SOUTH, THE NEW.. Sidney Lanier. Illustrations by Winslow Homer, R. Riordan, Arthur Quartley, Thomas Eakins and R. Blum. PAGE. 840 Pettiness in Art-International Copyright-Common Sense and Rum, 146; The Political Machine COMMUNICATIONS: The Restoration of St. Mark's, and the English Protest (D. C. P.), 465; "A Year of the Exodus HOME AND SOCIETY: Hints for the Yosemite Trip (George H. Fitch)-Nerves in the Household, 148; Letters to Young Mothers: Second Series, I. (Mary Blake)-On Landing in Liverpool (Alexander Wainwright)— The Culture of the Rose (M. S. S.), 305; The Slavery of To-day (S. B. H.)-On Arriving in London (Alexander Wainwright)-Letters to Young Mothers: Second Series, II. (Mary Blake), 466; Letters to Young Mothers: Second Series, III. (Mary Blake), 630; Letters to Young Mothers: Second Series, IV. (Mary Blake), 789; Education in Europe (L. Clarkson), 940. CULTURE AND PROGRESS: Mme. de Remusat's Memoirs (Concluding Part)-Gray's "Natural Science and Religion "—A THE WORLD'S WORK: Western River Improvement (with Diagrams)-New Warehouse Elevator-Transposing Piano- BRIC-A-BRAC: Another Hanging Committee Outrage (drawing by L. Hopkins)-Law at our Boarding-House (A. THE annals of art in America have not been eventful, but the year 1876-7 may be said to mark the beginning of an epoch in them. Before that year, we had what was called, at any rate, an American school of painting; and now the American school of painting seems almost to have disappeared or has, at the least calculation, lost the distinctive characterlessness which won for it its name and recognition. We are beginning to paint as other people paint. If we are to have a new American "school" hereafter, it is certain that it will be very different from its once popular predecessor; but at present it is quite evident that we are but accumulating and perfecting the material for such a national expression, and even to the taking of so initial a step as this, the destruction of our old canons and standards was necessary. In this sense, a just consideration of the younger painters who appeared in New York at the National Academy Exhibition three years ago is in the nature of a pæan rather than of a dirge. Even the three years that have elapsed since then have made it difficult to recall the general condition of our painting at that time. American painters of genius there were, certainly; it is not meant to insist here that there are many more now. Nothing is so difficult or so invidious as to single out individuals in a matter of this kind, but the youngest of "the young men" will recognize the long-since-established reputations of Elliott, Page, Hunt, La Farge, Inness, Vedder, Martin, Homer, and others easily recalled. They occupy the same relative position in point of merit in their generation that Stuart and Copley and Rembrandt Peale did in theirs. The point is that before VOL. XX.-I. 1876-7, roughly speaking, this notion went begging. None of them could be called representative men. The American school of painting was wholly opposed to their spirit and methods. It was represented in portraiture, not by Page, but by Huntington; in genre, not by La Farge, but by Eastman Johnson; in landscape, not by Inness or Martin, but by what a galaxy of names occurs to one here, from Church and Kensett to Bierstadt and William Hart! Any one who does not remember the American contribution to the art display of the Philadelphia International Exhibition may refresh his recollection of the general condition of American art three or four years ago,-of what was then admired and pointed to as American,-by thinking of any ordinary exhibition of that excellent association, the Artist Fund Society. The Artist Fund Society is by no means identical in point of membership with the National Academy of Design, but it is fairly typical of it in this respect; namely, that one of its exhibitions leaves upon the mind very much the same general impression of the spirit, and purport, and tendency of the kind of art therein revered and followed that an Academy exhibition used to. In the first place, it shuns ideality as something profane, substituting therefor what is known in conservative American art circles as "truth"; in the second place, for real truth-the essential, spiritual, vital force of nature, however manifested-it substitutes what is known as "fidelity" and what the early pre-Raphaelites who protested with so much vigor and success against the false classicism current nearly a hundred years ago would greatly marvel at, we may be sure. It is, in fine, in idea and [Copyright, 1880, by Scribner & Co. All rights reserved.] |