest almost disappeared, and each man sought to steep himself in that all-pervading luminosity which, for the time being, seemed the sole source of beauty and inspiration. Certain phases of artistic effort did not, of course, so readily respond to the new order of things, though even portraiture and mural decoration ultimately reflected the spirit of the hour. While there resulted from this scrupulous study of the optics of art much that was fresh and invigorating, the personal equation was nevertheless lacking, or was reduced to a minimum. You cannot open the window to nature and close it upon the human soul, and even before the conclusive triumph of Impressionism there were signs of a reaction. Analysis was bound to give place to synthesis, and hence Impressionism, which ignores the individual, was supplemented by Expressionism, which exalts the individual. Various names have been given the multiple forms which these ultra- modern tendencies have assumed. We hear, with increasing perturbation, of Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Synchromism, and a bewildering succession of isms all more or less closely associated in aim and idea. The most comprehensive and characteristic appellation is that of Expressionism, which, as is readily perceived, stands in direct antithesis to Impressionism. There are manifest differences between each of these isms. The inventors and promoters of one, repudiate all affiliation with the exponents of another, yet their general significance, both popular and philo- sophic, remains substantially the same. In order properly to appreciate the situation it is necessary to realize that there are, to begin with, no revolutions in art. The development of artistic effort proceeds along definite lines. The various movements overlap one another, and in each wull be found that vital potency which proves the forma- tive impulse of the next. The aesthetic unity of man is as indisputable as is his ethnic unity, and, given similar conditions, he will not fail to produce similar, if not identical results. The panorama of pictorial or plastic accomplishment the world over, like the phenomena of crystallography, conchology, or those basic verities that lie at the root of all harmonic proportion reveal but scant variation from fixed rule. Nature at the outset managed to get such mat- [ 17 ] IMPRESSIONS ters systematized, and since then has been satisfied to let things pursue their appointed course. While it is permissible for juvenile or uncritical enthusi- siasts flamboyantly to announce revolutions, at bottom it is the more deliber- ate process of evolution to which they are paying tribute. Why, then, the current superexcitation in art circles? It is merely due to a lack of close, first-hand acquaintance with the problem at issue. Most of us see only effects, not the causes that lead up to these effects. The primitive craftsmen, owing partially to their rudimentary command of technique, pictured things synthetically, and it is something of this same precious syn- thesis of vision and rendering which certain painters and sculptors of to-day have set about to recapture for themselves. The trend of art during the past few centuries has been away from subjective, and frankly in the direc- tion of objective, representation. It is the thing itself we have gradually been forced to accept, not that which it may suggest to sight and sense. We have little by little stooped to a sort of debased ilhisionism and in order to extricate ourselves from the stupidity and stagnation of such a predica- ment, we have gone back to the fountain-heads of native art as they may be found in Hindu-China or Yucatan, on the plains of Mongolia, in the basin of the Nile, or among the shimmering islands of the Polynesian archipelago. Less revolutionary than reactionary, the modernists have reverted to an earlier type of art, and in doing so it was inevitably to the East that they were forced to turn. The present movement of which we hear so much, possibly too much, represents more than anything the subtle ascendancy of Orient over Occident. The first premonition of this impending triumph was apparent as far back as the early ’sixties of the past century, when a certain Mine. Desoye opened in Paris a modest shop where she sold Japanese prints, pottery, screens, and the like, and succeeded in attracting the notice of Bracquemond, Louis Gonse, the de Goncourts, and other discerning spirits. Scattered quite by chance, the seed bore fruit in various quarters. Though Whistler paid his tribute in parasitic fashion, it was Manet who. in- spired by the Spaniards and freed from scholastic influences by the redoubt- able Courbet, first seized upon the essentials of the new art — the simplicity of outline, the juxtaposition of pure colour tones, and the substitution for elabor- ate modelling of flat surfaces without the use of shadow. The virtual precursor of the|Impressionists, on the one hand, Manet may also be ranked as the parent Expressionist, for it was from him that Cezanne received hints of that [ 18 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING structural and chromatic unity which, as we shall see, became the keynote of his method and the corner-stone of subsequent aehievement. Yet it must never be forgotten that it was Courbet who at the outset courageously spurned a stilted and effete classicism and rudely dispelled the embers of a burned-out romanticism. It was upon his expansive peasant shoulders that Manet, the townsman, climbed to hitherto unattained heights. And it is to Courbet and to nature, which he worshipped with such passionate energy, that, once they have ventured far enough into space, our tense and pallid theorists must inevitably return. The new art preaches before all else the supremacy of the personal factor. Social as well as aesthetic in aspect, it bases itself upon an unfettered, uncompromising individualism. We had a foretaste of this in the capricious attitude of Whistler toward the world of actuality about him which he was unwilling, or unable, to fix upon canvas. It was he who first inveighed against the picture that simply tells a story or states a fact. With his super-exclusive- ness we are already well along the pathway leading toward complete inde- pendence of objective representation. The principle upon which the new movement is founded is, as we have indicated, one of the oldest of graphie expedients. It is the principle of simplification, of eliminating the superfluous and the non-essential. Consciously or unconsciously, it was practised over fifty thousand years ago by the caveman in his rock pictures of bison and reindeer. It lies at the root of all primitive artistic effort, and has been resur- reeted by a group of men who, whatever their individual differences and disagreements, unite in maintaining that contemporary painting and sculp- ture are but slavish and cumbersome forms of nature-imitation. They hold that the spirit has insufficient scope in a world so studiously, so palpably real. They take refuge in a realm where the abstraet reigns supreme. One after another they have cast aside the precepts of the schools, the paraphernalia of the pedants, and gone, so they claim, straight to the source of things. Glance at the founders of the cult and you will doubtless better com- prehend the situation. First you encounter Paul Cezanne, ever sane and searching, extracting from the visible world its voluminal integrity of form and colour. You next behold Gauguin, the so-called barbarian, synthetiz- ing life and scene in far-off Tahiti with a smouldering splendour of tone and stateliness of poise that hark back through Degas, Ingres, and Prudhon to the symmetry and spaciousness of classic times. And finally you are con- [ 19 ] IMPRESSIONS fronted in Van Gogh with a fusion of Gothic fervour and sheer dynamic fury that gives his tortured landscapes or distraught peasant physiognomies something of the eternal throb of all creative energy. Each, after his own fashion, was individual and anti-academic. Each, after his own fashion, strove to free eye and mind from the actual and the objective. Each sought not the substance but the sign, and that is why together they con- stitute the intrepid trinity of the new movement. Troubled and inarticu- late as their utterance sometimes was, they rank as pioneers of the first category. And furthermore they did not shrink from paying the price of their independence in anguish, isolation, and death. A perceptible distance separates these now classic pathfinders from their clamorous pendants and successors. It is a far cry from Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh to Henri-Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, et alii. You are compelled to take a still more extended stride in order to find your- self abreast of Severini, Russolo, Boccioni, and the Italian Futurists. Matisse presents a mixture of naive sophistication and deliberate savagery. Picasso deals in a species of plastic geometry, and Picabia seeks to convey his im- pressions of the universe visible and occult by means of a series of ingeniously assembled cubes. The distinction between Cubist and Futurist is that the former strives to express volume in the most elementary fashion known to human concept, while the aim of the latter is to create upon canvas the sensation of ceaseless, synchronous motion. The one is static, the other kinetic. Once the importance of the lesson taught by the pioneer spirits had been grasped, the field of operation, as we have seen, rapidly extended itself. The backward swing of the pendulum toward the primal spontaneity of untutored effort followed as a matter of course, and within a few brief years we were greeted with the apparition of Henri-Matisse. Others, less radical of temper, such as Alaurice Denis, lingered appealingly with the Italian Primitives, yet all conceded that it was no longer the exclusive function of art to relate facts, but to communicate sensations; not to record life, but to interpret life. It was soon found that rhythm had been neglected, that form had lost its original significance, and that, above all else, the visible world had ceased to be employed as a vehicle for arousing emotion, but was doing service as the actual object of emotion. As Henri-Matisse is the accredited head of the present movement, it may [ 20 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING not be inappropriate to consider at somewhat closer range his personality and principles. This arch-enemy of convention inhabits a charming villa at Issy- les-Moulineaux, in the suburbs of Paris. He is fond of his garden and dogs, and is a devoted husband and father. His studio is large, square, thoroughly workmanlike and painted white without and within. It is here amid normal salubrious surroundings that he perpetrates those huge, schematic panels, elementary essays in still-life, and primitive adventures in plastic form which are acclaimed in Germany, Russia, and Austria, which make a sensation in Paris, and create consternation in America. There is however nothing in the artistic credo of this mild-mannered iconoclast to frighten or confuse. Alike in word and deed he typifies the customary reaction against academic ascendancy and the futility of conventional formulae which one encounters elsewhere. His ideas are concisely set forth, and his canvases, while they may repel because of their brutal insistence upon outline and broad spaces filled with primary colours, are in no sense obscure. “I began,” said Matisse, in a recently published interview, “like every- body else, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. When I started to paint, I painted for a time like everyone else. But things did not go well, and I was very unhappy. Then, little by little, I strove to paint not as I had been taught but as I felt. One cannot do successful work which shows feeling unless one sees the subject simply, and one must do this in order to express oneself as clearly as possible. Now, although certain conservatives accuse me of hav- ing dispensed with drawing, harmony, and composition, such is by no means the case. Drawing is for me the art of being able to express myself in line. When an artist or student renders a figure with painstaking care the result is drawing, not emotion. A true artist cannot see colour that is not har- monious. He should express his feelings by means of the harmonic sense of colour which he innately possesses. He should above all express a vision of colour, the resultant harmony of which corresponds to his feeling. Now take that table,” he added, indicating a table near by upon which stood a jar of flowers, “I do not paint the table, I paint the emotion it arouses in me.” As the connecting link between the Neo-Impressionists and the Cubists, Matisse occupies a significant position. In his search for motives coloristic, decorative, or plastic, he has gone by turns to Persia or to Polynesia, and has produced effects that are both reminiscent and revolutionary. He stands as the one artist of the modern school who succeeded in giving painting its [ 21 ] IMPRESSIONS definitive impulse toward the abstraet. His existence is inconceivable without taking into consideration his Impressionist forbears, and, had it not been for him. Cubism could scarcely have come into being. Quite as logical as had been its predecessors, the next step was taken by Pablo Picasso, whose basic ideas may be found in Pythagoras, and the prin- ciples of whose method were long since formulated by Plato. Simple ele- mentalism herewith gives place to subtle geometrizing, with the result that we are at last free from all taint of imitation, and watch unfold before us a world of visual imagery accountable to itself alone. The austere, Iberian temperament of Picasso, which makes appeal almost exclusively through an inherent plasticity of design, is supplemented in the work of Picabia by a warmer, more sensuous tonality and a kindred desire to create, not to copy. Call it optical music, emotional mathematics, or by whatever term you choose, the production of Picasso, Picabia, Leger, Gleizes, and their colleagues cannot be dismissed as mere impertinent pleasantry. Something of that passionate self-absorption which characterized the great seers of the past finds reflection in the aims and activities of these men. In order rightly to appreciate the sequence of development let us take a glance at Francis Picabia in his studio in the avenue Charles Floquet, Paris, or better, in the cafe of the Brevoort, for Picabia is known in New York as well as in the French capital. Born of a French mother and Cuban father, Picabia is short and dark with heavy frame and delicately chiselled features. ^Yhile his personality suggests intensity of feeling, you instantly recognize in him a lucid, logical intellect with an extraordinary gift for abstract reasoning. In common with most young Frenchmen of artistic predilections Picabia first went to the ateliers for preliminary training. It was not long however be- fore he experienced a profound distaste for the work and teaching of his preceptors and posted off to Southern France in order to paint according to his own liking, amid resplendent sunshine and the sheen of olive tree. His first outdoor studies, which were impressionistic in spirit, soon became individual in vision and treatment. “Here,” he one day exclaimed standing before a glowing canvas, “is a song of colour which, without imitation or reminiscence, induces fresh sensations and arouses new sentiments. Away with form, and all attempt at materialization. Open wide the doorway leading toward the symphony of colour!” It was on a bleak Februaiy afternoon at the Brevoort, with the sparse trees [ 22 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING tossed about by the fitful wind, and the motor busses buffeting their way against the storm, when Picabia condescended to elucidate for me the inner workings of the Cubist mind. “Cubism,” he began, “is not a conspiracy; it is a creed. Every Cubist is different, yet collectively they constitute part of the modern movement in art or, rather, the art of the future. The term Cubist, which, like the term Impressionist, was first applied in derision, we have adopted in all gratitude and good faith. The cube, you recall, is the third dimension of matter — that of depth, volume, or thickness. Now be- cause we exponents of the new art have attempted to express what is beneath the surface — that which is not perceptible to the eye, or to any of the ma- terial senses, someone christened us Cubists, or workers in the third dimen- sion. But why, let me ask, stop at the third dimension, or the fourth, for that matter.