Sermon for Good Americans Found in the Art of the Art Galleries

The richness, beauty, and variety of modern American art—that is a theme which is enforced upon me anew by this week’s round of visits to the galleries. Why we should bother with second rate Dutchmen, like [Bernard] Blommers and [Johannes] Bosboom and [Hein] Kever and the rest—why we should pay thousands of dollars for their pictures which have no relation to our life—when here and there and everywhere in our own country gifted men are doing sincere and beautiful work in the effort to show us the beauty of our own land, our own ideals—the reason of all this passes understanding. 

Probably it is part of a ruinous manifestation of the same instinct which makes us neglect and ignore our poets, listen to opera sung in foreign languages, import foreign musicians to play in our Chicago orchestra, prefer plays about high life in England or France (though in the drama this preference seems to be yielding a little), apologize for our skyscrapers, the good as well as the bad, go to Switzerland instead of to the Sierras to see scenery, and in general imagine that beauty is to be found not at home but abroad. 

It is time to protest against all this, to cry aloud, to shout a warning, to ring the bells of clamor in every steeple. Because this colonialism of taste is not only stupid, it is disastrous.

-

It condemns our poets to silence—since no poet can sing on and on if no one listens; our painters to starvation or to compromise with commercialism, or else to foreign residence so that they can win reputation at home by securing honors abroad; our architects to a beaux arts education with its persistent after temptations to dry and imitative scholasticisms.

In short, it is ruinous to the artistic genius of the American people, which has already, against all these odds, achieved work, and [illegible], powerful, and expressive work, and which seems just ready, if it gets any proper encouragement, for a full and magnificent efflorescence.

Wake up! Wake up! use your eyes! Know a good thing when you see it; and, knowing it, recognize that it is your sacred duty, and ought to be your pleasure, to encourage the creator of that good thing—to read your fellow citizen’s poem, buy his book, hear his opera, appreciate his building, purchase his picture for your house or your club; and, in general, show him that you take an intelligent interest in his effort, always difficult enough at best, to show you the beauty of your own life and environment.

The immediate reason for this outcry—the text of the sermon—is a visit to Young’s [Chicago] gallery in Kimball hall, and to the room in the Art Institute now filled with pictures by two Texas painters; also a landscape by [Paul] Dougherty at Thurber’s [Chicago gallery], and a new portrait by Louis Betts at O’Brien’s [Chicago gallery].

Let us begin with the Texans, not because they are more distinguished than [Alexander H. ] Wyant and [Dwight W.] Tryon, [Henry Ward] Ranger and Dougherty, but because they are less, and therefore, more in need of recognition; also because they have been working patiently in a new and hitherto almost untried American field, and lastly because they claim our hospitality by generously giving this special exhibition of a roomful of their pictures at the Institute.

-

These sixty little landscapes in oils and pastels by Frank Reaugh and Charles Peter Bock are the result of a sketch trip taken last year through the semi-desert country of mesquite and chaparral and sage grass between Dallas and the Staked Plains.

They partly reveal to us the wonderful coloring of those dry plains and terraced mesas, color sometimes brilliant with many tints, sometimes delicately opalescent. This coloring cannot be exaggerated; on the contrary, its more gorgeous manifestations cannot be expressed in paint, and the attempt to do so, as in two or three of Mr. Bock’s larger canvases, does not quite make a picture.

Frank Reaugh is more discreet, more sure in his painting instinct; indeed, it is no disparagement of his friend to pronounce his exhibition the finer of the two. His pictures are all quite small, and the pastel sketches are tiny, mostly about ten by five inches—but, O, the beauty of them, the delicacy, the exquisite feeling, the poetry! Listen, you Christmas shopper—these little pastels are for sale at from $20 to $30 apiece. One of them given to your friend—if you can bear to part with it—will be a joy forever in his house and his heart, worth a basketful of bureau ornaments and scarf pins and desk sets and silver picture frames. And, moreover, when your friend, many years hence let us hope, goes the way of all flesh, this picture may enrich his family to the tune of—who knows?—several hundreds.

