The Portland daily press., 1880-10-18
Impressionism Run Mad.
"A Letter of James jackson in Boston Herald fro
Claggenfurt, Austria.]

"A Letter of James jackson in Boston Herald from
Claggenfurt, Austrial
There is also on exhibition now a collection
of paintings of the modern Austrian and Ger
man schools of the average provincial kind
which would not be worth mentioning, were it
not for one very extraordinary production, by
"Mary of Paris, female pupil of Zichy," as
the catalogue reads. 1t is canvas about II
feet high by 6 wide, at first glance represent
ing apparently colossal shadow, relieved, on
a mysterious background of impenetrable
darkness, by blood-red lightning zigzagging
across it, as they dart out of sulphurous mass
of light, at the extrome right and top of the
picture, projecting CHASTITY lurid glare on the
seeming shadow, and causing it to assume,
with some aid of the Imagination, the appari-
tion of man. stood at least five minutes
before this spectral phenomenon before could
make out what it represented. There was un-
mistakably great darkness and frightful tenn
pest of wind and lightning, in the midst of
which, suspended on a cross, was this startling
shadowy figure, with its phantom torso of ribs
and projecting breast bone, exaggerated to a
sharpness, meagerness and anatomical repul-
siveness that no Byzantine fanatic of asceti-
cism in art ever equaled, hanging forward
and making plowshare-like outline against
the lurid sky. 1t resembled, more than any
thing, the picked skeleton Of one of those
frghtful antedeluvian bat monsters that geol-
ogists delight in discovering. Long, snewy
arms, stretched to their utmost tension were
pulled violently forward from the cross to an
angle of about 45 degrees, as If the body were
trying to pitch itself to the ground; and had
been suddenly brought up by a convulsive jerk
on the nailed hands and feet The legs were
strangely elongated and skinny, while what
was meant for the head, black, fiat, irregu-
lar mass, with profile which gave the idea of
the beak of a carriOn fowl, and had nothing
human in its look, was thrown abruptly back
ward. Over it there was just discernible a
whitish object with an inscription, which was
being torn from the cross by the violence of
the wind in one direction, while the loose,
flowing substance which passed for hair was
raised up backward, thrown into the opposite,
twisting and squirming over the beaked front
of the profile like the tresses of Medusa
tossed by hurricane To the whole figure
ing than there is in the familiar shad-
ow of the rabbits head made on a wall
by the cunnsng hands of the fond father for
the mingled amusement and terror of his six
months old baby. Nevertheless after careful
study it was possible fol- the imagination to
conjecture, this extravagant composition was
the "Crucifixion" at the period when the
Lord, bowling his head, exclaimed, SIT is fin
ished,' and gave up the ghost. Indeed, it is so
written, to prevent mistakes in the catalogue.
But had not read the catalogue when 1 first
observed the picture. Strange indeed that
woman, least of all one named Mary should
have been its painter! No believer in Christ,
divine or human, could have done it.