Our National Capital is far richer in collections of fine pictures than seems to be generally known, though the steady stream of visitors to the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Library of Congress suggests that many are aware of the opportunities here.
Writing of the National Gallery of Art, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the National Museum, says that more than sixty years ago ” the Congress of the United States directed the formation of a gallery of art for the nation,” and ” al-though the growth of the collection has depended entirely on gifts and bequests, in the lines of the contemporary American paintings and oriental art the Gallery has attained a prominence which has brought world-wide recognition.”
The National Collections are now housed in the north hall of the new building of the Natural History Museum, but it is anticipated that a national gallery building will be erected in the near future for the accommodation of the rapidly growing body of art works.
The most noteworthy art event of recent years is the building of the Freer Gallery now under way in the Smithsonian grounds. Mr. Charles L. Freer of Detroit provides the building at a cost of a million dollars to hold his collections which will be retained in Detroit until the Gallery is finished. These have as their central feature one of the most important groups of oriental art in the world, being especially rich in works of the early Chinese and Japanese masters. Hardly less important are the rare art works in oriental pottery and bronze, and to these vast riches are added many pictures by American artists, comprising no less than sixty two notable Whistler oil paintings, and an even larger number of his water-colors and pastels, besides the famous Peacock room (which is to be set up complete in every original detail) ; also works of many other American artists, including Dewing, Childe Hassam, Sargent, Winslow Homer, Abbott Thayer, Gari Melchers, and Tryon.
One of the most beautiful as well as most highly valued pictures in the National Gallery is the lovely “Madonna and Child” (facing this chapter), by Bernardino Luini, whose style has been likened to that of Leonardo da Vinci. Ruskin, indeed, in a well-known passage, ranks him above Leonardo. This scene shows an unusual grouping; the Child is taking the first step, just learning to walk, leaving the Mother’s arms for that high destiny, which she feels with tender premonition though she knows not why.
In the same room (Harriet Lane Johnston Collection) is an interesting portrait of the late King Edward VII., as Prince of Wales, a handsome youthful figure of military bearing in red uniform, painted by Sir John Watson Gordon. This picture was sent to expresident Buchanan, in 1862, following the memorable visit of the Prince in 1860 to the United States. A personal letter from the Prince accompanied it, and may be seen with this collection, to which belong also two letters from Queen Victoria to the President. Miss Lane, who is mentioned in these letters, was the President’s niece and was mistress of the White House during his administration, as Buchanan was unmarried. She afterward became Mrs. Johnston, and through the terms of her will this important collection came eventually to the National Gallery.
Perhaps the most generally interesting feature of this collection is Rossiter’s painting representing a large party of visitors before the tomb of Washing-ton at Mount Vernon. It includes portraits of the Prince, President Buchanan, Miss Lane, and many other personages of prominence at that period.
In this remarkable collection should be observed a Constable landscape and several fine portraits from the early English School. These include the beautiful Romney, “Miss Kirkpatrick” p. 8o), a harmony of exquisite coloring and composition, with delicacy of expression and beauty of flesh tones. Almost equally charming is the Reynolds of ” Mrs. Hammond,” together with the Hoppner of ” Mrs. Abington,” and the Sir Thomas Lawrence of ” Lady Essex as Juliet,” a brilliant delineation of spirited English grace.
The William T. Evans Collection includes examples of eighty five American artists. Among these are four from the great landscape painter, George Inness. ” September Afternoon” (p. 116) (dated 1887) is a glow of autumn color.
Winslow Homer’s ” High Cliff Coast of Maine ” shows the characteristic rocks and surf so often. appearing in this artist’s work. Three of Homer D. Martin’s (1836-1897) landscapes and three by Ralph A. Blakelock are of interest.
The American mystic, John La Farge, is well represented in the ” Visit of Nicodemus to Christ.” The Saviour is saying, ” Ye must be born again,” as He looks compassionately at the sitting Nicodemus, who holds open before him the Book of the Law. Harmonious low tones suggest night.