-

We of Chicago do not know this desert country so well as we ought—this red and chocolate soil, these broad plains pearly white and turquoise and purple, these level uplifted mesas, these stratified and castellated hills. We have traveled in Europe, maybe, but few of us in our own wonderland of space and color and mystery. Very well—here is a man who will show us what it is like, make us go to see it likely. It was an exhibition of Lundgren’s desert pictures—back in the ‘90s—which first made me long for Arizona. Since then I have traveled there again and again, but I have not satisfied the longing yet.

At Young’s is another picture of the plains, done in the old days further north than Texas. This is a little after sunset scene by A. H. Wyant, a consummate masterpiece—no less—which seems to perpetuate an epoch. Wyant crossed the plains long ago, when the trail was marked by buffalo skulls mounted on poles; there he fell ill and was paralyzed, and the party who carried him along were in danger of their lives from Indians.

This picture is profound with the concentrated passion of that experience. The shadowed plain, the dark, red streaked rolling clouds, the single swift horseman wildly riding—these somehow give one in this small picture the spacious grandeur of that "Great American Desert" of long ago, which has now become the rich corn fields of Kansas and Nebraska.

-

There are other beautiful pictures at Young's. One is a stern, brown, autumnal landscape by Tryon, painted perhaps a score of years ago, before he fell so deeply in love with the mauve and lavender of early spring. Others are a gorgeous, tropical water color by Winslow Homer, a russet autumnal forest by Ranger, a study of a rough field under a lively sky by C. H. Davis, some pines at sunset by Charles Warren Eaton, a nude out of doors by Childe Hassam, and two or three landscapes—especially one showing a pale green meadow with trees by J. E. Bundy, who grew almost old at his work down in Richmond, Ind., before the public began to appreciate its exceptional quality.

Two or three silvery landscapes done in tempera by W. C. Emerson of Chicago are most original, high spirited and decorative, expressive of a fresh outlook and a vivid temperament. And there is a lovely little snow scene painted some years ago by Svend Svendsen, so pearly and delicate as to make us almost forget how his style has stiffened and hardened of late.

The Dougherty at Thurber’s is a rock ribbed edge of coast with a strip of sea and a windy sky beyond—a powerful picture by one of our strongest men. And Louis Betts, in his portrait of Dr. Goodspeed, one of the trustees of the university, has added another to that distinguished collection of Chicagoans which we shall all be proud of some day.

The doctor wears his scholastic robes.Its flowing lines and various tones of black are a dramatic setting for the smiling, vivid, gray bearded face. About twelve of Mr. Betts’ portraits, including those of the Blair ladies, Mrs. Keogh, Mrs. Revell, Mr. Hough, Mr. Cramer, the O’Brien boy, and the lovely child called ‘Apple Blossoms,’ now form a special exhibition in the Scott & Fowles galleries in New York.

-

The Art Crafts exhibition is, as usual, a charming place to linger in at this Christmas season. There are some interesting groups of pottery, especially the new Rookwood designs, those from Newcomb college, and from F. E. Walrath. In silver, Massachusetts craftsmen seem to carry off first honors; we have a beautiful large bowl from C. G. Forssen, two fine bowls from George C. Gebelein, some enameled boxes from Elizabeth E. Copeland, and various articles of graceful form from Arthur J. Stone, Mary C. Knight, and Mrs. [Eva] Macomber.

Many exhibits of jewelry are charming. I noticed especially those of Jane C. Barron, Millicent Strange, Elizabeth Copeland, James H. Winn, the Pratt sisters, and the Vedder brother and sister, children of Elihu Vedder. In copper the Handicraft guild shows some graceful pieces. The Wilson shop shows, as usual, some beautiful work in stained leather—bags, purses, book covers, and the like—while in tooled leather Charles A. Herbert’s work is notable and also that of the late Josephine Von Oven, whose sudden and lamentable death last October deprived us of one of the cleverest craftswomen and teachers of handicraft in Chicago. 

There are not many book bindings, but those shown are of excellent workmanship, especially those of Fanny Dudley, Rachel Miller, and Florence Ward. Charmingly decorated china is shown by various members of the Atlan club, by Laura Mattoon and Matilda Middleton; and a bowl and pitcher by Mary J. Coulter are of exceptional beauty.