^ There are no limits to imagination and emotion save those imposed by habit or convention.” The wind still swept across the grey, asphalt spaces in front of the hotel and whipped into submission man and beast alike. Picabia disdained the liqueurs which had been deposited upon the marble-topped table by a solicitous gargon and continued in measured, carefully modulated periods. He recounted with minute detail the inevitable transition which he and his circle had made from the new to the still newer. The various members of the original group, which was called La Section d’Or, have in brief gone their several ways, while he in turn has passed from Cubism to Orphism, in response to a call, real or fancied, from the passionate, fateful lyrist who epitomizes the divinity of music and song. On concluding, Picabia peered across the table to see whether or not I had followed him with the requisite sympathy and comprehension. I am proud to record that he seemed reassured, yet all the while I could not keep my thoughts from the pathetic singer whose name the new cult has chosen in order to make their programme clearer to the popular mind. I recalled that Or- pheus not alone sang and stroked his lyre among the sunlit hills and beside sparkling streams, but also down in the gloomy shades of the underworld, where pathways were devious and uncertain. Although it was not my good fortune to assist at the debut of the Futurists in Paris, I subsequently encountered the exhibition in Hamburg, and also in Copenhagen, where I made acquaintance with the work of these veritable anarchists in paint. In their impetuous, Latin fashion, they go further toward destruction and demolition than do any of their colleagues. If Cubism [ 23 ] IMPRESSIONS is a creed, Futurism is a challenge. This virulent, not to say savage, assault upon aesthetic convention was first delivered by the Italian poet and pam- phleteer Marinetti at a public gathering held in the Chiarella Theatre at Turin, on the evening of March 8, 1910. The meeting was stormy and tumul- tuous. The opposition attempted to cry down Signor Marinetti, but the resourceful propagandist silenced the crowd by dexterously catching an orange which had been shied at his head. This he peeled, quartered, and ate with engaging unconcern. The incident saved the day, and he thereupon pro- ceeded to read the now famous manifesto of the Futurist Painters, whieh may be designated as their profession of faith. Having stated their case, we were in due season permitted to see how these same ideas looked when trans- ferred to canvas, and I do not hesitate to add that the sensation they created far exceeded the stir caused by the Post-Impressionists and Cubists. Amid a vast amount of violence and bombast there lurk, at the basis of Futurism, certain valuable and invigorating truths. As an artistic demonstration it is virile and anti-sentimental. It is exhilarating, positive, and nationalistic. In no country save Italy could such tendencies have taken form, for the Futurist art is innately vivid, colourful, and effective. It is the desire of the Futurist to interpret life as it throbs and surges about him, to catch its movement, to convey a sense of its complexity, both visual and psychic. Everything that one sees, thinks, feels, or recalls may be crowded into a Futurist canvas. These men are striving, one and all, to destroy the traditional fixity of impression. They aim to demolish the theory that a given scene is unalterably focussed in the eye. Their art typifies not unity, but diversity, not that which is dead and immobile, but that which is vital, fluxional, and dynamic. Is it necessary to lure you farther into the feverish, questing atmosphere of modernism — into this arena where the battle for aesthetic freedom is being waged so fiercely and tempestuously.? You will in any event en- counter the same phenomena from Stockliolm to Naples, from Bordeaux to Budapest. Young men the world over are striving as never before to re- juvenate painting. That many, nay, most of them, are sincere is beyond question. That they will succeed in their efforts to create visual music, to found a new language of form and colour, is a question which may be dis- creetly left to the future. Meantime, while it can scarcely be maintained that they have produced anything approximating the supreme sovereignty [ 24 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING of a masterpiece, they have injected into the pictorial and plastic arts a spirited, energizing impulse which has already proved of immeasurable benefit. It is futile to expend one’s energies debating whether such tentative mani- festations as those under discussion have, or have not, any rightful place in art. The fact remains that they are here, hanging upon our walls, and that alone must go far toward justifying their existence. There is scant doubt but that much of this work is predominantly occult, or even at times posi- tively hieratic. And still, despite what may be termed its over-individuali- zation, it presages a profound spiritual rebirth in the province of aesthetic endeavour. There is little else to the so-called revolution in art than simply this. Its particularity of utterance will undoubtedly vanish, and its inner significance only will survive, since in any event our eyes, after a brief interval, become adjusted to method and are responsive to meaning alone. Though it cannot be held that America has taken conspicuous part in the creation of these turbulent artistic currents we have not been oblivious of their existence. The most auspicious and authoritative note has been struck by Henry Golden Dearth, whose recent canvases are individual in conception, brilliant in colour, and highly decorative in arrangement. Im- pressionism having attained its final accent in the delectable outdoor confec- tions of Frieseke, our less timid men have turned to fresher fields. Alfred Maurer and Arthur B. Davies, already well established along conservative lines, have espoused the cause of Expressionism. In addition, there are others, including Steichen, Sterne, Weber, Dove, Hartley, and the like who have declared themselves pronounced apostles of novelty. The combined effect of these various and varied foci of activity is felt mainly in its secon- dary phases, no specific programme having been thus far evolved. The local exhibitions are nevertheless brighter and more stimulating in aspect than was formerly the case, for which we must thank the exponents of the new movement, of whose existence neither the public nor the most indurated academician can remain unmindful. Great things were freely predicted for American art following the initial influx of these stimulating and progressive foreign ideas. It is however only vaguely realized in certain quarters that, in order to paint like Gauguin it is necessary to live, think, and feel like Gauguin, or that, in order to fill a canvas after the fashion of Picasso, it is essential to possess the plastic vision and [ 25 ] IMPRESSIONS profound cerebral concentration of Picasso himself. Mere imitation, to which we are already too prone, will never produce anything significant or enduring, and, what should be taken to heart, is not the form but — let us once more add — the spirit of this work. The fact that one finds in Picabia, for example, a mingling of logic and lyricism which derives direct from the Impressionists and blends into the delicate exaltation of a new Orphism, should inspire our young men not to paint polymorphically, but look to their own traditions and sensibilities and see what they are capable of bringing forth. That which we, as a nation, above all else need is a more robust and decisive racial consciousness in matters artistic. And it is this lesson that the current agitation, despite its incidental crudity and incoherence, manifestly inculeates. If, in fine, we are to accomplish something vital in art we must strive to purge ourselves alike from timidity and from pedantic prejudice. There is no phase of activity or facet of nature that should be forbidden the creative artist. The X-ray may quite as legitimately claim his attention as the rainbow, and, if he so desire, he is equally entitled to renounce the static and devote his energies to the kinetoscopic. If the discoveries of Chevreul and Rood in the realm of optics proved of substantial assistance to the Impres- sionists, there is scant reason why those of von Rdntgen or Edison along other lines should be ignored by Expressionist and Futurist. There is, in any event, little occasion for alarm, since to no matter what lengths our restless Nietzscheans of brush, palette, and chisel may go, they cannot de- stro}^ the accumulated treasury of the past. The point is that they will add nothing thereto, unless they keep alive that primal wonder and curiosity concerning the universe, both visible and invisible, which was characteristic of the caveman, and which has proved the mainstay of art throughout successive centuries. It matters little, in the end, whether the message of art be conveyed through the employment of lines, dots, dashes, cubes, or spheres. The tech- nical idiom is something that alters with each generation, each decade, almost. What is essential is that the general public, and not a few of the painters, too, be continually awakened, shocked if necessary, into a realization of the fact that art is a living organism which must reflect the temper of its time or degenerate into a sterile and soulless formula. The Futurists, in anar- chistic frenzy, call upon us to demolish the museums and obliterate all con- nexion with an effete and futile past. No one else would be willing to ven- [ 26 ] CONTEMPORARY PAINTING ture quite so far, and yet it behoves us to inquire whether there is anything wrong with the art to which we have long been placidly accustomed. Reference has been made to the penalty that painting has been forced to pay for pursuing its policy of aloofness, for losing direct contact with daily life and need. The fact has never, it seems, been more apparent than at the present time. Not only has the breach between painter and patron grown wider, but the barrier between the artist and the public has, in cer- tain instances, become wellnigh impassable. Though neither side is wholly to blame, both are clearly at fault. Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Vorticism, and the like are not diseases, they are symptoms. For the disease itself, if such it be, one must look farther afield. Survey the achievement of the ages and you cannot fail to note that modern society offers less and less scope for that patient, often anonymous effort which fostered the master- pieces, pictorial and plastic, of preceding generations. Contemporary art is for the most part paraded before the common gaze for a few days, weeks, or months, and then immured in vast, impersonal edifices where it is inspected by the incurious and indifferent on Sundays and holidays. The conditions under which it is both produced and exhibited could scarcely be more false and unfruitful. We have in brief taken from the artist much that was for- merly his, and he doubtless feels forced to call attention to his existence in ways that are often purposely sensational. It is either immature or indurate to condemn or deride the countless isms that now and then disturb the sometimes too tranquil surface of contempor- ary art. There is in each a germ of verity and a wholesome fund of fermenta- tion. And furthermore the latter-day painter or sculptor is by no means unique in his desire to create new forms or recombine old ones. Correspond- ing changes are taking place in music, poetry, the theatre, and the dance. In confronting these more advanced manifestations of the modern spirit we should strive in as far as possible to place ourselves in the position of the artist himself, for, whatever his title to fame or oblivion, he in no sense stands alone. He is, let us remember, but the eloquent and responsive offspring of his particular day and generation. Current artistic endeavour favours the frankly intensive appeal rather than the mere materialization of external appearances. With the ancients painting remained a submissive servant. With Whistler it became an aesthetie adventure. With us it is more and more assuming the aspect of a subjective experience. [ 27 ] f THE PANAMA-CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION Panama-California Exposition, San Diego Photograph by Francis Bruguiere TOWER AND DOME OF CALIFORNIA BUILDING CRAM, GOODHUE, AND FERGUSON, ARCHITECTS [ 30 ] THE PANAMA-CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION I T must be confessed that the congenital penchant for hyperbole which obtains west of the Mississippi led one to be cautious, not alone of the Grand Canon, but of the eloquently exploited expositions at San Diego and San Francisco. Superlatives not unwarrantably make