” The Cup of Death,” by Elihu Vedder, is one of the illustrations for the ” Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
Other interesting works in the Gallery are Ribera’s (15588-1652) ” Job and his Comforters,” examples of Frederick Remington, Kenyon Cox, Henry Ward Ranger, Twachtman, George Fuller and his son Henry Brown Fuller, J. W. Alexander, A. H. Wyant, and numerous important pictures on loan, including a Hogarth, a brilliant Raeburn, and a Nicholaas Maes.
The ” Aurora,” by F. E. Church (who painted the famous ” Niagara ” in the Corcoran), and Healy’s full-length of the French statesman Guizot are note-worthy, besides American portraits of Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, and other national characters.
Elizabeth Nourse’s ” Fisher Girl of Picardy” (p. 104) is a brilliant study of French peasant life, by an American woman painter whose work has received high recognition both in this country and abroad.
A remarkable collection of eighty two sketches by contemporary French artists is also on exhibition. This was ” presented (July, 1915) to the people of the United States by the citizens of the French Republic as a token of their appreciation of the sympathetic efforts of American citizens toward relieving the distress occasioned by the European war.” A variety of styles are to be seen here, the work of such well-known French artists as Besnard, Bonnat, Carolus Duran, Harpignies, Lhermitte, Henri Martin, Menard, and Rodin.
In the White House, Washington, are to be seen interesting portraits, including Lincoln and other noted Presidents. Seymour Thomas’ recent portrait of President Wilson is a striking character interpretation. Sargent’s ” Roosevelt ” is here, considered by the artist one of his best portraits. George Frederick Watts’ ” Love and Life” (Frontispiece) divides the time between the White House and the Corcoran; in the present administration it has been recalled to the White House. It is a lovely thing to those who understand its symbolism.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, founded in 1869 by the late William Wilson Cor-coran, ” for the purpose of encouraging American genius in the production and preservation of works pertaining to the Fine Arts,” is conspicuous in examples of the American School, and it has fine European subjects, especially the Barbi-son School. From this group is Corot’s “Wood Gatherers” (p. 130), considered the most valuable picture in the Cor-coran Collection and estimated at between $125,000 and $150,000. The artist signed this canvas in his last illness, at the age of seventy nine. The first motive was an old study by another painter of a landscape with St. Jerome at prayer. Even in his closing moments Corot was painting in thought, for he moved his right hand to the wall and said, “Look how beautiful it is! I have never seen such admirable landscapes.”
Of Daubigny, Dupré, Troyon, Jules Breton, and others there are interesting subjects.
“Charlotte Corday in Prison” is a popular picture by Charles Louis Muller (1815-1892), called “Muller of Paris.”
” The Warrener,” by George Morland (1763-1804), is a typical English cottage and farmyard, of the early English School which was led by Constable.
Lhermitte’s large peasant picture, ” La Famille,” cannot be overlooked, nor an-other favorite, ” The Helping Hand,” by Emile Renouf (1845-1894), of a little girl with her hand on the oar, aiding a sturdy old fisherman, perhaps her father, to pull the dory home.
An ” Interior of a Cottage,” by Josef Israels, shows a mother sewing for her little one asleep in its cradle; light stealing in from the curtained window at the left touches the flowers on the table and softens the faces, intensifying the sympathetic atmosphere characteristic of this painter of Dutch peasant life.
The portrait of ” Otto Fürst von Bismarck,” by the noted German artist Franz Lenbach (1836-1904), though in a very low tone, is an interesting picture of Count Bismarck.
Another German artist, a contemporary of Lenbach, is Ludwig Knaus (1829-1910), whose “Forester at Home ” rep-resents an interior of a hunter’s lodge. The forester, engaged in smoking and with dreamful eyes, is seated by the blazing fire, his dogs beside him.
