USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 45
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DENNIS BUNKER
Dennis Bunker was one of these early figures, a figure of distinction and dead all too soon. He was the son of a Cape Cod whaler and a French woman, not a bad combination when one comes to think of it. His death was one of the most unfortunate things that could have happened to Boston art. He was a searcher, always dissatisfied with his work, always improving. And some of his pictures - a certain girl in white at the Philadelphia Art Club, the portrait of Miss Anne Page - will always remain among the finest of American paint- ings. One can only guess at what he might have accomplished, but the present
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writer believes that he would have made his mark as a very strong and able painter. He had certain qualities, an almost excessive refinement, the technique of a master, a constant searching for the best.
PAINTERS OF TODAY
And then the leaders of the present day. The friend to whom I am indebted for much help in planning these paragraphs suggests Tarbell, Benson, Paxton as the winners. There is the saving phrase, et cetera, added to this suggestion and the present writer would fain, octopus-like, hide behind its murky complications. The words, et cetera, indeed seem to suggest "There are others." And so indeed there are. They also ran, and in the great court of art they also serve who only stand and wait. Of course there are many who don't have to wait, who are in demand. One thinks of Leslie Thompson, of Charles Hopkinson, Dudley Murphy, Richard Andrews, and many others who do strong and stimulating work. Then, too, among the younger men and women there are John Lavalle, Harry Sutton, Aiden L. Ripley, Bernard Keyes, Ethel Thayer and Catherine Richardson.
Mr. Frank Benson is certainly one of the leaders, not only in painting but in the fascinating art of etching. He is one of those happy men whose work is agreeable, not only to the artist but to the sportsman and to the general public. The sportsman, disappointed and embittered by the scoffing laughter that greets his admiration of some mangy painting of a cleanly bird-dog, is delighted when he finds that he can admire an etching of ducks by Mr. Benson with a full heart. He learns that artists admire these able works as much as he. In the matter of still life Mr. Benson has invented what amounts to a new genre. His paintings, through choice of original subjects, a new way of pre- senting things, effective and brilliant technique, have struck a new note. The Benson still-lifes are bigger, brighter, and in many instances better than those that have gone before.
One smiles gently and tolerantly as one comes upon Mr. Paxton's name among the immortals. And yet it's a position that he eminently deserves. Certainly there is no one more skillful than he in the art of putting paint on canvas - or, better yet, no one has been more thoughtful than he in planning what to put on each canvas. Only he has not always, by all men, been accorded the position he so well deserves, and one of the agreeable duties of writing this article is to put him where he belongs. If one smiles, it is that the malice and ill-will that have kept him back so long should in the end be defeated. For he is now spoken of by many people as one of the leaders in Boston art -- and, what is more, he deserves this recognition. Certainly, as I have said, there is no artist in Boston who is a more skillful technician, nor anyone who has higher ideals about his art.
Most of the artists of this country will, if you say "Boston" to them, reply "Tarbell." He has done so many things and done them so well that his name has become a sort of synonym for Boston painting, especially in the rest of the country. His portraits, his little interiors, his subtly designed land- scapes, are all masterpieces in their way. His big portraits are not only evoca-
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tions of character, they are fine and largely conceived designs. His interiors have long been famous and it's not too much to say that liis "Girl Crocheting" is already considered one of the great American pictures. Tarbell's land- scapes are not so well known, but they have a sense of subtle, supple, not to say subtile, design which is all too uncominon with landscapes.
The skillful planner to whom I have referred puts the rest of the painters under the heading, "Others," and that, as Mr. Whittier used to say, is one of the saddest words of tongue or pen. For there have to be the others, the ones who also ran. But certain thoughts should console them. In the first place, contemporaries seldom judge the art of their time aright. It may be that among these "also rans" there is some pearl unseen, all too effectively hidden in the deep unfathomned caves of Bostonian indifferenee. If that is really so, the day will come when his work will be appreciated and given its right place. And if it isn't so, why then the quicker these things are forgotten the better for all concerned.
INDIVIDUALISTS
In every group of painters there have been certain individualists and it is not otherwise in our Boston school. Of these there is no one more individual than was Maurice Prendergast. While he was saturated in Impressionist, not to say Modernist, ideas, he achieved what one might call a pattern of his own. It would hardly be called the pattern in the carpet. It was rather a pattern quite outside the carpet - a little thing he had invented for himself. What is inost admirable about Prendergast is a joyous, almost childlike, pleasure in color and paint quality. And the fact is he never grasped the true inwardness of the Impressionist formula or indeed knew anything about it. He liked, as children say, to play with the p'itty colors-and, as the modern slangsters say, "And how."