for sus- picion, yet in none of these instances was there occasion for undue conserva- tism. Like the thumb-print of God pressed into the surface of the earth so that man may forever identify His handiwork, the Canon transcends the possibilities of verbal or pictorial expression. Although by no means so ambitious as its competitor, or rather its complement, farther northward along the historic Camino Real, the Panama-California Exposition had scant reason to fear comparison with the Panama-Pacific, of which it was both the logical and chronological prologue. Restricted in area though rich in sug- gestion, the San Diego Exposition was a synthesis of the spacious Southwest. It seemed to have sprung spontaneously from the soil and the vivid race con- sciousness of those who inhabit this vast and fecund hinterland. Regional, in the sense that the recent Baltic Exposition at Malmd, and the Valencian Exposition of 1909 were regional, it was at once more concentrated and more characteristic than either of those memorable displays. Though you may have seen many expositions you have encountered none like this blue-tiled, white-walled city, set amid luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation and flanked on one side by a deeply incised arroyo, and on the other by the azure expanse of the sea. On crossing the majestic Puente Cabrillo you entered the Plaza de Cahfornia, or California Quadrangle, the architecture of which furnished the keynote of the exposition. To the left was the California Building which exemplified the cathedral type, to the right was the Fine Arts Building which conformed to the better-known mission style. These latter structures are per- manent, and are not only a credit to the exposition and municipal authorities. [ 31 ] IMPRESSIONS Panama-California Exposition, San Diego VIEW FROM ACROSS THE CANON DE CARRILLO but reveal in new and congenial light the varied talent of their designer, Mr. Bertram G. Goodhue. At San Diego you had in brief something that at once struck a picturesque and appropriate note. The remaining buildings, which were of composite authorship, all continued the Spanish-Colonial motive with conspicuous success. None of them was in the least out of harmony with the general scheme, and there was not one that did not display uncommon capacity for the assimilation and adaptation of this ornate and effective architectural style. It was impossible not to respond to the seductive flavour and opulent fancy of such an offering as confronted one at Balboa Park, a large measure of the success of which was due to the creative energy and vision of the director of works, Mr. Frank P. Allen, Jr. Climatic conditions and lavish planting effects here royally concur in assisting the architect. Almost every conceiv- able flower, shrub, and tree attains unwonted magnificence. The sun is brilliant but does not burn, and the close proximity of the sea softens and freshens the atmosphere without undue preponderance of moisture. Pro- ceed along the acacia-lined Prado which constitutes the main axis of the permanent plan, stroll under the cloisters, linger in the patios, or follow one of the countless calcadas, or pathways, skirting the crest of the hill, and you [ 32 ] Fanama-Cnlifornia Exposition, San Diego Photograph by Francis Brugui'ere ENTRANCE FACADE, CALIFORNIA BUILDING [ 33 ] THE PANAMA-CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION Panoma-California Exposition, San Diego LOOKING ACROSS THE ESPLANADE will experience the sensation of being in the gardens of a typical Mexican mission. The mind indeed travels farther back — back to the Alcazar of Sevilla, the Generalife, and to remote and colourful Byzantium. Unlike most of its predecessors, the San Diego Exposition did not convey an impres- sion of impermanency. The luxuriance of the floral and arboreal accompani- ments effectually dispelled any such feeling. Yet behind this was a distinct sense of inevitability which derived from the fact that here was something which was at one with the land and its people — a visible expression of the collective soul of the Southwest. It need scarcely be assumed, however, that this radiant city which smiled down from its green-capped acropolis came into being over night, as it were. Behind this symphony of beauty was a background of solid endeavour and serious research along widely divergent lines. Mr. Goodhue’s California Building is a successful adaptation to exposition exigencies of the impres- sively ornate cathedral at Oaxaca, Mexico. The New Mexico State Build- ing, with its more severe silhouette and massive weathered beams protruding from the exterior walls, was a free amplification of the famous adobe mission of the Indian pueblo of Acoma, the “sky city,” dating from 1699. The funda- [ 35 ] IMPRESSIONS mentally composite parentage of Spanish architecture has never been better illustrated than in these various structures where you were confronted by turns with details Roman and Rococo, Late Gothic and Renaissance, Classic and Churrigueresque. Still, despite this manifest complexity of origin and inspiration, the ensemble achieved the effect of complete unity. The very flexibility of the style employed proved its greatest asset when it came to solving problems of such a nature. You in short witnessed at San Diego the veritable revival of Spanish-Colonial architecture, and you will scarcely fail to concede that as a medium it is as perfectly adapted to the physical and social conditions of the Southwest as is the English-Colonial, or Georgian, to the needs of the East. Had the Panama-California Exposition accom- plished nothing else, this rehabilitation of our Spanish-Colonial heritage would have amply justified its existence. The same consistency of aim and idea which characterized the architec- tural features of the exposition obtained in other fields of activity. It was the intention of those in charge to show processes rather than products, and nowhere was this more significantly set forth than in the California Build- ing, which enshrined examples of the stupendous plastic legacy of the Maya civilization, and in the Indian Arts Building, which was devoted to displays of the craftsmanship of the present-day Indian of the Southwest. To begin with the deep-rooted substratum of primitive effort that stretches back into dim antiquity, and to follow its development down to modern days, entails no small amount of labour and scholarship. Eor this task the exposition authorities were fortunate in securing the services of Dr. Edgar L. Hewett and a corps of competent assistants from the Smithsonian Institution, Washing- ton. Dr. Hewett is one of that rapidly increasing number of scientists who feel the indissoluble connexion between ethnology and aesthetics. Nothing finer has thus far been accomplished than his installation of the several ex- hibits in this particular section. The collections of pottery, rugs, baskets, and domestic utensils, and the detailed series of drawings illustrating that graphic symbolism which is an inherent element in all aboriginal artistic ex- pression, were as extensive as they were stimulating. On comparing these latter with the canvases devoted to native type and scene in the Fine Arts Building, one was forced to conclude that the capacity for pictorial repre- sentation has diminished rather than increased with the advent of our latter- day art schools and academies. [ 36 ] Panama-California Exposition, San Diego A MISSION PATIO SOUTHERN COUNTIES BUILDING [ 37 ] /rf < 1 •V THE PANAMA CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION You can scarcely expect perfection, even in such an exposition as that at San Diego, and it is in the choice of paintings for this same Fine Arts Build- ing that one may point to a certain lapse from an otherwise consistently maintained standard. It is not that the exhibitors in question are not ad- mirable artists. It is simply that their particular contribution did not fit into what in other respects seemed a carefully matured programme. San Diego is so rich in the fundamental sources of beauty and feeling, that, had Panama-California Exposition, San Diego COMMERCE AND INDUSTRIES BUILDINGS there been no paintings whatever on view, one would have had scant cause for complaint. The welcome absence of the customary flatulent and dropsical statuary, which was such a happy feature of the exterior arrangements, might well have been supplemented by the exclusion of the sophisticated canvas. Intensive rather than extensive in appeal, basing itself frankly upon local interest and tradition, conscious of its inheritance and looking with confidence toward the future, the Panama-California Exposition proved a model of its kind. If this gleaming little city perched upon its green-crested mesa taught anything, it taught that the most precious things in life and art are those which lie nearest the great, eloquent heart of nature. The subtle process of interaction that forever goes silently on between man and his surroundings, and the identity between that which one sees and feeds upon and that which one produces, are facts which you found convincingly vindicated by the San [ 39 ] IMPRESSIONS Diego Exposition. It was more than a mere show-window of the Southwest. Alike in its architecture and its specific offerings it typified the richness and romance not alone of New Spain but of immemorial America. There is every reason to hope that the expositions of the future may, consciously or unconsciously, pattern themselves upon that of San Diego. We have for generations been surfeited with ambitious international and universal undertakings which invariably leave in their wake a sense of physical fatigue and mental confusion, not to say chaos. The scramble for cosmopolitanism is in itself one of the surest indications of provinciality. It behoves us in matters aesthetic to foster individual, independent initiative, as well as to familiarize ourselves with the achievement of our neighbours from overseas. The lesson which may be learned from the simple, silent craftsman of the Southwest — the native weaver or potter — is one that may well be taken to heart. Panama-California Exposition, San Diego ENTRANCE TO THE VARIED INDUSTRIES BUILDING [ 40 ] THE PANAMA PACIFIC EXPOSITION Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco SCULPTURE AT ENTRANCE OF THE FESTIVAL HALL BY SHERRY E. FRY THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION T he ideals which animated the makers of the Panama-Pacific Ex- position were different from those that served to inspire the creators of the Panama-California. It was not simply the civilization west of the Rockies which they aimed to exploit. Their scope was not local, nor even national. It was international. Confronted by such a situation the architects, sculptors, and painters were forced to extend their field of activity and broaden their sympathies. No single style would have sufficed. Diverse factors had to be pressed into service, and out of this diversity it was necessary to evolve a sense of harmonious unity. More practical than traditional, the problem entailed tact, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Though it was difficult save in a broad way to place restrictions upon form, it was quite possible to control the element of colour, and herein lies the exposition’s claim to originality. Festal and jubilant in detail, the Panama-Pacific was brilliantly chromatic in general aspect. The whole was fused into a colour fantasia at once logical and agreeable. Had its magic been dispelled the ensemble would have lapsed into something closely re- sembling ornate commonplaceness. A preliminary stroll along the principal concourses and through the main courts was sufficient to convince one of the eclectic character of the architecture of the San Francisco Exposition. Entering from Scott Street you found your- self in a stately formal garden which was French in inspiration. To the left was the Palace of Horticulture, Byzantine in origin and Gallic in ornamentation. On the right was Festival Hall, which recalled the Theatre des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Directly facing you was the Tower of Jewels, which based itself upon various Italian Renaissance prototypes. Recalling the spacious area in front of St. Peter’s in Rome, the Court of the Universe was also Italian Renais- sance in persuasion, while the pardonably pretentious Column of Progress [ 43 ] IMPRESSIONS resembled similar shafts dedicated to Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. It would be superfluous to trace in detail the genealogy of the exposition architecture. You had the intricacy of Spanish Gothic, the massive simplicity of the Romanesque, the fertility of the Renaissance, and that serenity of spirit which remains the imperishable legacy of the Greeks. From the standpoint of serious criticism, if such an attitude be not incompatible with our theme, the best efforts were the Palace of Horticulture and the Palace of Fine Arts. The former was one of the most diverting and satisfactory of the entire group. The latter, for breadth of conception and nobility of design, stood unap- proached. A special feature was made of the several contiguous courts, all of which were given euphonious names. They varied in merit, and in general may be said to have been more expositional than inspirational. There were eleven units in the central plan, eight of which were assembled within the so-called “walled city.” To each of these, the basic tonality of which was the now popular travertine, the director of colour applied his favourite tints. Beyond question the result was stimulating, and, in the main, successfnl. The least variegated, and most effective, was the Palace of Horti- culture, where the only colour used was lattice green. In a building such as the Palace of Fine Arts the structural integrity was not enhanced by the profuse employment of ochre, verde antique, burnt orange, and Pompeian red. Granting the ephemeral nature of the task in hand it nevertheless seems that colour should on principle be less superficial than inherent. Mr. Guerin’s inspiration was frankly scenic. He gave ns a pastel city, joyously poly- chromatic, replete with beauty, and of rainbow evanescence. It is difficult to plan an exposition such as the Panama-Pacific without facing certain serious issues, not the least of which may be designated as the plastic problem. Boldly to suppress sculpture as they did at San Diego was of course out of the question in an undertaking of similar pretension. There was apparentl}'^ nothing to do save adhere to the customary symbolic tradition, to fall back upon perennial abstractions more or less loosely em- bodied in relief or in the round. The sculpture at San Francisco, while suffering from the usual