A Connoisseur with Original Ideas Who Grasps at Once the Spirit of the Canvas and discovers Various Latent Beauties Unknown Even to the Artist Himself – Diana Surprised, and Attired in an Atmosphere that Defies Fashion's Edict.
Taking The World artist with me in order to know fully what I was talking about, I visited the Academy of Design a day or two ago for the purpose of witnessing some of the pictures from Paris which are now on exhibition there. Many of these pictures are large and beautiful, while others are small and ornery. At the head of the stairs is a smallish picture, with a good, heavy frame and greenish foreground. It is not on the catalogue, so I will try to describe it briefly. About half way between the foreground and middle distance there is a cream-colored perspective, while above this there is a rag-carpet sky, with lumps on it.
"And is there no way of removing these large lumps of paint, so as to give the picture an even appearance?" I asked Mr. McDougall.
"Oh, no; they don't want to do that," he said; "that is the impasto method of putting on the colors, which brings out the salient features of the painting."
So this imposture method, it seems, is really gaining ground, and this picture, with the soldier-overcoat sky and green chenille grass and gargetty distance, would no doubt be worth in Paris thirteen or fourteen dollars.
No. 84 is a picture by Charles Durand, entitled "A Country Woman in Champagne." I was bitterly disappointed in this picture, for though the woman seems to be in good spirits the artist has utterly failed to grapple fully with his subject, and without the catalogue in his hand I would defy the most brilliant connoisseur to say definitely whether or not she is under the influence of liquor.
We next walk around to No. 168, a picture by Camille Pissaro.
M. Pissaro has ten pictures in the Academy, but this one is the best. It is made by the squirt system of painting, graining and kalsomining, which is now becoming so a la mode and rouge et noir. The artist tells me that the colors are carefully arranged in a tin pail and applied to the canvas by means of a squirt gun or Rembrandt stomach pump. This gives the painting a beautiful yet dappled appearance, which could not be obtained with a brush.
This picture is worth three dollars of any man's money for the frame is worth two dollars, and there is at least a dollar's worth of paint on the picture that is just as good as ever. The artist has handled the feet in a masterly manner, bringing them out so that they hang over the frame like a thing of life. If I could paint feet as M. Pissaro does I would not spend my life striping buggies in a close room among coarse men with putty on their pantaloons, but I would burst forth from my humble surroundings, and I would attract the attention of the whole great world of art with my massive and heroic feet. Then from this I would gradually get so that I could make pictures that would resemble people. There is no reason why M. Pissaro should not do well in that way, for he has painted No. 171, "A woman at a Well," in which the most unkempt and uncultivated peasant can at once distinguish which is the woman and which is the well. He is also the author of "Spring," a squirt study with a blue rash, which has broken out where the sky ought to be.
No. 136 is the "Execution of Maximilian," by Edouard Manet, a foreign artist. The scene is laid at the base of an old Mexican slaughter-house. In the foreground may be seen the rear of the Mexican army with its wealth of tournure and cute little gored panties. All Mexican troops have their trousers gored at the hips. Sometimes they also have them gored at the bull-fights which take place there. In the contiguous distance Maximilian maybe seen, wearing the hat which has evidently infuriated the Mexican populace. The artist says that Maximilian objects to being shot, but I pretend not to hear him, and he repeats the remark, so I have to say "Very good, very good," and then we pass on to No. 60, which is entitled "Dreams," by Prévis de Chavannes.
In this picture a weary man, who has worn himself out sleeping in haystacks and trying to solve the labor problem, so that the great curse of industry may be wiped out and the wealthy man made to pay the taxes while the poor man assists in sharing the burden of dividends, is lying on the ground with a pleasant smile on his face. He is asleep, with his mouth slightly ajar, showing how his teeth are fastened in their places. He is smiling in his slumber, and there is hay in his whiskers. Three decalcomanie angels are seen fastened to the sky in the form of a tableau. One is scattering cookies in his pathway, while the second has a laurel wreath which is offered at a great reduction, as the owner is about to leave the city for the summer. These are the new style of wingless angels recently introduced into art and now becoming very popular.
