The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-07-29
Art and Artists.
Notes New and Old.

The Saturday Review says, "Mr. Whistler
exhibits at the Grosvenor Gallery some ad-
mirable etchings, and certain arrangements
'nocturnes' and 'harmonies,' two Of which he
seems to have painted in a comparatively sober
frame of mind and one of which, q dancing
figure, is ludicrously muddy and ugly"
Edward Strahan, in the Art Amateur, thus
discourses ON two contrasting styles of painting
inithe New York Academy exhibition; Thom-
as Moran, honored by an appreciative nation
with various commissions for the capitol, and
with successive summer excursions of a roman
tic and to him inexpensive nature, shows the
result of some of his travels in Florida scene,
"Ponce de Leon" (317) and, nearer home, in
view of sugar bakeries at Communipaw (2S9).
Let us not deny the finished ability of this pro-
life artist in expressive brush work: the re-
markable length of his catalogue of the con-
ventional formula which may be tai en- for the
conventional textures and growths of nature is
most imposing. His touch for grass, his touch
for pine trees his touch for rocks, his touch for
mud and gravel, his touch for cloud is ready
at moments notice, whereupon the thing is
in moment defined. A turn of the wrist,
play of the astonished bristles, and the thing
is painted. 1t is like seeing iugglers exhibi-
ton to inspect his facility. The temptation
that goes with this least reassuring of the gifts
of the gods is to rest content with superficial
impressions. Mr.. Thomas Moran's Florida"
with Ponce de Icons explorers, is a rich and
imposing drop-curtain; his "Communipaw" is
a silver dazzle of sugar-baking palaces rising
among the miSts and eXhalations of univer-
sal thaw, which expresses itself in front by
realistic" mud and practicable" slush, that
ba 10 fha of ,tror-
soda in the stage presentment of "L'Assom-
moir' Both of the landscapist's contributions
aforesaid have an almost terrifying ease and
mastery of style, and this is not in the way of
sickness or emptiness, but with downright
fecundity of varied effects; but the artists
determination is to teach Nature how to look,
not to learn how Nature looks. We may
take, as a wholesome Offset to this drill
sergeant's view of natural effects, the learned
hesitation, the commanding uncertainty,
with which the Bostonian Fuller treats his
landscape in the scene entitled "And She
Was Witch (42D. Here the shuddering
anxiety of the touch of the artist is most
wise furnishing of his whole being for the
scene; as the truly competent actor will undo
his personal character, and fill his mind with
vacillation to play Hamlet or with intirplity
of purpose to play Macbeth, so the painter
here has accumulated in his own feeling the
vagueness and mists of sunset woods in which
the arrest of his old crone takes place; in the
foreground a hunted young creature, like
Whittier's 'Witch's Daughter, in appearance,
flies to the shelter of lonely cabin. The in
certitude of the manipulation is part of his wis
dom; the Mighty Mother is not going to unveil
her face to the interpreter who knows all about
her beforehand In the redeemed mystery
which trembles through these tree trunks and
futters over the half-seen figures of terrified
beldame or superstitious Puritans-personages
equally shaken with terror of each other and
partaking together of the confusions of twi-
light time of history-the artist proves himself
stronger than if he had been more definite. He
has given us a well-crooned ballad of roman
tic epoch, and has surpassed his success with
Turkey pasture" of another season.
Couture says in his book that he would ig-
more the antique in giving first lessons in art.
To use it with beginners is monstrous. While
the teacher is trying to make his student feel
the beauties of his statue he is giving him false
impressions and familiarizing him with what
he cannot understand \ teacher can make
his pupil copy table or book. and he can
have plaster casts of them if he like. but to
''teach from the antique is impossible; the pu-
pill has many things to learn before he can
comprehend it," Couture relates that when
he was asked to paint portrait of Beranger he
said he did not care to do it because he had a
great admiration for him, and feared an inti-
mate acquaintance might destroy his ideal.
What finally decided him to overcome his re-
luctance was "a charming letter from Nine.
Sand" This letter, however, he did not pre-.