Dodge MacKnight, of course, is the most individual of the individual. He has always been that way sinee the beginning. If one may continue to use the deplorable slang of the present day, individualisni is his middle name. His work doesn't seem so different from the rest as it used to - but that is because so many people have caught up with him. MaeKnight's work will always be significant and moving in any history of American art and his own personality is even more attractive than that which he reveals in his pictures. His influence on water-color painting is particularly marked. No one paints water colors now as they all would if he had never existed. He has shown us certain possi- bilities in the use of water-color painting that no one had ever suspected before. His exhibits at Doll and Richards are among the artistie events of the year. Maddened plutocrats almost tear his pictures from the walls.
Arthur Spear has been suggested for this group and certainly he has found his sphere. His little mermaids, his nymphs of sea or of the woodland, are as different as can be from the rather heavy-handed productions of some of his contemporary comrades. He seems to find a joy in invention. His pictures are in a sense evocations. That one should paint three Spanish onions on a piece of purple paper is good; but that one should throw on a canvas a vision of sea nymphs floating in some dim light that never was on sea or land, that also is good. Mr. Spear's invention is one of his strongest qualities. The groves of
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MINOAN SNAKE GODDESS (Cretan) MYCERINUS AND HIS QUEEN (Egyptian) HEAD OF APHRODITE (Greek ) COMPASSIONATE BUDDHA (Chinese) KUAN-YIN (Chinese) (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts)
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Arcady are as well known to him as is the Public Garden. Despite his habitat he is a diver in strange seas rather than in the Back Bay.
And John Whorf, so recently a student, now so well known. What one observes and what one likes about his stuff is the zest with which it is done. It has that quality which good old Hazlitt used to call "gusto." These fishing boats sliding into shore under full sail, these whitewashed houses wincing under the flicks of sunlight flecked with shade, are done with such ingenuous assurance, such assured ingenuity. Painting is fun for Mr. Whorf. That is evident enough from looking at his pictures, and with this goes a strong sense of effective- ness. The visible world is evident to him and he knows how to make it evident to other people.
My mentor here suggests the name of Mr. Aiden L. Ripley as an example of the younger men, though one might guess offhand that he is about the same age as is Mr. Whorf. Certainly his work, especially his water colors, shows a most remarkable assurance and understanding of effect.
BOSTON PAINTERS IN NEW YORK
And then there is that delectable group in New York which Boston has driven from her gates. Not that Boston has any gates or for that matter that anyone has been driven anywhere. But that in a measure says what one means, that these prophets have been not exactly slain but permitted to go in peace, followed by a benison of complete indifference that might well be more galling than curses. It may be that Boston slays the prophets, but Boston slays the prophets not with paving stones but with chunks of ice, distilled from the cold storage vaults of Bostonian ideas -- and ideals.
Of these expatriates there is none more brilliant and "taking" than Mr. Childe Hassam, who has so long dwelt apart in New York but who undoubtedly was once a Bostonian. Boston, of course, has long ago regretted his absence, and regretted also its indifference, though that is hardly the word. Cumbered as Boston was with much serving and many cares, it may have been that she was not sufficiently aware of what was happening when the five o'clock train slowly drew one of her chief glories from the Back Bay Station. Mr. Hassam's work, so crisp, so delicate, was deserving of more notice. His painting suggests Impressionism and yet it is not exactly like that of any particular man. He has introduced a note of lightness and gayety which is somewhat at odds with the rather grim work of the older Impressionists. They painted in a sparkly way in the hope of being disagreeable. He paints in a sparkly way with the. certitude of being agreeable.
PORTRAIT PAINTERS
If one has grouped these foregoing gentlemen with the idea of getting a little order out of chaos, it does not mean that there are not many others of equal ability who have not been mentioned. Indeed that is one of the splendid though embarrassing phases in the situation, an embarrassment of riches in the way of brilliant and able painters and an almost equal embarrassment in the sense that such an immense amount of equal ability hints at something that one might call sublimated mediocrity.
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Certain types of painting suggest themselves to the historian, distraeted by the very abundance of his material. Of these types each has its own group of men - or, place aux dames, of ladies - who cultivate it with enthusiasm and suecess.
