Art

THE last exhibition of the Boston Art Club hardly deserves so much space as we shall give to it, were it not that it suggests a train of thought which cannot fail to arise in the minds of unprejudiced outsiders, who are interested in art progress. We suppose that no one considered this exhibition a fair representation of the powers or work of our artists. Hunt was present only in a few slight sketches, which, if they were the productions of a young, obscure artist, might have the words “full of promise” jotted against their titles in a critic’s private catalogue. Inness had two landscapes, not in his best style ; Gay was not represented ; Norton’s pictures did him injustice ; and J. Appleton Brown had not contributed even a sketch to be remembered by.

An observer, standing before the collection, would really find it hard to decide what was the object of the club in opening their rooms to the public. If the club should say, “This is an exhibition by amateurs,” we should immediately drop our ungracious task of criticism, and endeavor to express ourselves as the politic man of society might, when shown the crude sketches of a friend : “ I cannot tell you how much I like your pictures.”

We should characterize many of the American landscapes in the Boston Art Club Exhibition as Dickens did the color of the American houses of old : “ The white is so very white, and the green so very green.” Perhaps such pictures really represent the manner in which American landscapes influence our artistic temperaments. These maybe honest efforts to paint nature as it is seen, which will be appreciated perhaps by some future generation as marking an epoch in our art development. To trace the influence of our climatic stage-effects, so to speak, upon the work of American artists would be an interesting subject for Taine. In England the solemn greens, the deep-hued browns of the carefully cultivated fields with their occasional fringes of bright poppies, the rounded olive-green hills, the grays of the chalk cliffs, all influence the landscapes of the native painters. There we never see the greens and the blues which pervade the pictures of many of our American artists. Among the French landscape painters also, there is the same dwelling upon subdued moods of nature. There is a fondness for misty effects : for reaches of moors on which the wind-waved grass, in straggling patches of brown and madder, with occasional breadths of modest green, seem to vie in wayward effects with the cloud forms overhead. In the subdued English landscape we miss the flavor of discontent and the thrills of color which a Frenchman can throw into his work. It would be a dangerous experiment, doubtless, for a French landscape artist to paint a series of American sketches. He would find so much in our garish midday sunshine, in our gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, in our autumnal effects, which would appeal to his instincts for the dramatic, that, far removed from the safeguard of the soft light, the browns and grays of his own country, he would be in danger of running to wild riot and disorder in color. It has long been the fashion in America to admire modern French art; perhaps it is because there is much that is akin in the art temperament of the two nations. The American artist recognizes apparently that his treatment of subjects in his own country lacks the sentiment which the Frenchman puts into even his mildest tour de force. Hence we have so many imitators of French art. We should be glad if they were less servile; and we should be rejoiced at bold strivings to express a distinctive American art in landscape, if the efforts had anything admirable in them. Perhaps nature in the beginning recognized what would be our national idiosyncrasies, and, to please a race of comparative barbarians in art, gave us in despair our brilliant skies and our autumnal gold and scarlet. There is certainly much that is admirable in color ; but it appeals to an uncultivated taste more than form. Children are very early impressed by vivid colors; and some innovators think that our art education should begin with instruction in color. To handle color well, however, especially when the contrasts are so vivid as they are in our country, requires great moderation and discrimination. Turner, even in the subdued atmospheric effects of England, would not touch brilliant colors for many years, and the discipline which Turner subjected himself to would not be out of place with many of our artists. We remember to have seen no really successful rendering of one of our autumnal landscapes by an American artist, although such subjects are very often attempted.

We fear that scientific photography will in a day not distant drive the mere painter of views out of his own field. We do not see evidence in the work of most of our landscape painters of a stern desire for excellence in painting a special class of subjects. Sunrises and sunsets, water views and inland reaches of meadow and uplands, are attempted by the same painter with varying degrees of success. Many of the pictures in the Art Club Exhibition seem to us to need more body color. They have a starved look, as if the artists, in a hurry to produce certain effects, worked upon insufficient foundations.

Among the few landscapes free from the overpowering greenness which we have dwelt upon, there was a little picture of Manchester Meadows, by J. R. Brevoort, with considerable tenderness and sentiment in the distance. Of Longfellow’s pictures we liked the careful study at Manchester. There was much that was commendable in a little sketch by Stratton, marked 99. Miss Boott’s study of a Pool at Rye Beach was forcibly painted. Norton’s picture, entitled December Gale, was very realistic, and appealed to any one who had been at sea. It was hung in too bright a light; to our view it should have been placed in a position where the spectral character of the ice-covered ship could be seen in half gloom. vinton’s Road in Melrose showed promise ; it was certainly broad in its effects. Staigg’s picture of the Chestnut Gatherer redeemed the room in which it was placed. It would not suffer if placed beside many of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portraits. The two pictures by T. L. Smith deserved better hanging, for they showed conscientious work.

Nearly a quarter of the entire exhibition was madeu up of the work of foreigners. On the whole, one often sees a better collection of pictures at Doll and Richards’s.

There is something a little mournful to us in the departure of our artists for the more striking regions of American scenery. It seems to us that there is an infinite number of subjects lying at our very doors. Any one who would hire an old boat, and lurk in the salt marshes of the Mystic or the Charles, could fill his sketch-book with studies of delicate distant effects of towers beyond rich sweeps of brown ; stranded schooners ; old, rambling coal-sheds ; all of which can be seen under a thousand varied effects of light and shade, with a sky over all, running down to the not far distant sea, capable of expressing every mood. Whistler could find as interesting subjects on these marshes near sea-ports, so Common on our New England coast, as he has found along the banks of the Thames. Gay has discovered the mine of sentiment which lurks in our varied sea-coast, with its beaches and strips of moor. Morviller in some of his pictures caught the fascinating gloom of our landscape when seen through the veil of fast-falling snow. La Farge has appreciated the wealth of sentiment which the rocks and pastures of Newport afford, with their curtains of mist and half-revealed stretches of opal-tinted ocean. Indeed, most of our artists appear at their best when they remain at the sea-shore. Their efforts in the interior are not happy. Their browns and grays seem to forsake them at once. There is much that is poetic in our New England landscape. It could impress Hawthorne’s peculiar genius so that it seemed the most appropriate setting for his fancies. Our writers seem to be far ahead of our painters in reproducing the characteristics of New England scenery, so that we must look to books and not to picture-galleries for landscape pictures.

Perhaps subdued pictures will not sell so well as panoramic views. Boston, however, with its many art lovers, with its prospective art museum and scheme of art schools, ought to encourage a style of art exhibition different from that of the Art Club this year.