congenital defects, was, however, more closely related to the architectural ensemble than has frequently been the case. Grate- fnl mention should be made in this connexion of Mr. Putnam’s Mermaids, adorning the fountains in the South Gardens, of Mrs. Burroughs’s Fountain of Youth in the east tower colonnade, of Mr. iManship’s four groups in the Court [ 44 ] [ 45 ] PALACE OF HORTICULTURE BAKEWELL AND BROWN, ARCHITECTS THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION of the Universe, and Mr. Fraser’s The End of the Trail at the entrance to the Court of Palms. As for the generality of the work in this particular medium it scarcely, save in a few instances, transcended mediocrity. One contem- plated such set pieces as the Nations of the East and the Nations of the West with but scant enthusiasm, and when it came to monuments like the Genius of Creation one conceded the lofty seriousness of purpose while at the same time regretting that such concepts have in large measure ceased to move or inspire. After exhibiting manifest promise, our sculpture seems to have remained stationary. Thus far we have assuredly failed to produce a mighty emotionalist in marble, such as Rodin, or a sturdy-souled apostle of labour, such as Constantin Meunier. What has been said of the sculpture at the Panama-Pacific Exposition applies in a measure to the mural decoration. These ambitious panels seemed as a general thing to lack conviction. Mr. Dodge’s apotheosis of the Atlan- tic and Pacific in the Tower of Jewels, and Mr. Brangwyn’s series dedicated to the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water were distinctly better than w^as the work of Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco COLONNADE AND PALACE OF FINE ARTS BERNARD R. MAYBECK, ARCHITECT [ 47 ] IMPRESSIONS Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco DISCOVERY— MURAL PAINTING IN THE TOWER OF JEWELS BY W. DE Lf:FTWICH UOOGE their colleagues. Full of verve and true to the limitations of his craft, Mr. Dodge achieved a fine effect. iVhvays opulent in line and ample in pattern, Mr. Brangwyn’s subjects, each of which was treated in duplicate, revealed this artist in congenial vein. He takes us back, in these broadly handled com- positions, to the days when the world was young and the primal wonder of man began to manifest itself in countless questing ways. There is a definite pictorial idea in each of these rich-toned panels. The figures group them- selves logically and move in unison. You are never in doubt as to the painter's meaning. His method is not that of the vague symbolist. It is that of the earnest-minded seeker after the inherent possibilities of graphic represen- tation. Conceived in less serious spirit, the other murals served their pur- pose sufficiently well. Mr Simmons’s scheme was full of technical novelty and interest. Mr. Reid’s decorations in the dome of the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts constituted a joyous cycle, and Mr. Hassam's eontribution to the Court of Palms was instinct with lyric lightness. Whatever their shortcomings in the matter of fundamental ideas or depth of feeling, these latter men approached their task in appropriately festal mood, which, after all, was the important consideration in the given cireumstance. [ 48 ] THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION While it is difficult to condense one’s impressions of the Panama-Pacific Exposition into summary phrases, it nevertheless appears that its ultimate significance will prove social and psychological as well as aesthetic. The love of form and colour which you here saw displayed in such prodigal fashion suggested something pagan and Dionysian. Demonstrations of this character do not date from to-day. They are as old as humanity itself. They hark back to Rome and to Greece, to the basin of the Nile and the banks of the Euphrates. In spirit this exposition was akin to the pageants and processionals of bygone times. Phoenix-like, a city rose from darkness and disaster, and her children united in offering their tribute of appreciation and propitiation. There was downright inspiration in such a magnificent dis- play of energy, such a marvellous demonstration of recuperative power. The opening of the Canal to the traffic of the universe was an excuse, a mere pretext; the essential point is that here was a community .teeming with energy BY ROBERT I. AITKEN Copyright, The Panama-Pacific Exposition Co. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: DETAIL FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF THE EARTH [ 49 ] IMPRESSIONS and taking legitimate pride in a phenomenal achievement. And such emotions found fitting semblance in visible form, in architecture, sculpture, and the heightened eloquence of tint and tone. While San Diego kept modestly within the confines of a concise and char- acterful local tradition, San Francisco proclaimed herself a world creation. That element of cosmopolitanism which is by no means her least claim to at- tention was constantly to the fore in the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Colour, all things considered, proved the dominant contribution of the undertaking as a whole, and this is consistent, for colour is the keynote alike of the Pacific slope and of the spacious and vibrant Southwest. In the East our taste for chromatic expression has been modified by generations of Puritan and Quaker constraint. West of the Rockies it is more free and spontaneous. You find it in nature and in man. You find it in the vanishing Indian, in the mellifluous place names bestowed by the early padres and pobladores, and in the racy phraseology of the prospector who first opened the region to his less intrepid transcontinental kinsfolk. Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco THE HARVEST— SCTLPTURE BY PAUL MANSHIP [ 50 ] FOUR DECORATIONS BY FRANK BRANGWYN For the East Court of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco rilHE panels wei’e painted for the ambulatory that surrounded the open court, of which Louis C. Mullgardt was the architect. They were placed in the four corners, one on each wall, where it made the corner, and each measured twenty- five feet by twelve feet. The canvases reflect the spirit of humanity and of work. Mr. Brangwyn chose as subjects the four elements — Air, Earth, Fire, Water — each represented by two panels. Copyright, Panama-Pacific International Exposition Co. AIll— THE WINDMILL BY FRANK BRANGWYN EARTH I.— DANCING THE GRAPES BY FRANK BRANGWYN EARTH II.— THE FRUIT PICKERS BY FRANK BRANGWYN Copyright, tanama-Pacific International Exposition Co, WATER— THE FOUNTAIN BY FRANK BRANGWYN NIGHT EFFECTS AT THE FAIR Photographs showing the nocturnal lighting that proved a distinctive feature of the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco COLONNADE FRONTING PALACE OF FINE ARTS [ 55 ] '•V Panama-Facific Exposition, San Francisco PART OF THE COURT OF THE FOUR SEASONS [ 57 ] :oj \ If [ 59 ] LAGOON, ROTUNDA, AND PALACE OF FINE ARTS Panama^Pacific Exposition^ San Francisco THE TOWER OF JEWELS [ 61 ] Panama-Pacific Exposition^ San Francisco EAST facade, horticulture BUILDING Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco COURT OF THE FOUR SEASONS [ 63 ] SCULPTURE NATIVE AND FOREIGN THE END OF THE TRAIL BY JAMES EARLE FRASER [ 66 ] SCULPTURE NATIVE AND FOREIGN T here can be scant question but that sculpture as displayed at our current exhibitions fails to attract the general public. In place of being a focus of interest it is usually surveyed with ill-dis- guised indifference or ignored save by a slender fraction of the chosen few. Unless something of a sensational character be on view the plastic arts do not compete upon even terms with painting, and are hence relegated to draughty anteroom or sepulchral subcellar. Though contin- ually seeing sculpture treated in inauspicious fashion we have come to regard the statue, the relief, or the bust, as different phases of the same necessary evil. They are forms of art which, in the popular mind at least, do not convincingly justify their existence. Such a condition of affairs naturally does not date from to-day, nor are its causes to be found in the immediate past. Sculpture since its initial florescence has submitted to various transitions. Marble was the inevitable medium in which the Hellenic ideal of beauty found expression. The jubilant richness of the Renaissance attained its apotheosis in bronze, while during the rose-tinted dawn of Gothic age the anonymous artist chiselled his naive fusion of paganism and piety into the surface of stone. In due course, how- ever, plastic representation, being restricted to considerations of form alone, found it increasingly difficult to reflect the complexity of contemporary feeling and aspiration. Cradled in joyous serenity, sculpture could not readily take upon itself the sorrows and mortification of the Christian faith. Its day of glory had passed, and thus painting, with its sensuous film of colour, and faculty of direct transposition, gradually wrested the primacy from its sister art and became the chosen handmaiden of Church and State. While one can scarcely contend that sculpture suffered an eclipse, it can- not be denied that from this period onward it ceased to enjoy its one-time [ 67 ] IMPRESSIONS undisputed supremacy. Stray figures still haunted secluded, vine-covered niche, or graced the fountains and avenues of formal park and garden. Pagan laughter still lingered in the gay wantons of Clodion and Falconet, but. the role played by the plastic arts was henceforth subsidiary. And yet it is not this perceptible loss of prestige which is responsible for the present plight of sculpture. It is rather due to that radical misconception of the functions of the art which followed close in the wake of the so-called classic revival. Turbulent and grandiose as he indubitably was, Michelangelo proved a less baneful influence than did such smug falsifiers of the antique spirit as Canova and Thorvaldsen. The assiduous imitation of these palpable imitators, and the persistent placing of statue and bust in inept and illogical surroundings, were the chief factors in the progressive alienation of sculpture from popular sympathy. Ruthlessly wrenched from their original setting, and displayed as mere detached curios with no feeling for background, either artistic or historical, it is scant wonder that these pathetic fugitives from a forgotten world held no message for the masses. Sculpture is a legitimate child of light and air. It is indissolubly wedded to an architectural, or at least a decorative ensemble, and, once this precious connexion is severed, the plastic spell is for ever broken. You will readily concede that sculpture survived numerous changes both social and aesthetic. It managed, as we have seen, to adjust itself to various media. It passed from pagan blitheness to appealing fraternalism, and came bravely down to modern times only to falter in the end through a series of unfortunate misapprehensions as to its true mission. The most conspicuous offenders in this respect have been, it cannot be too often repeated, the museum directors and other custodians who have continued to house the priceless heritage of antique civilization with callous incomprehension. Stark halls and dingy corridors have been congested with genuine originals or chalky casts that struggle in piteous futility for sunlight and the flash of green foliage. The intimate relationship between plastic form and nature has been almost wholly neglected, and, in consequence, few of us can be blamed for growing cold and unresponsive to the claims of this noblest and most exalted of all phases of artistic expression. Previous to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 there was, strictly speaking, no sculpture worthy the appellation in America. While such primitives as William Rush and John Frazee practised their profession with commendable [ 68 ] Y,OUNG GIRL WITH WATER JAR BY JOSEPH BERNARD French Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco SCULPTURE American Section^ Panama-Pacific Exposition^ San Francisco THE OUTCAST BY ATTILIO PICCIRILLI integrity of purpose, they were hardly more than ill-equipped craftsmen. Whatever their shortcomings they are, nevertheless, entitled to an ampler measure of consideration than their pretentious successors, Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers, who espoused the emasculated classicism so much in vogue during the early decades of the last century. Drifting farther and farther from the true Attic spirit, which is essentially concrete, they led the taste of the day into a realm of vapid abstraction. The sense of personality was sacri- ficed to a smooth, characterless finish. The figures showed no real vitality, and in general conception were the antithesis of that which is inherently sculptural. It was not indeed until our leading artists turned from Rome to Paris, from the immemorial dust of the city by the Tiber to the purple haze which hangs over the Seine, that conditions betrayed substantial im- provement. [ 71 ] IMPRESSIONS If it was the Paris-trained artists who, during the ensuing interval, made possible the splendid plastic pageant which was such an inspiring feature of the ^York^s Columbian Exposition of 1893, it was likewise certain Paris men, with the assistance of a few home-taught talents, who were responsible for the results witnessed at San Francisco. Sculpture here for the first time in the annals of American art assumed its rightful place in a broadly conceived decorative scheme. Not only was it admirably correlated with archi- tecture; it was also accorded its proper position as a component part of the landscape. Having already touched upon the sculpture at the Panama- Pacific Exposition in its relation to the several buildings, we may turn to its application to more informal outdoor problems. While the ornamental and monumental sculpture at San Francisco was but a trifle less banal than cus- tomary, the various groups and single figures dotted about the grounds disclosed certain engaging effects. They appeared to the best advantage when most closely identified with natural surroundings. Those which created the finest impression were in fact those that seemed spontaneously to spring from their backgrounds. Sculpture of this character should be the epitome of earth, sky, tree, and plant. It is nature herself, it is the veritable spirit of place, which should suggest to the artist his theme and treatment, for only thus can he work with that sympathy and comprehension which make for lasting achievement. A leisurely, receptive stroll in the proximity of the Palace of Fine Arts was sufficient to vindicate the above contention. Silhouetted against luxuriant foliage or warm-toned wall