Of American painters, Frederick Edwin Church’s (1826-1900) “Niagara Falls” is especially fine. This picture when exhibited in Paris at the International Exhibition in 1867 received a medal of the second class, a triumph for American art in those early days. It has been said that “indeed this picture formed an era in the history of native landscape art, from the revelation it proved to Europeans.”
The large ” Cupid and Psyche,” by Benjamin West, is in the academic French style.
Childe Hassam’s ” The New York Window “‘is a study in blue and yellow tones of a girl by a wide window. It was purchased by the Corcoran Gallery in 1912, when it was awarded the first William A. Clark Prize of $2,000, accompanied by the Corcoran Gold Medal.
The charming portrait, ” Girl with Muff,” by Philip L. Hale, son of the late Rev. Edward Everett Hale, was pur-chased by the Gallery from the Fifth Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings in 1914.
Two fine works by George Henry Boughton are ” The Heir Presumptive ” showing an English estate where a little boy is walking, accompanied by his dog and nurse and followed by his pony,and the ” Edict of William the Testy,” a spirited Dutch-looking group of early settlers, a picture which illustrates a passage from Irving’s Knickerbocker History of New York, Chapter VIII.
Richard Norris Brooke’s ” Pastoral Visit” is a typical interior of a southern darky cabin, on the occasion of the colored minister’s visit,-a popular picture.
A rare Inness, ” Sunset in the Woods,” is thus explained by the painter: “The idea is to represent an effect of light in the woods toward sundown, but to allow the imagination to predominate.”
Another interesting collection in Washington is the O’Connor Art Gallery of Trinity College, which ” includes nearly a hundred magnificent paintings in oil which represent all the great historic schools of painting. . . The Holahan Social Hall contains many precious and rare pictures, works of the Old Masters.”
In the Library of Congress, an ex-tended series of brilliantly colored mural paintings by American artists attracts many visitors. In the entrance pavilion Lyric Poetry is symbolized. The central figure is the Muse, ” laurel-crowned and bearing a lyre.” She is attended by the nymphs Passion, Beauty, Mirth, Pathos, Truth, and Devotion.
The Poets are presented as youthful subjects in six paintings: Emerson as winged ” Uriel “; Wordsworth, the meditative ” Boy of Winander ” (England’s most beautiful lake) ; Milton, by ” Cornus “; Shakespeare, by ” Adonis,” a prone figure; Keats, as lovely ” Endymion,” deep in thought, beside him ou the ground his shepherd’s staff, and in the west a thin new moon; Tennyson, as “Ganymede,” borne by an eagle.
Joy” and “Memory” are idealized in an arch painting with a Wordsworth inscription:
” The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.”
Greek mythology forms the subject of Walter McEwen’s illustrations of the legends of ” Paris at the Court of Menelaus and Helen,” “Bellerophon,” “Perseus,” ” Prometheus,” ” Theseus,” “Achilles,” ” Hercules,” ” Jason,” and “Orpheus.”
Frederick Dielman’s two mosaic manteIs of rare Italian marble representing “Law” and “History,” in the Representatives’ Reading Room, are considered “the richest and most beautiful adornments of the building.”
“Government of the Republic” is symbolized, in the entrance pavilion to the Reading Room lobby, in mural paintings by Elihu Vedder, entitled “Government,” “Good Administration,” “Peace and Prosperity,” “Corrupt Legislation,” and ” Anarchy.”
“The Evolution of the Book” forms John W. Alexander’s six panels,of which ” The Cairn ” illustrates the cave man; next ” Oral Tradition,” followed by ” Hieroglyphics,” ” The Pictograph,” ” The Manuscript,” and ” The Printing Press.”
Charles Sprague Pearce’s paintings have for their theme, as elements of civilization, ” The Family,” ” Religion,” ” Labor,” ” Study,” ” Recreation and Rest.” The Muses inspire Edward Simmons’ nine panels.