M. Chavannes is also the mechanic who constructed a picture numbered 61 and called the "Poor Fisherman." The history of this little picture is full of pathos. The scene is laid in Newark Bay, N. J. A poor fisherman and his children go out to spend the day, taking their lunch with them.
"O papa, let us take two or three cucumbers with our lunch," says one of the children, in glee.
"Very well, my child," exclaims the father, with ill-concealed delight, "Go down to the market and get one for each of us."
The artist has chosen to make his study of the fisherman a short time after lunch. The father is engaged in regretting something which it is now too late to recall. Cholera infantum has overtaken the younger child and the other is gathering lobelia for her father. The picture is wonderful in its conception ana execution. One can see that he is a poor fisherman, for he has not caught any fish, and the great agony he feels is depicted in his face and the altitude of his hair. The picture might have been called a battle piece or a French interior, with equal propriety.
Manet has several bright and cheery bits of color, among them No. 147, "Spring at Giverny," which might be called Fourth of July in a Roman candle factory without misleading the thoughtful art-student.
No. 150, "Meadows at Giverny," by the same man, is a study in connecting the foreground and background of an oil painting by means of purple hay and dark-blue bunches of boneset in such a way as to deceive the eye.
I have always bitterly regretted that while I was abroad I did not go to Giverny and see the purple hay and navy-blue tansy and water cress which grow there in such great abundance. How often we go hurrying through a country, seeing the old and well-worn features shown us by the professional guides and tourists, forgetting or overlooking more important matters, like a scene in France, No. 142, entitled "Women Bathing." I presume I was within three-quarters of a mile of this view and yet came home without knowing anything about it.
No. 123, "Diana Surprised," is no doubt the best picture in the whole collection. The tall and beautiful figure of Diana in the middle distance in the act of being surprised, is well calculated to appeal to any one with a tender heart or a few extra clothes. Diana has just been in swimming with her entire corps de ballet, and on coming out of the water is surprised to find that someone has stolen her clothes. The artist has very happily caught the attitude and expression at the moment when she is about to offer a reward for them. The picture is so true to life that I instinctively stammered "Excuse me," and got behind the artist who was with me. The figures are life size and the attitudes are easy and graceful in the extreme. One very beautiful young woman in the middle foreground, about seven and one-half inches north of the frame of the picture, with her back to the spectator, crouches at Diana's feet. She has done her beautiful and abundant hair up in a graceful coil at the back of her head, but has gone no further with her toilet when the surprise takes place. The idea is lofty and the treatment beneficial. I do not know that I am using these terms as I should, but I am doing the best I can.
We often hear our friends regret that their portraits, dressed in clothing that has long since become obsolete, are still in existence, and though the features are correctly reproduced, the costume is now so ridiculous as to impair the de trop of the picture and mar its aplomb.
Jules Lefebvre has overcome this great obstacle in a marvelous manner, and gives us Diana and her entire staff surrounded by an atmosphere that time cannot cloud with contumely or obscure with ridicule. Had the artist seen fit to paint Diana wearing a Garibaldi waist and very full skirt with large hoops, and her hair wrapped around two or three large "rats," he might have been true to the customs and costumes of a certain period in the history of art, but it would not have stood the test of time. As it is he has wisely chosen to throw about her a certain air of hauteur which will look just as well in a hundred years as it does now.
The picture has a massive frame and would brighten up one end of a dining-room very much. I was deeply mortified and disappointed to learn that it was not for sale. Actéon is the party who surprised Diana.
Nice Points of Seasonable Etiquette – City Relatives Whose Friendship Grows Warm with the Summer, but Who Regard a Chalk Meerschaum Pipe at Christmas as an Offset for a Season's Board.
I hold that I violate no particular amount of confidence when I lay the following private letter before the heated public:
Shirley-on-the-Piscataquis River,
State of Maine, June 20, 1887.