surface were numerous familiar figures that never before appeared to like advantage. They are creatures of the open, these fauns, nymphs, shepherd lads, and playful water sprites. They demand, one and all, the shifting caress of light and shade and the fitful stir of the wind. ^Yhile there are various matters upon which the Department of Fine Arts cannot be congratulated, it merits, in this particular instance, ungrudging praise. Mistakes were made, the most flagrant being the depositing of Mr. Grafly’s Pioneer Mother stolidly in front of the main portal of the Palace of Fine Arts, but, on the whole, few exceptions can be taken to the general propriety of the scheme. The climax of this happy outdoor treatment was attained in Ralph Stackpole’s Shrine of Inspiration, which rose upon a slight eminence in front of the rotunda. One saw in this compo- sition an inherently sculptural conception given the requisite poetie and imaginative significance through the unique beauty of its entourage. [ 72 ] Ph >h ^ pq [ 73 ] OWS AND THEIR YOUNG DAGFIN WERENSKIOLD International Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Photograph by W. M. van der Weyde [ 75 ] COUNT TOLSTOY BY PAUL TROUBETZKOY SCULPTURE Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco AQUATIC NYMPHS. COURT OF THE UNnT:RSE BY LEO LENTELLI The development of American sculpture since the somewhat dim, inde- terminate days when Patience Wright, of Bordentown, first began modelling wax portraits and silhouettes of celebrities, local and national, is fraught with vicissitudes. Reference has already been made to the Canova-Thorvaldsen period, though it is doubtful whether this particular epoch was more inimical to taste than was the era of the monument manufacturers which followed the conclusion of the Civil War. We have sinned grievously in this latter regard. We have disfigured many a noble space and obstructed countless streets and public squares, yet we are somehow learning our lesson aright. At Phila- delphia in 1876 sculpture was not identified with architecture. It was some- thing apart, isolated from the ensemble. At Chicago it was employed in festal fashion after the manner of the French. A still further advance was recorded at San Francisco. You were herewith not confronted with separate works the significance of which it was difficult, if not impossible, to decipher. [ 77 ] IMPRESSIONS The aim was to fuse all the arts into a single eloquent, unified, impres- sion. And while the possibilities of plastic form were not so keenly realized or so consistently applied as were those of colour, a distinct improve- ment was made upon anything of the sort hitherto attempted on so ambitious a scale. We shall not linger to review in detail the miscellaneous assortments of native sculpture which were immured in the Palace of Fine Arts. Much of this work being already well known, we shall proceed to a consideration of the various foreign sections, for, after all, it is not specific issues, but general out- lines, which we aim to trace in these brief sketches. Many of the principal nations represented in the Palace of Fine Arts also possessed separate pavilions of their own, in the embellishment of which sculpture played an appropriate part. The most elaborate of these structures was that of Italy, and it was also the most traditional. No fresh problems were entailed in the construction of this Renaissance palace or the disposal of the numerous statues, ornamental groups, carved seats, etc., in the courts and corridors of this imposing pile. It was the treasury of the past that was alone drawn upon, so in order to see what contemporary Italian sculptors were accomplishing, it was neces- sary to return to the Fine Arts Palace. The sculpture of Italy, like that of other European countries, to-day ex- emplifies two distinct tendencies. The one instances that reversion to archaic tradition which finds its most acute manifestation in the work of certain of the younger French artists and their transalpine imitators. The other illustrates that return to the freedom of Renaissance ideals which attains its supreme expression with such masters as Auguste Rodin and Leonardo Bistolfi. Thus far the Italians have not achieved anything of moment in the former category. It is Bistolfi and his followers who are producing the noblest work of contemporary Italy, for they have rejected an effete Greco- Roman heritage and turned, like Rodin, to fresher sources of feeling and in- spiration. Owing to the regrettable absence of Bistolfi, the sculpture in the Italian Section at the Panama-Pacific Exposition lost not a little significance. A certain florid elegance characterized Arturo Dazzi’s Portrait of a Lady. Giovanni Nicolini showed power and mastery of design, and in Ermenegildo Luppi’s Grandmother’s Idol one noted a suggestion of the nervous modelling and direct, graphic method so brilliantly employed by Prince Paul Troubetzkoy. There was, however, little else of importance. hile the contributions of [ 78 ] Italian Section, Panaina-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco GRANDMOTHER’S IDOL BY ERMENEGILDO LUPPI [ 79 ] IMPRESSIONS Professor Ferrari commanded attention, and The Kiss, Michelo Vedani, paid eloquent tribute to Rodin, one was not inspired by the balance of the offering. Considering their rich endowment and incomparable background the latter-day Italians scarcely occupy the position they should in modern sculpture. They have not succeeded in escaping the influence of a certain decadent formalism which seems to destroy individual effort and initiative. Like that of Italy, the sculpture contributed by France to the Panama- Pacific Exposition was on view partly in the national Pavilion, and partly in the Palace of Fine Arts. The exalted names such as Rodin, Bartholome, Bour- delle, Dalou, Mercie, and the like were nearly all represented by one or more subjects. One missed, it is true, Falguiere, who oddly enough, figured in the painting section onl^u One also deplored the absence of Maillol, but, taken together, the display evinced variety and interest. Special prominence was by the way accorded the medallic art, a department in which the French have attained unique distinction. It might well have been inferred that the master modeller of Meudon would triumph over his colleagues in any collection of contemporary French, or other sculpture, and such was the case at San Francisco. In the spacious courtyard of the Pavilion sat the Penseur brooding and stressful. AYithin was a series of portrait busts which, in the final analysis, will doubtless consti- tute Rodin’s chief title to immortality. The general average of merit was above that of Italy. There was less perfunctory work, and distinct significance attached to such essays in simplified form as Joseph Bernard’s Young AYoman with a Water Jar and Rene Quillivic’s The Foot Bath. In these figures, both of which reveal obvious sympathy with the modern archaistic spirit, we note a legitimate indebtedness to Aristide Maillol. It is quite frankly a wel- come tendency, and one which, if it does not relapse into mere mannerism, should produce valuable results. Had you pursued the impressionistic rather than the scholastic method and passed with not too rigid scrutiny through the remaining galleries you would have come upon certain works of more than common interest. In the Swedish Section the powerful and broadly monumental conceptions of David Ldstrom dominated all others. Most modern sculpture is fictile, that of Edstrom is glyptic. He gets his effects from the hardest granite, not the ready tractability of clay. The display of sculpture in the Netherlands Section, while not otherwise important, was notable through the inclusion of three [ 80 ] O • AtiK French Section, Panama^Pacific Exposition, San Francisco THE FOOT BATH BY RENE QUILLIVIC [ 81 ] SCULPTURE objects by Charles van Wyk, a young artist who possesses something of Meunier’s vigour of handling and deep sympathy for the downtrodden. The generous representation accorded Hans St. Lerche, and the decorative panels by Dagfin Werenskiold, were the features of the Norwegian exhibit, while the chief points of attraction in the Argentine room were the work of Juan Carlos Oliva Navarro and Alberto Lagos. And, finally. Prince Trou- betzkoy, fluent and spirited as ever, furnished the recpiisite flavour of cos- mopolitanism to the International Section. You will presumably have noted in the sculpture as seen at the Panama- Pacific Exposition not a few encouraging signs. The endeavour to escape from a fatal fixity of type, the attempt to attain a more personal expression, and the realization that sculpture must not stand alone in sterile, melancholy isola- tion are welcome tendencies. We can never, and we should never, aim to recapture the antique spirit. If sculpture is to survive, it must be brought into closer accord with contemporary feelings and ideas. The desire, and the power, to see objects plastically should be more consciously cultivated, for to this craving sculpture will surely not fail to respond. It was thus when the human form first emerged from the vase of potter, and the relief evolved from rude hieroglyph, and thus it is to-day. Swedish Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, Safi Francisco SPHINX BY DAVID EDSTROiM [S3] AMERICAN PAINTING TORSO BY ARTHUR B. CARLES [ 86 ] AMERICAN PAINTING P ICTURE a colonnade over a thousand feet in length sweeping ma- jestically around the tree-lined marge of a gleaming lagoon, with, behind the colonnade, a vast, crescent-shaped structure containing a hundred or more separate rooms, and you have some idea of the Palace of Fine Arts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Viewed from the opposite side of the lagoon, the rotunda fronting the encircling columns re- called, in its deeply romantic suggestion, Rocklin’s Island of the Dead. The sense of antiquity was there, the silence, the remoteness from the world of actuality, and the summons to a realm where one surrenders to the magic of a mysterious, indefinable beauty. Such was the appeal exercised by this memorable fusion of elements traditional, natural, and frankly inspirational. The Palace of Fine Arts seemed indeed an island set amid a shimmering sea of colour, a haven where the spirit sought grateful repose. This island was not however Die Toteninsel of Teutonic imagination, nor was it the Cythere of more ingratiating Gallic fancy. If it was impossible to repress a feeling of exaltation as you approached this building which, on the outside, promised so much, it was equally difficult to dispel a sense of disillusion on examining its contents as a whole. In the rooms devoted to American painting classic calm and romantic reverie gave place, despite belated attempts at rehabilita- tion, to something closely resembling confused incompletion. While there were certain sequestered spots where beauty was successfully wooed and won, the combined impression was far from inspiring. We all realized that there were mitigating circumstances, that it was difficult to assemble an exhibition of pictures during a world crisis, not to say cataclysm, yet nevertheless such restrictions did not apply so rigorously to the American section. Moreover, in general arrangement and not infrequently in questions of specific choice, the native display proved inferior to many of the foreign rooms. The [871 IMPRESSIONS average of merit attained by Sweden, for example, and the installation of the Swedish, Dutch, and Italian exhibits were notable instances of what, despite unpropitious conditions, the Europeans were able to accomplish. Even a casual stroll through the galleries was sufficient to convince one that in the matter of ambitious international art exhibitions we are moving consistently backward. The World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 was superior to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904, which, in turn, was manifestly better than the recent Panama-Pacific. It is doubtless ungracious to possess a somewhat extensive perspective, or to recall with vivid freshness how paintings are displayed at the Grosse Berliner, the Secession exhibitions of Berlin and Vienna, in the more char- acteristic capitals of Prague and Budapest, or in such cities as Stockholm, Dtisseldorf, Dresden, Munich, and Venice. Modern pictorial emplacement originated in Brussels at the Libre esthetique, and from thence passed on to Austria and the rest of Europe. Though historically part of the decora- tive regeneration which derived from William Morris, neither the English nor the Americans grasped its significance, nor can they be said to do so to the present day. Quite obviously we Anglo-Saxons are a generation behind in such matters. Burlington House in London and the Vanderbilt Gallery in New York are annually the scene of the most antiquated hanging through- out the civilized world. A few institutions, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Albright Gallery, Buffalo, the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, have made measurable advances during the past few seasons, yet even so, the essential principles of appropriate instal- lation are with us but imperfectly appreciated and ineffectually practised. Assiduous amateurs of contemporary painting encountered little that was novel in the American section of this same classico-romantic Palace of Fine Arts. We shall not, at this date, attempt an inventory- of the several rooms, but rather, if possible, summarize the salient features of the exhibition as a whole. The task is a simple one. It is primarily a question as to whether the general public did or did not leave the building having experienced that great aesthetic adventure so eagerly looked forward to. Did they discover something new, or was their customary attitude toward art merely amplified and diversified? In brief did the director in his selection and disposal of the thousands of works pictorial and plastic enforce, or did he enfeeble, the fine emotional fervour, the thrill of expectancy created by the architect? [ 88 ] American Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of the Artist MME. GAUTREAU | BY JOHN S. SARGENT [ 89 ] AMERICAN PAINTING American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of The Lotos Club THE COMING STORM BY WINSLOW HOMER After an extended study of the public, as well as the paintings, one is face to face with the conclusion that there was something amiss with what may be generically termed the San Francisco system. Despite a presumable predisposition for the production of their countrymen and the personality of the various artists, our good people from West or East did not experience the requisite reaction from the American section. The reason is not far to seek. Whatever be the