On the second floor, George W. May-nard symbolizes the Virtues, as eight floating female figures; elsewhere the same artist represents ” The Discovery and Settlement of America.” ” Wisdom,” “Understanding,” ” Knowledge,” and ” Philosophy ” are pictured by Robert Reid.
The mosaic of ” Minerva,” by Elihu Vedder, is notable in its careful arrangement of design. Benson’s ” Seasons ” and ” The Graces ” may also be mentioned. Kenyon Cox celebrates in two groups ” The Sciences ” and ” The Arts.” Bela L. Pratt pictures ” The Seasons ” in four medallion sculpture reliefs. ” War ” and ” Peace ” form the subjects of Gari Melchers’ two panels.
In these brilliant frescoes of the Library of Congress we find, perhaps, the most truly American gallery in the world.
Baltimore is an important art center from the Walters Gallery, a remarkable private collection of more than a thousand paintings; at specified times open to the public.
It was Mr. Walters’ purpose to represent the history of Italian art rather than to fill his gallery with master-pieces; but he has masterpieces, too, such as the “Madonna of the Candelabra,” attributed to Raphael, and the ” Virgin and Child” by Fra Lippo Lippi, a picture full of human interest to those who recall Lippi as the monk, who was forgiven and permitted to marry, and whose beautiful wife Lucrezia was so often the model for his pictures. The Venetian School has a fine example in the ” Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor,” by Crivelli; also a ” St. George and the Dragon,” attributed to Carpaccio.
The German School includes a Dürer picture of “Nuremberg,” the artist’s birthplace, and works of both the Holbeins, with a fine ” Portrait of an Ecclesiastic” by the Younger.
The Barbison School is rich in eight Millets, among them the beautiful nude, ” La Baigneuse,” known as ” The Goose Girl,” and the large canvas, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian.” Rousseau’s noted landscape, ” Le GivreWinter Solitude,” is called also ” The Hoar Frost (painted in 1845). Of this series Caffin says: ” American collectors were among the first and the most generous clients,not only of Rousseau but of the whole Barbison group.” . . And he adds that ” it is in this country that the greatest number of fine examples of their work exists.”
Delaroche’s original sketch for ” The Hemicycle ” is considered especially choice, as the artist alone painted it, while on his large finished work in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, he permitted his students to fill in the picture and then retouched it.
The Walters Gallery owns, also, eight excellent examples of Fortuny, of Meissonier five,. and no fewer than thirty five Turners including water colors. The early English School is well represented. There are also paintings by Géricault, Gérôme, Baudry, and Puvis de Chavannes.
In the new Court House, Baltimore, are fine historical and symbolic mural paintings by Jean-Paul Laurens, La Farge, Blashfield, and C. Y. Turner.
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is possibly the best portrait gallery in America. It has an interesting Gilbert Stuart of the famous White House beauty, Dolly Madison. Another is a charming girlish portrait of the great actress, Fanny Kemble, painted by Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Though born in England, Sully is reckoned with American painters, as he came to live in the United States when but nine years old.
Miss Cecilia Beaux’s interesting study, ” A New England Woman,” was exhibited in 1896 at the Paris Salon, and received so much praise from the French that the artist was honored with associate membership in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and four years later was made an associataire, an honor which she was the first American woman painter to receive. Miss Beaux’s almost romantic rise to fame is richly deserved, for it is the result of hard work.
The best known picture of Benjamin West is here, a tragic scene of many figures called ” Death on the Pale Horse.” West was a Quaker boy, who had much difficulty at first in winning the Friends’ approval of-his bent toward art.
” The Violinist ” is a pleasing work, by Bartolomeus van der Helst (1613-1670), and reminds us that the painter was Rembrandt’s rival, and so fickle is popular taste that Amsterdam in that day actually turned toward van der Helst instead of to the great master, who died in poverty.