Mr. William Nye, World Office, New York.
Sir: I have been a reader of The World for some time and have frequently noticed the alacrity with which you have come forward and explained things through its columns. You must be indeed a kind-hearted man, or you would not try to throw light on things just to oblige other people, when you do not, as a matter of fact, know what you are talking about. Few men would so far forget their own comfort as to do this in order to please others. Most men are selfish and hang back when asked a difficult question, preferring to wait till they know how to answer it; but you, sir, you seem to be so free always to come forward and explain things, and yet are so buoyant and hopeful that you will escape the authorities, that I have ventured to write you in regard to a matter that I feel somewhat of an interest in. It is now getting along into the shank of the summer and people from the great cities of our land are beginning to care less and less for the allurements of sewer gas, and to sigh for a home in the country and to hanker for the "spare room" in a quiet neighborhood at $2 a week with board.
I have seen a great many rules of etiquette for the guidance of country people who go to the city, but I have never run up against a large, blue-book telling city people how to conduct themselves as to avoid adverse criticism while in the country. Every little while some person writes a piece regarding the queer pranks of a countryman in town and acts it out on the stage and makes a whole pile of money on it, but we do not seem to get the other side of this matter at all. What I desire is that you will give us a few hints in regard to the conduct of city people who visit in the rural districts during the heated term. I am not a professional summer-resort tender or anything of that kind, but I am a plain man, that works and slaves in the lumber woods all winter and then blows it in, if you will allow the term, on some New York friends of my wife's who come down, as they state, for the purpose of relaxation, but really to spread themselves out over our new white coverlids with their clothes on, and murmur in a dreamy voice: "Oh, how restful!"
They also kick because we have no elevated trains that will take them down to the depot, whereas I am not able and cannot get enough ahead or forehanded sufficiently to do so, as heaven is my judge.
They bring with them a small son, who is a pale, emaciated little cuss, with a quiet way of catching my three-year-old heifer by the tail and scaring the life out of her that is far beyond his years. His mother thinks he will not live, mayhap, to grow up, and I hope she may not be disappointed. Still he has a good appetite, and one day last summer, besides his meals, he ate:
One pocketful green apples (pippins),
One pocketful green apples (Ben Davis),
Three large steins rhubarb,
One hatful green gooseberries,
Two ginger cookies, without holes,
Three ginger cookies, with holes,
One adult cucumber, with salt on same,
One glass new milk,
Two uncooked hen eggs, on half-shell.
I laid off all that day from haying in order to follow the little rascal around with a lead pencil and a piece of paper and see how much he would eat. That evening I thought what a beautiful night he had selected for his death. The moon was slipping in and out through the frothy, fleece-lined clouds, and I could imagine the angels just behind the battlements putting the celestial bric-a-brac high enough up so that Henry couldn't get hold of it when he came. I had a slow horse concealed behind the barn, with which I intended going for the doctor. It was a horse with which I had failed to get the doctor in time on a similar occasion, and I felt that he could be relied on now.
Night settled down on the riproaring Piscataquis and deepened the shadows at the base of Russell Mountain. The spruce gum tree of the Moosehead Lake region laid aside its work for the day and the common warty toad of the Pine Tree State began to overestimate himself and inflate his person with the bugs of the evening, now and then lighting up his interior with a lightning bug. It was a glorious evening that little Henry had selected and set aside for his death. But he was really the only one in our house who slept well that night, and seemed to wake up thoroughly refreshed. He is still alive as I write and is coming down here in July emptier than ever.
Oh, sir, can you help me? Will you print this poor petition of mine, with the tear-stains on it, and your reply to it in The World and send me a copy of the paper that I can show to Henry's father, who is a cousin of my wife's but otherwise has nothing to which he can point with pride? Yours sincerely,
Eben L. Tewey.