extenuating circumstances, and in every exhibition there are extenuating circumstances, the collective impression has proved inconclusive. Starting with the magnanimous, not to say merciful, assump- tion that all which met the eye was worthy of inclusion in such an exhibition, there was still much to be desired. The methods employed failed to disclose the decorative significance of a given canvas. We were shown what a picture was, but not what a picture was for. Suspended in dual, sometimes even triple, alignment, the efi^ect was stupefying rather than stimulating. Save in a few instances the backgrounds were dull, grimy, and unprepossessing, and it was hence impossible for many of the works to appear to advantage. [ 91 ] IMPRESSIONS The situation would seem to resolve itself into a question of imperfect sympathy. A painting either is or is not an expression of creative emo- tion, something into which the artist has put his version of the visible world or his vague aspiration toward that great, beckoning beauty which is the heritage of all people in all ages. To distribute canvases about the walls like so many unrelated specimens is not to accord painting its requisite spir- itual or social, not to speak of aesthetic, consideration. It is true that the practice is a venerable one, yet it is also true that it is being modified and rectified in virtually every country from Scandinavia to South America. There seems, however, a certain fatality attached to us when we appear beside the foreigners on the occasion of important international exhibitions. One recalls with pathos the moribund American room at the Venice Exposition of 1909, and the more pretentious fiasco at the Roman Esposizione Internazionale two years later. We do not realize the importance of proper spacing or proper setting for our vast and varied pictorial output. Our exposition and museum directors are doing little along these lines to bridge the ever-widen- ing abyss between the producing artist and the aspiring public. They con- tinue to employ methods that are obsolete. They fail, above all, to appre- ciate the fundamental affinity between beauty and utility. As may be inferred from the foregoing, the best features of the American section were to be found not in the galleries devoted to miscellaneous work, but in those dedicated to individual masters, of which there were, fortunately, not a few. Of the deceased painters, separate rooms or walls were allotted to Whistler, Edwin A. Abbey, Winslow Homer, John La Earge, Theodore Robinson, John H. Twachtman and others, while prominent among the living thus to be honoured were Erank Duveneck, Gari Melchers, William M. Chase, John S. Sargent, J. Alden Weir, Edmund C. Tarbell, Childe Hassam, and Edward W. Redfield. The insubstantial art of Whistler, so exacting, so persistent in its search for preciosity, was seen to special advan- tage in the full-length likeness of ]Mrs. Huth and a series of panels from the collection of Charles L. Freer, Esq. The room was small, and, with the excep- tion of the portrait already mentioned, the subjects were restricted in size. The effect was none the less one of manifest propriety. It was a secluded little sanctuary to taste, a corner where one could commune with a frail though ardent spirit, one whose legacy to posterity is slender, yet imperishable. We shall not attempt to characterize each of the above artists. Abbey, who never found paint a congenial or spontaneous medium, and La Earge, [ 92 ] American Stciion^ Panama^Pacijic Exposition, SanFrancisco Courtesy of the estate of Mrs. E. M. Cobden. NOTE BLANCHE: STUDY OF JO BY JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER [ 93 ] AMERICAN PAINTING American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco SUMMER BY FREDERIC C. FRIESEKE who ranks at best as a studious, eclectic amateur, call for scant comment. The robust naturalism of Winslow Homer was but insufficiently indicated, though one had, in compensation, a serene, clear-toned wall from which shone the radiant masterpieces of Theodore Robinson. The pioneer Ameri- can impressionist painted modest themes — bits of winding canal, glimpses of white cottage nestled against green hillside, peasant girls musing under spread- ing apple bough or stretched prone upon the grass. There was no pose, no hint of pretence here. Robinson went to the heart of the scene, however simple and unambitious it may have seemed. Out of little he made much. He painted light, air, and colour. The purest lyric talent we have thus far produced, he sang a song steeped in outdoor brightness and objective tran- quillity. Starting from a somewhat similar point of view, that which, in Robinson, remained analysis, became with Twachtman a species of creative synthesis. His opalescent panels are veritable improvisations wherein the essentials of impressionism have been superseded by a subtle abstraction frankly suggestive of the Japanese. Both men died in the fullness of attain- [ 95 ] IMPRESSIONS ment, and you have merely to survey the walls of any current exhibition in order to realize how sadly we miss certain elements of taste, sensibility, and aesthetic integrity which were the touchstones of these two brief but signi- ficant careers. There can be nothing invidious in the contention that the chief success among living American painters represented at San Francisco was achieved by Ph-ank Duveneck. Though reminiscent of the Munich Academy manner and the murky tonality of Piloty and the Italo-Bavarians of some four decades ago, Mr. Duveneck’s work is by no means devoid of personality. You will doubtless recall Leibl in confronting certain of his portraits. You may here and there encounter echoes of von Lenbach or the sumptuous Yenetians, yet always you will meet the eye and hand, the mind and mani- pulative mastery of Duveneck himself. As far as the general public is con- cerned, and the public is, alas, seldom recognizant in such cases, Frank Duveneck has of late years been merely a respected and honoured memory. The San P'rancisco exhibition served to rehabilitate his name and ensure for him that position in the development of American painting which he so rightfully merits. it Afnerican Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of Samuel T. Shaw, Esq. IN THE SUN by THEODORE ROBINSON [ 96 ] AMERICAN PAINTING American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco POPPIES BY ROBERT W. VONNOH While adequately presented, less interest attached to the work of our periodic prize winners than to certain more progressive talents. In the com- pany of such men as Tarbell, Hassam, Metcalf, and Redfield, one experiences a sense of quotidian familiarity. They are specialists, and may always be counted upon to maintain prescribed standards. Their production re- veals few departures and no surprises. It is consequently to the younger element that we must turn in order to gather a less perfunctory impression of contemporary painting, and in this connexion may be cited the names of Frederic C. Frieseke, Hayley Lever, Jonas Lie, Walter Griffin, George W. Bellows, and Arthur B. Carles. Mr. Frieseke proved the official as well as popular success of the exhibition. By no means profound, or divulging any disquieting depth of feeling, his canvases are nevertheless captivating in their sheer, bright-toned beauty, their luminous iridescence, whether of boudoir or sun-flecked river bank. In Mr. Lever we discern a more sub- stantial achievement, and note a special gift for colour draughtsmanship and a sense of rhythm as rare as it is welcome. There can be no doubt but that the complexion of current art is fast changing. To these changes the public is rapidly becoming accustomed, more rapidly perhaps than exposition promoters and museum officials realize. [ 97 ] IMPRESSIONS We are casting off our congenital conservatism and dependence. The Fon- tainebleau-Barbizon tradition which so long darkened and sentimentalized native landscape, and the aesthetic anaemia that emanated from the delicate organism of Whistler, have been succeeded by fresher, more invigorating tendencies. While one cannot describe the paintings at the Panama-Pacific Exposition as being in any degree radical or modernistic, still they were suffi- ciently indicative of the fact that art in America is progressing along normal, wholesome lines. Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, and the like were ex- cluded from the native section. You did not encounter upon the walls of the Palace of Fine Arts any third, or fourth, dimensional experiments. There were it is true a few arsenical nudes in evidence, yet as a rule there was nothing that could perturb the cautious or timorous. We appear, on the whole, to display less fervour and less creative fecundity than do our foreign colleagues. The sense of style is with us not so promi- nently developed, nor do we seem so individual in our general outlook. Such considerations are not superficial. They are fundamental. Our art begins at the top instead of surging irresistibly up from the wellsprings of nature and character. We betray the effects of an imperfectly established social equi- librium. We lack on one hand the sturdy substratum of peasant endeavour which the Europeans so abundantly possess, and, on the other, that central authority which must always constitute the final court of appeal. While, as was so eloquently demonstrated at San Francisco, we have accomplished memorable things in architecture, sculpture, and painting, we must not be misled by mere exposition enthusiasm into believing that the prize of beauty has been, or can ever be, definitively captured. And as you lingered outside the galleries in the fading light, with the stars mirrored in the surface of the pool, and the swans gliding silently about, you doubtless thought less of Cythere than of Die Toteninsel. The dream of a splendid exhibition of contemporary painting, of something uniquely educa- tional and uniquely inspirational, had meanwhile vanished. The architect, with the perspective of the ages behind him, succeeded, in his visible suggestion of human aspiration and human futility, in giving us something more subtle than that vouchsafed by the art director. The one was a prophecy, the other merely a promise. [ 98 ] American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of the Cincinnati Museum Association. WHISTLING BOY BY FRANK DUYENECK [ 99 ] American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of Louis B. McCagg, Esq. SPANISH COURTYARD BY JOHN S. SARGENT [ 101 ] American Section, Payiama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of James Deering, Esq. Copyright, The Detroit Publishing Co. MOTHER AND CHILD BY GARI MELCHERS [ 103 ] a 'X! :z; o a X! rXJ a c [ 105 ] American Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition^ San Francisco [ 107 ] PORTRAIT BY CECILIA BEAUX Avierican Section, Panama-Pacific Expositioji, San Francisco THE ICE STORM BY ALLEN TUCKER [ 109 ] [Ill] American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco ST. IVES FISHING BOATS BY HAYLEY LEVER [ 113 ] American Section, Panama^-Pacijic Exposition, San Francisco MOTHER AND CHILD BY JOHN H. TWACHTMAN [ 115 ] o Q H Ch <1 cn H !Xl Q H O « [ 117 ] American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco OCTOBER MORNING BY BEN FOSTER [ 119 ] H W W Ph H c/2 H W Eh o Q a c w M Q Ph O Ph Ph ‘O PP K H PP [ 121 ] American Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition^ San Francisco [ 123 ] THE EMERALD ROBE BY ROBERT H. NISBET 1 American Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco YOUTH BY JOSEPHINE PADDOCK [ 125 ] o o U O w o hP o [ 127 ] American Section^ Panama^Pacific ExpositioUt San Francisco [ 129 ] MY FAMILY BY EDMUND C. TARBELL [ 131 ] A MOTHER AND HER SONS BY ROCKWELL KENT American Section^ Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco [ 133 ] TANGIER BY ALEXANDER ROBINSON FOREIGN PAINTING PART ONE Italian Section, Panamn^Pacific Exposition, San Francisco THE GREEN SHAWL BY CAAHLLO INNOCENTI [ 136 ] FOREIGN PAINTING PART ONE D espite the petulant pronouncement of Whistler that art knows no country, it becomes increasingly apparent that the element of nationality is the most potent of all aesthetic characteristics. The butterfly conception of beauty, while an effective weapon when employed against the Philistine, fails to enlist the sympathies or augment the sum of knowledge. It is through studying the art of other lands that we can alone glean an accurate impression of our own, and this is not the least reason why we should extend generous welcome to the stranger. In the ensuing survey of foreign art at the Panama-Pacific Exposition special consid- eration will be accorded only those countries which were officially represented. Though there were numerous isolated canvases in the International Section that might otherwise invite comment, we shall confine our attention to nations rather than to individuals. As the first country to respond to the appeal of popular life and shake off the sterilizing formalism of Church and Court, Holland claims a leading place in the history of modern painting. It matters little that there was a dreary, barren hiatus following the death of Ruisdael, Hobbema, and Pieter de Hooch. The sturdy Dutch were simply biding their time, and when, under the inspiration of the French romantic movement of 1830, attention was again directed to native theme, they readily reconquered their lost prestige. The chief names in this renaissance of the art of the Netherlands are Bos- boom, Israels, Mauve, Weissenbruch, and the brothers Alaris. They it was who laid the foundations of the contemporary Dutch school. Through their sympathetic appreciation of nature and their power of synthetic presentation they re-affirmed the fundamental principles of their forbears. It is the men of the second generation such as Blommers, Breitner, Witsen, Gorter, Isaac Israels, and van Mastenbroek who figured most prominently at San [ 137 ] IMPRESSIONS Francisco, and it may be asserted without hesitation that they preserve intact the national artistic patrimony. Like their Fontaineblean-Barbizon predecessors the Dutchmen are Ijy preference tonalists. Their pictures are studies in atmospheric unity rather thaP specific transcriptions of line or form. Drifting in from the sea or rising from lush meadow and lazy canal is an all-pervading moisture, a diffused, modified radiance that gives to the land and its art a characteristically persua- sive appeal. One and all these men are sincere, unaffected nature poets. No restless individualism disturbs their harmonious compositions. Repose, not revolution, is the sentiment they inspire. ^Yhether treating broad, pano- ramic outdoor motive or modest cottage interior it is light, or rather tone, which remains the centre of