American landscape painters are well represented. Twachtman’s ” Sailing in the Mist” has an almost metaphysical quality, so delicately is it painted.
The Wilstach Gallery in Philadelphia illustrates the early schools and the development of art in Europe and America. Tiepolo’s ” Last Supper ” is a work of deep interest, and has been compared in expressiveness with Leonardo’s greater vision of the same. In Tiepolo the pose of the figures suggests the startled question on the lips of each, ” Is it I? ”
Of the Spanish School, Ribera’s ” St. Sebastian ” here is an interesting, though melodramatic, picture. Ribera (1588-1656) followed not quite a century after Velasquez. St. Sebastian’s martyrdom was a favorite subject with the old masters. You remember he was twice martyred for his faith, by order of the Emperor Diocletian. First, he was shot through with arrows, being left for dead, but a kind friend rescued him and nursed him back to life again. He presented himself once more before the Emperor, who, thinking it must be an apparition, inquired in great astonishment who he was. Being assured that it was again Sebastian, he ordered him beaten to death. His body was finally interred in the Catacombs.
Another interesting Saint is recalled by Murillo’s ” St. Anthony of Padua.” This monk of St. Francis’ order came to rank next to the founder. One of many legends of him is that once, when preaching a funeral sermon over a rich man, Anthony denounced the dead man’s love of money and said, ” His heart is buried in his treasure chest; go seek it there and you will find it.” Sure enough, his friends looked in the money chest, and there was the rich man’s heart. But turning to the man’s body, they looked in the usual place for hearts, and none was there at all!
Another of Sorolla’s characteristically happy bathing scenes is ” The Young Amphibians.” This modern Spanish painter’s love for gorgeous color readily betrays his nationality.
A Ruisdael landscape represents one of his ” portraits of Holland,” as Fromentin called them. Constable’s ” Old Brighton Pier” is a fine bit of English sea-coast.
The Wilstach Gallery owns an unusual Millet in ” Solitude,” the deep winter stillness of which recalls the artist’s words, ” The gay side of life never shows itself to me. I do not know where it is. The gayest thing I know is the calm silence which is so sweet both in the for-est and in the fields.”
An Inness landscape, ” The Short Cut,” pictures a wide countryside; a bent figure is crossing a stream, and in the far distance is seen the curling smoke of a railway train.
Whistler’s ” Lady with the Yellow Buskin ” recalls the laced half boot worn by Athenian tragic actors, hence tragedy; but what is the tragedy of this interesting woman, calmly playing with her glove?
The great Widener collection of Philadelphia, though not yet open to the general public, contains many wonderful pictures. Rembrandt’s most celebrated landscape, ” The Mill,” is now here.
The Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh has an interesting and valuable gathering of modern artists, well deserving of a visit.
In Buffalo the Albright Gallery possesses a striking Inness, ” The Coming Storm.” Ranger’s group of ” Sturdy Oaks is the work of another true American painter. Childe Hassam is represented in a New England landscape, characteristic in delicate color tones, ” The Church at Old Lyme,” and Thomas Dewing has a character study, ” The Lady with the Macaw.”
Viewing the pictures in the Cleveland Museum of Art one finds some interesting early examples, of which Luini’s ” Salome with the Head of St. John is a group of four wonderfully expressive faces, belonging to the Holden collection. Leonardo da Vinci’s ” Virgin and Child ” is another rare and beautiful picture. With both Luini and Leonardo, facial expression is carried far. In the latter, we see, through open windows behind the Madonna and Child, a bit of Italian landscape, palaces, groves, and water with figures on the shore.
The ” Portrait of Eleanor of Austria,” by Jean Gossaert (c. 1470?-1541), called Mabuse, is a face as fresh as though painted today, but it has about it that beautiful medieval serenity so rarely seen to-day. The rich jewels worn by this regal lady are as carefully painted as her gracious features. The composition is excellent.