There is portrait painting, for instance, which has always been one of Boston's strong points. One begins to feel the agreeable confusion of mind of the happy person whose fate is soon to bring him to the point of being painted by one of these admirable artists and who has to choose which of them shall be given the order.
Certainly one would have to mention Mr. Leslie Thompson's work, so firm, so valid, so effective and realistie. Then there is Mr. Charles Hopkinson, who is considered one of the best of the Boston painters; and Mrs. Marie Dan- forth Page, whose pietures shine out in most exhibitions like a good deed in a naughty world. Messrs. Tarbell, Benson and Paxton belong here. So do Messrs. Troeeoli, Bosley and Hamilton.
INTERIORS AND STILL LIFE
One is obliged to crowd things a little. For instance, our amiable mentor suggests that one group should embrace still life, interiors and genre. When one thinks that these three subjects were enough to make the Dutch leaders among the greatest painters in the world, one shudders at one's apparent dis- respeet for those sturdy Hollanders. Certainly interiors are among the hardest things to do. Perhaps that's why so few of them are done. As one ponders the matter, the names of the big three, Messrs. Paxton, Tarbell and Benson, come onee more to one's mind, not to mention men equally able, only different, like Mr. Thompson. Mrs. Elizabeth Paxton has painted delightful interiors. Miss Gretehen Rogers has done still life very true and existent yet of a quite unique quality. Nor ean we forget here Mr. Dudley Murphy.
DECORATION
One advantage the old Italians had was the chance to cover great wall spaees. One remembers how Ghirlandajo said he would like to decorate the walls of the fortifieations of Florence. There are plenty of painters now who could and gladly would do great decoration if extended wall space were offered them.
Mr. Richard Andrews is one of our best decorators, and spends unheard-of pains in making his decorations as beautiful and as fine as he can. Mr. Paxton has done a very brilliant decoration at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, and Mr. Frank Benson has done one of the decorations in the Washington Library.
WATER COLORISTS
Winslow Homer, Dodge MaeKnight and John Sargent - all more or less affiliated with Boston - have made it in a sense a water-color capital. Bostonians are canny. "Although on pleasure bent they have a frugal mind." There's the feeling one ean get just as much art as in an oil painting, and then,
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too, it won't cost so much. The humorous thing is that water colors by men like Sargent, MacKnight and Benson have become so popular that their water colors cost more than the oils of less resplendent individuals. There are lots of very clever water colorists in Boston, so many that it is difficult to naine them all, but the names of Mr. John Whorf, - most brilliant of eclectics, - of Mr. John Lavalle, Mr. Harry Sutton and Mr. Aiden Ripley come to one's mind.
WOMEN PAINTERS
A word, and a very big word, should be said for the women painters of Boston. A New York critic has said they are not beautiful but they certainly can paint. Ever since. the days of the daughters of Unitarian ministers who thronged the ateliers of William Hunt women painters have been among the proudest jewels in Frau Bostonia's crown. They are too numerous to mention, for almost every Boston woman has studied art and by the last census one learns that there are eight hundred thousand people in Boston. About half of them must be women and therefore artists. Certain names come to one's mind: Mrs. Page, she whose pictures shine like lighthouses in the night; Mrs. T. S. Perry, long the very efficient secretary of the Guild; Miss Gertrude Fiske, the equally efficient present secretary. Then there are Mrs. Chester Chase, Mrs. Kirkpatrick, Miss Margaret Richardson, Mrs. Sohier, Miss Hazelton, Miss Margaret Fitzhugh Brown. I have already mentioned Miss Catherine Richardson, Miss Ethel Thayer and Miss Rogers, and may, I think, becomingly add Mrs. Lilian Westcott Hale.
LANDSCAPE
There have always been fine landscape painters in Boston since the days of William M. Hunt and Foxcroft Cole. At the same time it's worthy of note that Boston exhibitions are the only ones in the country that aren't swamped with landscapes. Boston has always responded generously to the thought of land- scape. She was the first city to buy largely works of the Barbizon school and she was having exhibitions of Impressionist pictures before the rest of the country had heard that such an animal existed. Mr. Hibbard is a land- scapist whom prize juries delight to honor. Mr. Kaula's work is always lumin- ous and effective. Mr. George Noyes has produced some delightful things, all compact of vibration and glitter. Mr. Lester Stevens has done vigorous work. Other admirable painters in this field are Mr. Charles H. Woodbury, Mr. Charles Curtis Allen, Mr. Anthony Thieme and Mrs. Marion P. Sloane.