P. S. – I have presumed some on your good nature, because I have been told that you was born here. I am sorry to say that Shirley has never overcome this entirely. It has hurt her with other towns in the State, but you can see yourself that there was no way we could provide against it. My wife sends love, and hopes you will print this letter without giving my name, or if so, with a fictitious name, as they call it, and perhaps it will fall into the hands of those people who come down here every summer with nothing in them but sincere friendship and go home full of victuals. I wish you would put into it some way a piece that says I do not regard a Christmas present of a chalk meershum pipe, with a red celluloid stem, as an offset against a summer's board of a family that has more malaria than good manners. Slap that in, in your genial way, so as not to give offense, and whenever you visit your old birthplace, and want to just let go all holts and have a good time, come right to our house. I have lathed and plastered the cook-room and fitted it up as a kind of Inebriates' Home, and I would feel tickled to death to have you come and see what you think of it.
P. S. Again. If you print this letter, Slocum would be a good fictitious name to sign to it, and I would want an extra copy of the paper also.
T.
Reply.
Sir: Will you allow me to say that I think it is such letters as the above that create ill-feeling between the people of the country and the people of the city, and cause the relations to be strained, especially those relations that live in the country. Although you are not altogether in the wrong, Eben, and although country people, who live near to nature's heart, have certain inalienable rights which should be respected, yet there is no work on etiquette which covers the case you allude to.
It would be very difficult for me to write out a code of ethics for the government of your relative while in the country, and from the description you give of him I judge that we could not enforce it anyway without calling out the State troops.
I take him to belong to that class of New York business men who are so active doing nothing every day, that in order to impress people with their importance, they are in the habit of pushing a woman or two off the Brooklyn bridge in their wild struggle to get over into the City Hall park and sit down. I presume that he is that kind of a man here, and so we think you ought to get along with him through July and August if we take him for the rest of the year.
He is the kind that would knock down an old woman in the morning, in his efforts to get the first possible elevated train, and then do nothing else all day but try to recover from the shock. I wouldn't be surprised if he ultimately wrote a book on etiquette, which will inform a countryman how to conduct himself while he is in town. Maybe he is writing it now.
I can imagine, Eben, what sad havoc the son of such a man would create in your quiet Piscataquis home. In my mind's eye I can see him trying to carry out his father's lofty notions of refinement and courtesy. I can see his bright smile as he lands at your door and begins to insert himself into your home life, to breathe resinous air of the piney woods, and to pour kerosene into the sugar bowl, to chase the gaudy decalcomanie butterfly, and put angle worms in the churn.
In this man's book on etiquette he will, doubtless, say that should you have occasion while at table to use a toothpick, you should hold a napkin before your mouth while doing so, in order to avoid giving offense to those who are at table. It is not necessary for you to crawl under the table to pick your teeth, or to go out behind the barn, for by throwing a large napkin over your head you can pick your teeth with impunity though you should not use a fork, as it does not look well and it might put out your eye.
Nothing is more disgusting to a refined mind than to see a man at table holding one of his eyes on a fork and scrutinizing it with the other.
In calling on a lady who is away from home leave your card. If the visit is intended for two or three ladies at the house, leave two or three cards, but do not turn down the corner of the card as that custom is now exploded except in three card monte circles and even then it is regarded with suspicion.
All these things, however, are for the guidance of people who come to town, and those who go into the country are left practically without any suitable book to guide them.
I do not know of any better way for you to do, Eben, than to write a polite note to your relatives asking them if they contemplate paying you a visit this summer, and if so at what time, and whether they will bring Henry or not. Use plain white unruled note paper and write only on one side, unless you are a Mugwump in which case you might write on both sides.
Then if they write that they do so contemplate paying you a visit without paying anything else, I do not know of anything for you to do but to go away somewhere for the summer, leaving your house fully insured and in the hands of a reliable incendiary.
Write again, Eben, and feel perfectly free to come and lean on me in all matters of etiquette. Do not come to town without hunting me up. You will find me at the Post-Office forenoons and in the pest-house during the afternoon. Yours, with kind regards.
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