Frans Hals’ ” Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen ” shows a cheerful Hollander, and Velasquez’s ” Man with a Wine Glass,” a Spanish bravo. A Claude Lorraine landscape is another treasure, among the French paintings. Puvis de Chavannes is represented in a striking picture, ” Christian Inspiration,” suggesting the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, showing the artists and decorators at their tasks. Jules Breton’s ” Tired Gleaner ” is a pleasing girlish figure, and still more interesting is Millet’s ” The Seated Spinner,” a meditative young girl in a woodland at the foot of a big tree, her eyes wide to something we cannot see, an inner vision, a true Millet quality.
Fine portraits here are by Raeburn, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and the ” Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria ” by Van Dyck, a strong profile view of this lovely French queen of England.
Of American painters may be mentioned ” The Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows,” by Frederick Church (who painted the celebrated ” Niagara in the Corcoran Gallery of Washington), ” The Setting Sun,” by Inness, an unusually fine landscape with this artist’s qualities of repose, three by Winslow Homer, and ” The White Girl,” by Whistler.
The Detroit Museum of Art has valu-able European works. These include a splendid Rubens group, “Abigail Meeting David with Presents,” the story of which is told in I. Samuel 25. In the picture we see a very striking David raising the comely Abigail from the ground. Among the women attending Abigail, may be seen the face of Ru-bens’ first wife and perhaps the second, both so dearly beloved. The picture is filled with color, life, and action.
Bellini’s ” Portraits of an Italian Nobleman and his Wife ” present an interesting character study, no less individual than the more spiritual face of ” Mary Magdalene” (p. 6o).
Quinten Matsys (1466-1531?), the Dutch Flemish painter, is represented in a realistic ” Virgin and Child,” painted against a background of Flemish landscape, intended for Jerusalem. Tradition says that Quinten Matsys was called in his day the ” Blacksmith of Antwerp,” but became a painter in order to win the father’s consent to wed the young woman he loved. There are other interesting Dutch pictures in the gallery.
Rembrandt Peale’s (1778-1860) large canvas, ” The Court of Death,” was painted more than half a century ago in emulation of West’s melodramatic ” Death on the Pale Horse” in the Pennsylvania Academy.
The American School is also included in this collection. There are striking works by Mr. Gari Melchers, a native of Detroit, whose mural decorations in the Library of Congress have already been mentioned. Elizabeth Nourse’s ” Happy Days ” is here.
In Chicago the Art Institute perhaps attracts more visitors annually than any other gallery in America, with the possible exception of Washington.
Of the Dutch there are Frans Hals picture of his son, the ” Portrait of Harman Hals,” a typical character study, also a fine Rembrandt ” Portrait of a Girl,” and examples by the lesser Dutch masters. Van Ruisdael and Hobbema are splendidly represented in ” The Castle ” by the former and ” The Water Mill ” by the latter.
Rubens’ striking ” Portrait of Marquis Spinola ” is the likeness of a noble Spanish military personage. Spinola besieged the Netherlands for his sovereign with much success. Rubens no doubt knew him personally, for it was through Spinola’s influence that the Spanish Archduchess Isabella, ruler of the Netherlands, sent Rubens to Spain. An exceedingly beautiful Van Dyck is the ” Portrait of Helena Dubois.” Another Sorolla sunshiny bathing scene is called ” The Twa Sisters.”
Chicago owns fine Inness landscapes, notably the ” Early Morning ” and ” The Home of the Heron.” ” Some persons suppose that a landscape has no power of conveying human sentiment,” says Inness. ” The civilized landscape peculiarly can; and therefore I love it more and think it more worthy of reproduction than that which is savage and untamed. It is more significant.” This thought recalls Bobby Burns’ remark, as, standing beside a friend, they surveyed a wide Scotch moor. Far away in the distance a little smoke was rising from the chimney of a humble cottage. It was the only sign of human life. ” And that,” said the poet, ” is more to me than all the rest.”
