Nebraska advertiser. [volume] (Brownville, Nemaha County, N.T. [Neb.]) 1856-1882, 1870-01-27
PICTURES FOR THE HOME.

PICTURES FOR THE HOME.
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has an
admirable article in "The Atlantic
Almanac for 1869, full of good
common sense and shrewd, humorous
hits,-in reply to the question, "What
pictures shall hang on my walls ?"
Once pictures were the prerOgatives of
the wealthy: now there is no family
so poor that it cannot afford to adOrn
its home with them. 1.-THE question
what to get" says the author of "Un-
Gle Toms Cabin "amid the crowd of
applicants and possible choices, is
often a puZzling one. A picture that
is to look you in the face at all hours
of the day and night is, after all,
somewhat of an item in your exist
ence. 1t is taking to yourself a silent
companion and though there is no
speech nor language, and its voice is
not heard, yet its lines 60 out into
your daily life, and its word to the
end of yosr days. Pictures" she
continues, "are as different as people !;
and to them as to persons applies the
rule, think before you choose an init
mate friend"
In considering the question of what
pictures one would buy, Mrs. Stowe
proceeds to puncture those most in
fiated of all live balloons, the "high-
artn critics, with a skill that is alike
admirable and remOrseless. Read =
"Well-meaning people who have
money to spare often are troubled
with the question, IUhGt to blly. There
are a crowd of takers about pictures A.;
and the cry Of high art, and varie-
ty Of other bewildering cries, are flung
into ones face at every turn. Does
the honest John Stubbs want to get a
picture because it is a pretty thing,
and pleases him, or comforts his wife
when he has the blues? Then he has
awful thoughts of Don Positive, his
next neighbOr, who writes art-cTjti-
Ques for 1.-The Ne Plus Ultra" and
solemnly informs him that il is duty
he owes to society to protest against
every thing that isn't high art. No
body must be left in peace to have any
thing but the publications of the Ar
undeI Society, or artists proofs of
Raphael!s MadOnas, or prOOf-casts of
the statues in the Louvre, or some
thing else which has the seal of ages,
"a written certificate of good anti
uuity, giving him leave to admire.
Poor Stubbs doesn't admire the Ma
donna San Sista half as much as one
of Tait's pictures Of chickens picking
at q worm, or some hens in a barn
ward, which puts him in mind of the
pleasant old days when he was boy,
and of the old farm and meadows,
and father and mother and 'Our folks
who are gone. All this almost fills
his eyes with tears as he looks; bat
Stubbs is q good fellow; and when
Don Positive tells him with q lordly
air that he can buy such things if he
pleases, bat he feels it his duty to in
form him how very trashy they are in
point of art; like good christian he
wipes his eyes, and goes resignedly,
and gives q hundred or two of dollars
for an old proof engraving Of the San
SistO, and hangs 1t up where those
dear, too charming hens and chickens
were to have been, and feels that he
has done his duty by society. To be
sure, he does MT care bodle for the
picture, aud never will but Don Pos
1.-Two tells him it's high art, and he
has saved him from getting a poor
thing for his money, and that's COM
fOrt.n ..-. s
Mrs. Stowe has evidently read and
enioyed the egotistical effusiOn of the
t'art critics'i of '"The New York Tri-
buneU and 'New-YOrk Nation" The
manner in which they sometimes
pooh-pooh the most beautiful recent
art publications, ns,-Prang's inimitable
chrOmos, for eXample,-and always
90 into ecstasy over the medieval re-
productions of the Arundel Society,
which are less appropriate for a
modern American home than a series
of fifteenth century sermons would be
suitable for a modern American Lii
brary, is well hit off in this and the
succeeding passage, which however,
we have not space to copy.
She then grapples at once with the
cardinal axiom of the art-creed of
these critics, and bravely denies in
words, what the people have always
denied in acts, that high-art pictures
are suitable for the adOTnment Of a
home. The language will be reckOned
little less then blasphemOus by these
pretentious writer's but every friend
OF lINluk anu bAlE CuuGs4LAOtA VI tlAC
people in art, will be glad to see her
assail the idol which they worship so
devOutly. She says
"High art means, as nearly rs we
can make it out, what pT0fessed artists
and instructed people, who under
stand the technical properties Of art,
aud the technical difficulties to be
overcome in it, consider as interesting
and valuable 1t also means what
past ages have liked and enjoyed, and /
things that are historically interest |
ing as the record of the modes of
thinking and feeling on such subjects
in past ages. Now, many of the best
recO ds of these in-cast eDgravings
are not suited to family life, but ought
to be kept in museums and portfolios.
The admirable engraving of old blind
Belisarius is a chef ~ OeuUFe of engrav-
ing art, a touching and tragic picture
but who wishes at all hours to be con-
frOnted by the image of blind father
with son bitten by a serpent in his
arms, however well represented. The
better the representation Of slteh q sub
ject, the lCOrse it makes 1t for q home
picture. Hung in a bedroom, this