ETCHING
When the word "etching" is mentioned the present writer thinks of the works of Mr. Frederick Hall. This is not to insist that they are the best in the country, but certainly they are among the best. His etchings of little French houses are vastly fine, and are done with a skill and artistic conscience that is beyond words. But that is not to say that there are not many others of ex-
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cellenee. Mr. Wales, the architeet, has produced some admirable etehings of ships, - among others those that pass in the night. As etehings they pass very well in the day. Mr. Haydon Jones, the talented newspaper artist, has done somne splendid dry points; effective, ineisive and vital, they always make their mark, no matter what the company. One could not write of Boston etehers without mentioning Mr. Sears Gallagher, whose works seem to take all the prizes at the various etching shows. Mr. Charles H. Woodbury is stimulating . in his work. Mr. Howard E. Smith has made some exeiting etehings on sport- ing subjeets and Mr. Dwight Sturgis has made a number of picturesque portrait etehings. Mr. Benson has been already spoken of as a painter. His etehings have an international reputation, and to be known in other countries is said to be present-day immortality.
PRESENT STATUS OF THE ART
An exhibition such as the recent Tereentenary exhibition at Horticultural Hall throws a rosy light on contemporary Boston art. It is to be doubted if any other city in the world as small as Boston eould present an exhibit of such caliber. Not only were the pictures excellent - but the drawings, the etchings, the seulpture and the arts and erafts came up to a high standard.
Certainly there is a lot of painting being done in Boston just now and in their sedate and doubting way Bostonians take a good deal of interest in the art. And then the foreign element, who will soon be one with us, are particularly interested in the matter. Crowds of Italians from the North End eome every Sunday to our Boston Art Museum and admire its many treasures. It is a little diseoneerting that the pariahs - so to say - should show more love for art than the Brahinins, but that's the way the world wags. If you ean prove to a Bostonian with figures and words that a pieture is worth looking at, he will go and look at it; but it must be admitted that the inmost soul of the sharp, snappy, well-groomed business man does not respond to artistie things so passionately as does the great unwashed heart of the foreign proletariat.
ART SCHOOLS
Bostonians are a great people for teaching others to do what perhaps they do not do particularly well themselves. There have always been art schools in Boston of one sort or another as far back as one can remember. Today, of course, one thinks first of the school of drawing and painting eonneeted with the Boston Art Museum, which has produced many excellent artists, notably Mr. Tarbell, Mr. Benson, the late Robert Reid, the late Willard Metealf and others. The present writer is elosely connected with this school, so that he feels a certain modesty about its merits. However, it may be permissible to quote a well-known eritie, who said the other day that the Art Museum School and the State Normal School were the best sehools of art in the country. Certainly the Normal Art School is an admirable school and that is more than ean be said of a lot of state-run institutions. To begin with, the staff of teachers, Messrs. Andrews, Hamilton, Major and others, shows a very high standard of ability.
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They produce men and women who can paint and draw excellently. And that, it would seem, is high praise for any institution of art. The students there go to scoff and remain to pray. That is, they go to get a state education as teachers and remain to become real artists.
CONCLUSION
Boston painting has come to have a particular standing among American paintings and painters. It's a commonplace that in any American exhibition the Boston group will represent many of the best and most able painters of the country. It's not Boston's fault. She can't be blamed for it. It simply happens. Certainly Boston can't be charged with over-encouragement of art. As I said at the outset, - it will bear repeating, - men paint well here simply because they like to, not because they're unduly stimulated. It is curious that while the two wicked elder sisters, Literature and Music, have been the spoiled darlings of Boston, - to what effect I may not say, - Painting, lonely and neglected, the Cinderella of the arts, has actually accomplished something.