It is appropriate that the Scotch-American painter, William Keith, who was a friend of Inness, should have also a fine landscape, ” The Coming Storm,” a title several times used by Inness for different subjects. Their similarity of thought is suggested in Keith’s words: ” The sentiment is the only thing of real value in my pictures, and only a few people understand that.”
Elizabeth Nourse has here a portrait study, “Mother and Children.”
Whistler’s group ” In the Studio ” includes the artist’s own portrait a full length figure of the ” butterfly “as he styled himself. A critic says of this lovely picture: “The colors are merely dusted on his canvas; and he has not thought good to ` finish’ his ladies’ figuresone has no arms!” The artist painted several replicas from the original of this ” Studio ” picture, as he liked the subject so well.
Jules Breton’s most popular picture, ” The Song of the Lark,” is in Chicago. It is considered the artist’s finest work. While it possesses a happy quality, Breton’s painting lacks the depth of feeling of Millet, which is so well shown here in his picture, ” Bringing Home the New Born Calf,” radiating a tender mother-love, in the cow’s homely affection for her offspring. A Troyon sheep picture is the ” Return from the Market,” with interesting peasant figures. Edouard Manet’s portrait of ” The Beggar ” illustrates the impressionistic realism for which this artist is famous.
In the Layton Gallery of Milwaukee is a fine collection, the gift of Mr. Frederick Layton and his wife in 1888, with works by such artists as Bastien-Lepage, Anton Mauve, Mesdag, Constable, Corot, and Inness.
The Cincinnati Museum owns a rare treasure in Titian’s ” Portrait of Philip the Second,” painted about 155o. Be-sides many others, Elizabeth Nourse’s picture, ” Peasant Women of Borst,” is here, Cincinnati being the artist’s birth-place; also John W. Alexander’s portrait of “Auguste Rodin,” the greatest living French sculptor and exponent of modern art.
In the Delgardo Museum, New Orleans, Koopman’s ” On the Rocks after the Storm” is a wonderful glow of sunlight bursting through clouds over a stormy sea. Augustus Koopman is a South Carolinian, and a strong painter. Robert Henri’s ” Spanish Gypsy Girl” is an interesting loan picture here.
The St. Louis City Art Museum has a charming portrait by George Fuller (1822-1884) of his little son, called ” The Fuller Boy.” An Inness, ” The Approaching Storm,” has the same title used elsewhere but for quite different subjects. A character study by Sorolla, called ” Another Marguerite,” is in somber contrast to the artist’s gay bathing scenes elsewhere. It pictures a woman prisoner with two guards in a third-class railway carriage in Spain; intense grief marks the picture. St. Louis has also one of Puvis de Cha-vannes’ great pictures, ” Charity,” teaching its lesson, like the Sorolla, though in a different way.
The Crocker Art Gallery of Sacra-mento owns a Luini “Madonna and Child,” with characteristically pleasing faces, and a playful though entirely different child from that of the Luini in the National Gallery (p. 142).
Correggio’s ” Venus and Adonis ” is a valuable picture here. The subject was a favorite with the old masters. Correggio has given it almost the modern French realism.
Here also are Van Dyck’s ” Three Wise Men ” and Murillo’s ” Gypsy.”
A beautiful landscape by Thomas Hill (1829-1908) of “The Yosemite Valley” is well known through the Prang color reproductions.
In the Emanuel Walter Collection the San Francisco Institute of Art owns several fine examples of the Barbison School, including a Corot landscape, one of Millet’s sketches, a Daubigny, a Rous-seau landscape, and cattle studies by Troyon and Dupré. Two fine pictures of mountain scenery are Keith’s ” Sum-mit of the Sierras ” and ” The Mountain Top.”
So with delightful anticipation the art lover may turn to any large city in the United States, with the confident expectation of finding there at least the beginnings of a grand collection.