interest. You will note this alike in the busy glimpses of Rotterdam harbour by van Mastenbroek, or the irregular spires and rambling house-fronts of AYitsen. The same tendency is visible in the work of more advanced talents such as Hendrik Jan Wolter who, despite his free- dom of stroke and purity of colour, relies primarily upon the unifying possibilities of atmosphere. In surveying the spacious, well-appointed rooms devoted to Dutch art at San Francisco one was impressed by the sanity and lialance that characterized the can^'ases as a whole. The themes were, as may be inferred, normal and unpretentious, the technique sound and devoid of eccentricity. A conspicu- ous measure of approval greeted the appearance of Breitner's simple and effective Amsterdam Timber Port, while Marius A. J. Bauer, with a small panel entitled Oriental Equestrian, and a series of dramatic fantasias in black and white, contributed his usual richly imaginative note. A less famil- iar figure was Mr. Willem Witsen, the Commissioner of Fine Arts, who, with his portraits in the Netherlands Pavilion, his two views of Amsterdam, and his etchings, revealed himself the possessor of a definitely formulated artistic- individuality. To a rare degree of objective verity Mr. Witsen adds a per- sonal subjectivity which, in its every manifestation, is instinct with poetic feeling. One can indeed but congratulate the Resident Commissioner-Cien- eral, the Honourable H. A. van Coenen Torchiana and his able staff upon the success of the Netherlauds Section. Conservative, and basing itself confidently upon the production of the past, contemporary Dutch art, in no sense radical or modernistic, illustrates the value of a consistently maintained tradition. [ 138 ] [ 139 ] BINNENKANT: WINTER IN AMSTERDAM BY WILLEM WITSEN FOREIGN PAINTING Sivedish Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco WINTER IN THE FOREST BY ANSHELIM SCHULTZBERG It was to the Frenchmen of a later date that the more eclectic Swedes turned for inspiration. The “phalanx of 1830” had already been superseded by grey-toned naturalist and sparkling himinist when Zorn, Ernst Josephson, Karl Nordstrom, Larsson, and Liljefors flocked to Northern France. They did not as a rule remain away long enough to lose sympathy with Scandin- avian type and scene. One by one they returned to fling defiance at the Academy and initiate one of the most vigorous and wholesome movements in the history of current art. Under the commanding influence of Nordstrom the Konstnarsforbundet became the most important organization of its kind in Sweden. And yet, while this particular society has at various periods included in its membership virtually all the leading artists, certain of the better men, restive under its restrictions, have from time to time broken away. It was from such independent spirits, as well as from other sources, that the Swedish Section at San Francisco was recruited. [ 141 ] IMPRESSIONS There is no gainsaying the impression which the art of these virile, clear- eyed Northmen made upon the exposition public. Admirably arranged by the Swedish Commissioner of Fine Arts, Mr. Anshelm Schultzberg, who here duplicated his successes at St. Louis and at Rome, the several galleries reflected that breadth of comprehension without which painting remains a mere dilettante diversion. The Fjaestad room with its hand-carved furniture, tapestries, and amply spaced canvases offered an object lesson which local museum and exhibition officials should take seriously to heart. This artist, whose work is at once stylistic and naturalistic, who is a marvellous observer and a master of decorative design, proved one of the outstanding features of the exposition. An older and better-known man who was likewise accorded collective representation was the animal painter, Bruno Liljefors, while the landscapes contributed by the Commissioner himself proved that, despite official duties, he is more than maintaining his position as a syinj^athetic and veracious interpreter of forest stillness and snow-clad hillside. While it was difficult, from so well balanced an ensemble, to detach speci- fic individuals, it was impossible to overlook the work of two young and less widely known men, namely, Gabriel Strandberg and Helmer Osslund. The former selects his types from the poorer quarters of Stockholm and portrays them with luminous stroke and penetrative intuition. The latter finds his inspiration in North Sweden, where he records the clear colour, sharply silhouetted forms, and mighty rhythm of seemingly illimitable stretches of mountain and sky. You instantly discern in the work of the Swedes — in the bold Lofoten Island sketches of Anna Boberg or the delicate panels of Oskar Bergman — a frankness of vision and directness of presentation as rare as they are stimulating. Unfatigued and lacking in sophistication, the art of Sweden derives its strength from the silent, persistent community between nature and man. The elements are few, but they are all-sufficient. A less uniform development and a more truculent physiognomy mark the artistic production of latter-day Norway. Trained for the most part in Germany, the leaders, such as Christian Krohg and Edvard iNIunch, are tur- bulent and stressful in their outlook upon nature and character. Both dom- inant personalities, the rugged naturalism of Krohg becomes with Munch a species of restless, haunting evocation, now sensuous, now psychic in appeal. It was these men, together with numerous recruits from the ranks of the new [ 142 ] Swedish Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco [ 143 ] THE CRIPPLE BY GABRIEL STRANDBERG FOREIGN PAINTING Hungarian Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco LONGCHAMPS BY BATTHYANYI GYULA school, who constituted the exhibition eollected Director Jens Thiis for the delectation of San Francisco. Lacking in homogeneity, though not in interest, the display ran the gamut from tentative essays in impressionism by Collett and Thaulow to the invigorating chromatic experiments of Henrik Lund and Pola Gauguin. Save at Cologne, Berlin, and Vienna, where they have appeared with un- questioned success, the work of the more advanced men has not proved sym- pathetie to the general public. While it is impossible to deny the d.ynamic power and fundamental pictorial endowment which these compositions reflect they not infrequently reveal a eertain want of sensitiveness. iMore talented than their neighbours, the Norwegians are lacking in discipline. If the art of Sweden is a clearly formulated and in a measure collective expression, that of Norway remains defiantly individual. A stormy instability of temper [ 145 ] IMPRESSIONS combined with the lack of a central tradition, has thus far prevented these men from assuming their rightful position in the province of contemporary painting or sculpture. Although not represented in the Palace of Fine Arts, or its precipitately constructed Annex, the Danish Government contributed several canvases toward the enhancement of the official Pavilion. Viewed at leisure in spa- cious, homelike reception suites, these few subjects, all of which were from the Royal Gallery in Copenhagen, conveyed an agreeable impression of the essential characteristics of Danish art. The painters included H. and W. Hammer, Exner, Roed, Ottesen, Hansen, Balsgaard, Kyhn, Petersen, and Christensen. They belong to the epoch before Kroyer carried northward the gospel of light and air, and before Willumsen stirred his countrymen to fury with the premon- itions of Post-Impressionism. It was not “ Frie Udstilling” art that greeted you from figured wall and looked down upon flower-set table. Face to face with these simple, engaging bits of still-life, or glimpses of sunlit river and ripening grain field, one experienced a feeling of peace and repose. Here passed a peasant workman with a cheery “God Aften” to the landed pro- prietor and his wife. There sat a stolid market woman from Amager counting her hard-earned coppers. The feverish scramble for sensation, the shuffle of a thousand anxious feet, the crudity and confusion of the Palace of Fine Arts with its heterogeneous contents vanished like a nightmare amid the soothing propriety of these discreetly appointed rooms. In their quiet, unpretentious way the Danes appear to have somewhat the better of the argument. They have not lost sight of the true function of oil painting, which, be it intimated, is appropriately to embellish a given wall space. Their conception of life is modest and measured, and this attitude is eloquently reflected in their art. It is not difficult to divine why these particular subjects should have been sent to America. One can readily picture the mellow, erudite Director Mad- sen sauntering through the Kunstmusaeum and selecting them deliberately, one by one, each designed to convey its special message of beauty and benignity to a restless, transatlantic world. While it is to be regretted that he did not include a few examples by Kdbke and IMarstrand, this would have been asking too much of such a savant and solicitous custodian. Although it seems a far cry from the art of the Northern countries to that of Hungary, the passage may be made by way of Finland, for the Finns and Hungarians are allied both ethnically and aesthetically. There having been [ 146 ] Norwegian Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco From the Shulz Collection SUMMER NIGHT: AASGAARDSTRAND BY EDVARD MUNCH FOREIGN PAINTING Hungarian Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco COUNTESS BATTHYANYI LAJOS BY VASZARY JANOS however but a single Finnish artist, Axel Gallen-Kallela, on view at San Fran- cisco, we shall proceed to a consideration of the work of the music- and colour- loving Magyars. The art of Hungary is before else a typically rhapsodic expression. You feel in it a marked degree of rhythm and a rich, vibrant harmony rarely if ever encountered elsewhere. There has thus far been in the Land of the Four Rivers and the Three Mountains no visible divorce between beauty and utility. The painter’s attitude toward his profession, while more conscious, resembles that of the peasant toward the simpler tasks of eye and hand. In each you meet the same deep-rooted race spirit, the same love of vivid chromatic effect, the same fervid lyric passion. Hungarian painting in the modern signification of the term dates from the early pleinair canvases of the pioneer impressionist, Szinyei Merse Pal, who, at the Munich exhibition of 1869 , first came in contact with the epoch-making [ 149 ] I M P R E S S I ON S Frenchmen. And yet while Majalis, just as Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur riierbe, marks the dividing line between the old and the new, it was not until 1896 when Hollosy Simon moved his classes from the Bavarian capital to Nagybanya, that the tendency assumed definite shape. The work of Hollosy is to-day being continued by Ferenczy Karoly, while at Kecskemet we have Ivanyi Bela, and at Szolnok, on the banks of the Tisza, is Fenyes Adolf and another flourishing colony. Everywhere throughout Hungary you will note a similar return to the salutary fecundity of native scene and national inspira- tion. The movement is best typified in the most talented personality of all, Rippl-Ronai Jozsef who, after years of Paris artist life, is now serenely se- questered at his birthplace, Kaposvar, producing the best work of his career. Although independent of temper, it is necessary for such men to exhibit in a body, their memorable debut of 1897 having been followed a decade later by the formation of the Circle of Magyar Impressionists and Naturalists, cur- rently known as the “M. I. E. N. K.” A still more recent group is the Nyolczak or Eight, whose aims and ideas are patently expressionistic. It is these tendencies which, be it confessed, were somewhat ineffectually elucidated at San Francisco. The manifest intention was to have offered a more or less inclusive survey of contemporary Hungarian artistic activity, yet for one reason or another this was scarceR achieved. The group of sketches by Rippl-Ronai did not fail to disappoint those already familiar with this brilliant creative colourist’s achievement. Csok 1st van fared somewhat better, but one missed Reti Istvan, Perhnutter Izsak, Czobel Bela, and other names of kindred importance. Reth, Kesmarky, Korody, Csaky, and numer- ous talented young radicals whose work is as well known in Berlin and Paris as it is in Budapest, were also absent. The physiognomy of current Hun- garian painting as presented at the Panama-Pacific Exposition was in short varied but incomplete. The public was hardly able to divine from this par- ticular offering the true significance of modern Magyar art. That fruitful movement which, on the one hand, aims to preserve unspoiled the eloquent peasant heritage and, on the other, to foster an equally national though more comprehensive development was not clearly indicated. A more serious study of racial characteristics and a less spasmodic choice are necessary in order to convey a convincing sense of aesthetic aspiration and attainment. [ 150 ] Hungarian Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco HUXGAEIAN HOME ALTAR BY JAVOR pal [ 151 ] [ 153 ] AUTUMNAL DAA" BY ARNOLD MARC GORTER [155 1 AMONG THE BIRCHES BY CARL LARSSON SlMlinh Stvh'inii /'iiHKiitii l'~u'ith' (''iNiiti’t'si’i' (’iMU'ti's,v I'f Mi’n, l 'hivi-lM IUu'ul\i>m .Siiviloi' International Section, Panama- Pacific Exposition, San Francisco THE SHORE BY LEO PUTZ [1591 a <1 Xfl Pi ^ O ^ ^ iTi Ph o s >-( pp pp [ 1^>1 1 Swedish Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco [ 163 ^ ITinifjarinn Secti 07 i, Panama- Pacific Expo.ntion, San Francisco International Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Copyright, Franz Hanfstaengl, Munchen SUMMER NIGHT BY FRANZ VON STUCK [ 165 ] [ 167 ] IN THE RHINE MEADOWS BY HEINRICH VON ZtiGEL [ 169 ] WINTER ROAD BY THOROLF IIOLMBOE FOREIGN PAINTING PART TWO Italian Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco Courtesy of Mr. Nicola Bonfilio THE PROCESSION BY ETTORE TITO [ 172 ] FOREIGN PAINTING PART TWO I F it was the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century who freed painting from influences that were monastic and monarchical, it was the French- men of the nineteenth who initiated what may be described as the modern movement. For those who confess to a passion for precision, it is well to recall 1870 as the date which marks the starting point of the contemporary school. It was in the spring of this year, when visiting his friend de Nittis in the environs of Paris, that Manet painted the luminous, fresh-toned canvas entitled The Garden, disclosing a delightful family group seen in the open under the spreading trees. Following the war, French art evinced renewed