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SCULPTURE IN BOSTON
By CHARLES D. MAGINNIS
The history of sculpture in America is singularly brief. No native work of critical significance bears an earlier date than 1830; consequently, a single century actually embraces the national accomplishment. Our early civiliza- tion ungrudgingly admitted architecture as a social principle of respectability and, from the beginning, it held its logical place in the colonial culture, matur- ing in time to a discreet and formal beauty which has now become a venerable tradition. For the other fine arts, however, there was no place in the Puritan scheme. Painting and sculpture were exotic interests, somewhat unduly con- cerned with the emotions and ministering to the vanities and the sensuous elegancies of life. The impoverished version of English contemporary civiliza- tion which Puritan and Quaker brought to these shores took no account of them. Even the Dutch settlers were satisfied to leave behind all evidence of having forsaken a country where at the moment the art of painting was in its richest flowering. Only the more opulent society of Virginia may be said to have been free of definite inhibitions against art in the ampler historic meaning of the word. It was the distinguished portraiture of John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart which finally effected a breach in the evangelical rigidity of New England and wrung a qualified acceptance for the blandishment of the painter.
A long time was to elapse, however, before a corresponding talent was forthcoming to claim a similar measure of consideration for the sculptor. Such native ability as was then concerned with the third dimension was of the unin- tellectual order associated with the stonecutter and the carver in wood, and whatever ambition this interest might have inspired had little exercise in the absence of educational opportunity. The study of the nude, however funda- mental, was too daring an idea for the time and this innovation in the artistic curriculum was not attempted till 1876, when a life class was established at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There was lacking, moreover, even the inspiration of the imported classical example. In these circumstances, it was from the developing craftsmanship that the beginnings of a responsible native sculpture actually emerged. William Rush of Pennsylvania (born 1756) and Hezekiah Augur of New Haven (born 1791) were instances of an order of ability which, had it been untrammeled by the conventions of wood carving, might have developed notably. But the craft of the marble cutter offered a more logical evolution and, by its studious practice, John Frazee (born 1790) of New Jersey acquired a measure of authority that entitled him with some reason to be considered the pioneer sculptor of America. Numerous busts from his hand in the Boston Athenæum collection reveal an occasionally distinguished capacity in portraiture.
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In the course of time it had to be accepted, however, that first-hand study of the historic masters was a condition of the right education of the sculptor. And the geographic implication of this idea, in the temper of early American culture, pointed inevitably to Rome and Florence. Art and literature were at. this period in closer and less intelligent alliance than they have been since and both were definitely under classical dominion. Much of the inspiration of English and American letters was then drawn from the romantic antiquity of the Italian scene. Shelley, Keats, Byron, the Brownings, Hawthorne and Cooper bore witness to its potency.
Art was conceived as an interest essentially erudite and hieratic, whose concern was most becomingly confined to an engrossment with classical and mythological abstractions. The idea was still remote that its functions should be concerned in any degree with the expression of contemporary life. Indeed, as an active principle it was so withdrawn as scarcely to have affected the national consciousness.
Horatio Greenough (born 1805) was the earliest American student to reach out after the advantages of the Italian training. Of a family representa- tive of the developing Boston culture, he was intellectually qualified to grasp the opportunity with a full understanding of its significance. With him prop- erly begins the history of American professional sculpture. Of the few examples of public statuary already existing in Boston at this time, the Washington in the Doric Hall of the State House was the work of an Englishman, and an Italian hand had fashioned the more exotic figure of Columbus in Louisburg square. Greenough was a man of exceptional nobility of character, who brought to the study of his art an almost religious devotion. He was thus enabled to bear with fortitude certain grievous experiences in his career which must have greatly tried so sensitive a spirit. On the unhappy prompting of his admirer, James Fenimore Cooper, he undertook while in Rome what was designed to be a convincing demonstration of his technical power, a sculptural adaptation of certain naked cherubs from Raphael's "Madonna del Baldacchino" in the Pitti Palace. Much to Cooper's exasperation, this particularly innocent essay in Latinity, on its exhibition in New England, evoked most bitter con- troversy over the measure of its outrage against the national decencies. The group has not survived, but a later work, "Angel and Child," which is pre- sumably a more prudent treatment of the same theme, belongs, with several others of his works, including a bust of Hamilton, to the Boston Museum. The really tragic episode in Greenough's career, however, developed from the work which was calculated to be his most honorable achievement. Congress had commissioned him to carve a memorial to Washington for a specific place in the interior of the Capitol. The majestic seated figure which emerged from his prolonged and anxious study of the first President was unfortunately found on its delivery to be too weighty for the floor on which it was designed to rest within the Capitol. With cruel precipitancy it was thereupon consigned to the inappropriate position out-of-doors which it has occupied since, where it could not fail to excite unfairly the scorn and ridicule of the generations.
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