The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-06-29
ART.

with tue champion poets, authors, edi-
tors, statesmen, cereals, rivers, fruits,
salmon, scandals, electors, wool, vegeta-
bles, babies, inventors, and general en-
terprise of the Republic, now turns her
attention to art and artists, with which
and whom she Is destined to make her
mark in the world, outside as we'll as in
side the realm of Rutherford and the
rest of the men.
There is not, in all America, better
showing in the line of art palaces, as far
as they go, than you can find in the city
of Portland. If you go strolling up
First street, your attention is directed
to the beautiful displays in the shop
windows, and you pause to wonder Qf
an immigranD how it is possible for a
city so small, and so remote from the
worlds centers, to sustain trade in
such wealth of the useful and beauti-
full as is everywhere discernable. You
pause, after a while, in front of Morse's
Palace of Art, and are more astonished
than ever at what you behold. But re-
remember, you are not in an inland
town, but a miniature, though metro
politan, city, where everything to be
desired to make one happy or wise is at
tainable at rates even more reasonable
than on the Atlantic coast.
After feasting your eyes at Morse's,
turn to Alder street and visit D. w.
Prentice, who deals in musical instru-
ments. Here you may find everything
in the line of music from a Jews harp
to a Weber Grand.
Turn now to your right and mount a
flight of stairs in Strowbridge's build
ing. Turn and mount again, and then
turn through winding corridors till you
reach the southwest corner, and you
will find the studio of an Oregon artist.
Enter and you will see the usual out
cropping signs of genius. The rooms
are ill-kept and poorly furnished, and
the artist is sufficiently seedy and spir-
itueLLe to satisfy you that his soul is not
in his surroundings, but in his work.
! Shelves filled with bottles containing
every imaginable pigment in powder
and solution add to the unkempt ap-
pearance of other things, while pedal
organ, bearing signs of constant usage,
half fills the little, well-lighted sky
parlor. The artist greets you pleas
antly, and you soon forget everything
else but his pictures. Portraits, ready to
speak to you, so life-like are they in
lineament and coloring, gaze at you
! from amid the general confusion, and
one unfortunate lady's fac SimiLe in oil
is caricatured bya rope around the neck
tied with hangman's knot, the artist
explaining that the picture is thus
treated because the original will not pay
her bill. This gives you a better opin-
ion of his practical ability than the ap-
pearance of the room would indicate,
and you begin to want some of his work
if you can pay for it. Then you turn
to examine the landscapes. The artist,
being beginner, is too poor to retain
his finished pictures in the studio, but
he explains an unfinished sunset scene
or two, and then invites you to the pic
ture gallery of Victor Volney on Third
street, where you stand face to face with
some of his paintings that would, il
credited to the old masters, bring ia bu-
lous prices. A woodland scene on your
left carries you to the mountain fast.
nesses of the Upper Coquille, where we
have witnessed the tangle of fallen for.
ests so strikingly like it that we cannot
but wonder that the artist, who is
wholly self-taught, has not seen the
original, save by the eye of faith and
fancy. Then a landscape from the is.
land of Juan Fernandez attracts you, in
which tropical vegetation luxuriates
beside still waters, and mighty rocks,
overtangled with brilliant foliage, bask
lazily in the shimmering, equatorial
heat. Upon your right is a companion
piece, a gap in the Sierra Nevada,
which, when age has toned down a lit
tie in the coloring, will stand unrivaled
in its truth to nature by anything save
a reflection in the camera from the nat
Hral scene itself. To the right, again, is
a smaller landscape, so clearly tinted
that you can look around the ledge OF
rocks into the clear, blue water, away,
away, in the crystal distance, while the
shadows in the water from the rocks
and foliage are startlingly vivid. These
pictures, by Mr.. Parrott, are not in any
sense "daubs," the coloring being as
smooth and even as upon chromos, and
possessing a warmth, wealth, and vari-
ETY. of light and shadow which NO
chrome can be made to initiate.
But pictures amount to little without
being finished by appropriate frames,
and these Victor Volney can make for
you to order, marvelously cheap and
wonderfully beautiful.
After having feasted your fancy and
left your orders here, try Shahshan, on
Morrison street, next. Here you will
find notices, panel pictures, brackets,
chromos, oil paintings, steel engravings,
ETC., ETC., in almost endless variety.
Now go to the Photographic galleries
on First street. Give Davidson, Hen
dee, and Buchtel call, and when you