vigour, the Impressionists, after an arduous struggle, finally succeeding in demonstrating to a recalcitrant public the fluid beauty of atmosphere and the charm of simple, everyday scene. On all sides there was a spontaneous return to life, nor was this tendency without perceptible influence upon the painting of the day. It is this re-affirmation of the fundamental race spirit which those who organized the French Section at San Francisco endeavoured to illustrate. The display showed on one hand what France, despite defeat, was able to accomplish, and on the other that which she is now, in the fullness of her power, currently achieving. You could not stroll through the Retrospective Exhibition, which was housed in the imposing French Pavilion, without having acutely revived certain early, unforgettable memories. Here was Manet’s Balcony, showing Mile. Berthe Morisot, the painter Guillemet, and their companion grouped behind the familiar pale green grating. There was Besnard’s Portrait of Alphonse Legros, while a few paces farther along Carriere’s Christ peered out of a vague, poignant, spirit kingdom. Puvis was there, and so were Degas, Fantin-Latour, Renoir, Cazin, and the sumptuous and hieratic Gustave Aloreau. Certain of the more radical figures, including Cezanne, Gauguin, and Toulouse- [ 173 ] IMPRESSIONS Lautrec were also on view, though, alas, but meagrely presented. The atmos- phere of the Luxembourg was in brief transported to San Francisco with the coming of these canvases which, in a sense, constitute the vanguard of modernism. It was a notable collection, and while as a rule the best examples by the various artists were not in evidence, yet enough remained to convey the essential message of the men selected. If the galleries in the Pavilion constituted a species of miniature Luxem- bourg, those devoted to French painting in the Palace of Fine Arts offered a judicious resume of recent Salon activity. Designed to include work done during the past five years, one noted with pleasure subjects by Besnard, Blanche, Cottet, Dauchez, Le Sidaner, Roll, and Simon as well as a few by such relatively advanced spirits as Maurice Denis, Signac, and Vallotton. A scrupulously sustained eclecticism distinguished the offering as a whole. It was patently, indeed almost painfully, apparent that an attempt had been made to reconcile all differences, to fuse all factions into approved official concord. The result, as may be anticipated, was unconvincing, for in like circumstances conventionality invariably triumphs. Those already familiar with contem- porary French painting experienced scant difficulty in arriving at their respective conclusions. They knew what to accept and what to condone. With the general public, matters were more complicated. The art of France is nevertheless sufficiently diverse to satisfy all demands. It presents a mixture of academic routine and seemingly rampant radicalism. So great is the productivity of this marvellous people that every conceivable artistic mani- festation finds place upon exhibition wall. The most antithetical tendencies flourish side by side and appear to attract an equally numerous and ardent following. And still, despite its baffling complexity, French art remains inherently sane, balanced, and logical. Beneath each apparent eccentricity lurks an intellectual integrity that sooner or later discloses itself to view. And in every Frenchman may be found a substratum of classicism the function of which seems to be the constant simplification of form and clarification of feel- ing. It is some such impression that one could gather from a study of the French Section at San Francisco. While not particularly stimulating, the ensemble served its purpose sufficiently well. To have demanded more in these tumultuous times would indeed have been ungracious. [ 174 ] FOREIGN PAINTING French Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, SanFrancisco THE PAINTERS BY FELIX VALLOTTON Though the Frenchmen have for close upon a century furnished the most potent impetus known to the artistic world it is only recently that the Italians may be said to have come into their own. The foremost figures in the develop- ment of latter-day Italian painting are Domenico Morelli and Giovanni Segantini, the one a fervid naturalist, the other the founder of the Divisionist School. It is unnecessary here to discuss the career of the ardent Neapolitan who passed from the pose of romanticism into the pure light of day, or to detail the heroic life struggle of the painter of Alpine scene who became one of the incontestable masters of the closing years of the last century. Though neither Morelli nor Segantini was represented in the Palace of Fine Arts, we had, in partial compensation, an interesting group of men mainly from Rome with a casual sprinkling of Venetians. Conceived along the same conservative, not to say conventional, lines as the French Section, the Italians nevertheless appeared to better advantage. [ 175 ] IMPRESSIONS owing to the effectiveness of their installation. You here observed the influ- ence of Vienna, which came to us via Venice, for in these spacious, lu’ight- toned galleries one almost fancied oneself at one of those admirable ex- l)ositions in the Giardini Pubblici which have done so much to stimulate Southern European taste. Prominent among the exhibitors at San Francisco was the amazing Mancini, who sent three pseudo portraits, surcharged with pigment and saturated with sheer Latin lusciousness of tone. The magician of the Via Margutta is indeed incomparable as ever, and quite obliterated his associates. The prismatic palette of Camillo Innocenti, which has acquired a certain Gallic grace, was seen to advantage in a quartette of canvases, the best of which was The Green Shawl which by the by was the earliest in date. If Innocenti has become a modified, mundane impressionist, Ettore Tito remains a fluent exponent of genre and figure i)ainting who likewise appeared to more purpose with an older work. The Procession, which carried one's memories back a full score of years to the Venice Exposition of 189.5. A glance about the galleries was suflicient to disclose a number of excel- lent works, among whieh must l)e mentioned Giuseppe iMentessi’s austere and imaginative fantasy entitled The Soul of the Stones, Emma Ciardi’s ddie Avenue: Bol)oli Gardens, and two sensuous colour invocations by Enrico Lionne, designated respectively as Red Roses and The Return of Divine Love. The latter contriluited the only modern note to a display the significance of which would have been considerably augmented by a rea- sonable concession to more progressive taste. One regretted in partieular the entire absence of the Divisionist School, already referred to, which owes its inception to Segantini and Previati. This group, which includes such un- questioned talents as Carlo Eornara, Cinotti, Ramponi, Zanon, and others, appeared with signal success at the Lat in-British Exhibition at Shepherd's Bush three years ago. Their work is luminous and anti-academic, and no survey of contemporary Italian painting which does not aceord them adequate consideration can claim completeness. Not the least disappointing feature of the Expositioii was the lamentalfle absence of Spain, the one foreign country whose official participation would seem to have been essential to the undertaking. In default of any sort of regular representation, a few stray Spanish artists found their way to the Pacific Coast. Among these it may not be amiss to record the names of [ 176 ] FOREIGN PAINTING French Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco HAUBOCR OF ROTTERDAM BV ALBERT MARQEET Eliseo Meifren, Gonzalo Bilbao, and the lirotliers Zubiaurre, all of whom contributed work of varying merit. As it happened, however. Peninsular art was not entirely overlooked, for revolution-ridden little Portugal came gallantly to the rescue. The three leading Portuguese painters of the day, Columbano, Malhoa, and Selgado revealed themselves as able personalities. Cohimliano is a portraitist of the older persuasion, possessing a discern- ing grasp of character and a subdued, dignified sense of colour. Oue recalls AYatts in confronting the serious, earnest jDhysiognomies of his poets, players, and men of affairs, saving for the fact that the Engiishman never drew or modelled with such suave surety. In Malhoa was disclosed the leading Portuguese painter of genre subject. Somewhat suggestive of the Valencian Sorolla, though without the latter’s superlative dexterity, Malhoa achieves his best effects in such episodes as The Nightingale’s Veranda, where his sympathy with native type and mastery of diffused light find congenial scope. [1771 IMPRESSIONS With Selgado may be coupled his most successful pupil, Senhor Adriano de Sousa-Lopes, the Portuguese Commissioner of Fine Arts, whose facile brush and spontaneous love of colour have, despite his lack of years, won for him a distinguished position among the men of the younger generation. The manifest traditionalism that, at San Francisco at least, characterized the art of the foregoing nations, could scarcely have failed to repeat itself in the production of those countries which are in a measure directly dependent upon European inspiration. If it is difficult to discover much that is vigorous or individual in the work of North Americans, still more so is it hard to perceive originality and independence of temper among our neighbours farther south. As the most prosperous and progressive of the South American republics, the Argentine not unnaturally evinces keen interest in matters artistic. Princely private collectors such as the late Senor Jose Prudencio de Guerrico, Senor Santamarina, and Senor Pellerano have done much toward familiarizing the public of Buenos Aires with the best contemporary European work. Regular and special exhibitions also contribute their share, yet the vital impulse must always come from the individual himself. The final result rests with the artist, and it is a pleasure to record that creative as well as cultural conditions in the Argentine show unmistakable promise. Just as France is the foster-mother and chief instructress of the painters and sculptors of North America, so Italy, and to a certain extent France also, act in similar capacity toward South American aspirants. The students from Argentina desirous of completing their training go by preference to Turin, Florence, Rome, or Paris. Whether in Italy or France they come under influ- ences more official than fecund, and this may be described as the cardinal defect of their production. They give us types from Tuscany or Brittany rather than racy and indigenous Argentinos. Thanks however to the recent revival of interest in what is currently known as “el arte nacional,” such cos- mopolitan pretensions are being corrected, and interest is being concentrated upon themes which are native and local. In the work of Jorge Bermudez, Pompeo Boggio, and the sculptor, Alberto Lagos, are welcome evidences that European predominance is on the wane. The landscape painters, too, notably Americo Panozzi and his colleagues, are disclosing undoubted personal charm and freshness of vision. And thus, while your initial impressions of the Argentine Section at San Francisco may have seenied^disappointing, you would, upon closer inspection. [ 178 ] French Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco [ 179 ] SEATED WOMAN BY CHARLES COTTET FOREIGN PAINTING Argentine Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, Safi Francisco THP YOUNG LANDLADY BY JORGE BERMUDEZ have found not a little to interest and admire. Artistically speaking, the Argentinos are awakening to their inherent possibilities. From the dean of the native school, Eduardo Sivori, to Antonio Alice, one of the youngest meml)ers of the group, the spirit seems encouraging and the desire to accomplish some- thing is increasingly manifest. A word of praise should in conclusion be accorded the installation of the exhibit in the Palace of Fine Arts, Sehor Oliva Navarro having achieved a most satisfactory result with the single room at his disposal. We shall not, in the present circumstances, consider the showing made by other Latin-American countries such as I ruguay, Cuba, and the Philippines. Isolated individuals, including the I ruguayan, Manuel Rose, and the Cuban. Leopoldo Romanach, may have risen above the level, yet the general average [ 181 ] IMPRESSIONS was wanting in both decision and distinction. It is furthermore not our in- tention to discuss the comprehensively organized exhibits of China and Japan, or the modernistic contents of the x\nnex. These informal impressions do not claim to be exhaustive, but merely to bring under closer scrutiny certain salient features of development. Surveying in kindly, equable perspective the undertaking as a whole, one can scarcely escape the conviction that its chief shortcoming proved a lack of coherence. This pageant of art, as it was christened by coastal panegyrists, while imposing, was lacking in simplicity. A less pretentious, and at the same time more concisely formulated programme, must assuredly have produced different results. Judged for example by the standard set biennially at Venice, we have not thus far solved the problem of assembling a satisfactory exhibition of international painting and sculpture. Choice should be more discriminating, and there must above all loom behind such a task some concrete, unifying idea. We do not desire to see, nor should we be subjected to, all art, but rather those manifestations of artistic activity which alone illustrate certain specific principles. It is not the spectacular, nor is it mere numerical strength, that we are seeking. It is that which is vi- tal, formative, and significant. While maintaining the approved critical balance, one must not however lose sight of the positive good accomplished by the Panama-Pacific Exposi- tion. Generally speaking the reaction has been satisfactory, and the response to the various aesthetic stimuli has proved frank, spontaneous, and un- prejudiced. The three successive cultural waves which swept across the country following the expositions at Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis have finally overlapped the Rockies. Upon the Pacific slope the combined achieve- ments of Europe and America have met and mingled with the mellow legacy of Indian and Spaniard and the subtle magic of the Orient. Geographically speaking, the circle is complete. It merely remains to be seen how far this flood from the perennial fountain of beautj" can permanently enrich a parched and aspiring community. [ 182 ] Italian Section, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco THE BOHEMIAN BY ANTONIO MANCINI [ 183 ] [ 185 ] BATHERS BY MAURICE DENIS H H H W