The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1883-12-01
NEW YORK LETTER. e

In my last letter | promised to. drop,
for one week at least, the current news
and gossip, to talk about matters of art.
Probably no city in the world has made
the same progress in art that New York
has in the past eight years; l say eight
Years because place our grand starting
point on the first day of May, 1876, when
the Centennial Exposition at Philadel-
phia threw its gates open to the people
OF the United States and to the world.
Up to that time our supreme and SUPER
lativs egotism had led the mass of our
people to believe that the great and uni
versal Yankee nation was ahead of all
creation. The few who had travelled
abroad knew better, but they were COM
PEELED to hold their tongues or else be
constantly exposed to the unnerciful
rldicule of their neighbors. But the
Centennial Exposition brought us face to
face with hard granite facts-facts that
could not be controversial, and which
convinced the widest hoosier, the most
ignorant COW boy, The most arrogant
New Yorker, Or conceited Yankee, that
there was some little genius outside of
the United States, and that in matters
of high art We might be ranked in the
biographies as semi-barbarous. This
was indeed humilating confession for
high strung and conceited people, but
there was no getting aside from it, and
as we passed by the wonderful Japanese
collection, with it's marvellous bronzes,
its lacquerred ware, it's lovely screens,
its porcelain and mats, its exquisite papers
wrought into multiplied and wonderful
uses, we took off our hats, humbIy con-
Tossing that some good might indeed
come out of Nazareth. Even the I'M
tutored Brazilian, frsm the broad pam
pas of the south, taught US to make the
most beautiful flowers from the feathers
| of the birds of the air-flowers which
seemed to lack only perfume to make
them rivals of Gods own handiwork.
The semi barbarous Chinaman wrought
miracles in ivory and silk; and even Aus
tralia, regarded as wild outlying terri
tory between the equator and the pole,
challenged our admiration by her Won
derful exhibits, which proved her to be
the most formidable rival of the stalwart
young giant of the west. But it was
when brought face to face with England
Germany and France that we felt that
Yankeedoodledom was not yet in pos
session of the entire world. Then there
was the magnificent art collection from
Italy, its beautiful statues and it's Won
derful mosaics, and we felt that in such
| presence we breathed new and
nobler inspiration
Who can measure the giant strides we
have made in art since then? Men who
for nearly three quarters of century
had sat in mute worship before the
| golden calf suddenly Embossed their purse
strings, giving thousands upon thous-
ands for pictures that they could not
possibly appreciate, and untold sums for
ancient curiosities, of whose archaeological
value they had no more conception than
| horse has of the satellites of Jupiter.
But whatever the means to the end, the
end has at last been reached; and how it
| is done or why it is done, OR by whom it
has been done, is matter of little mo-
ment; this one great fact remains, clear
and clean above all the rubbish and
fraud, chicanery, and cheating, and vio-
lence of the time; that New York is to.
day becoming one of the great art Gen.
tiers of the world. 1t is not enough to-
| day for man to be worth one or two
hundred millions. He can swallow rail-
roads and telegraphs, .engulf banks ruin
his fellow-mec by thousands; but when
he has piled his millions upswith power
that has ground everything beneath him
to powder, like grain upon the neither
milestone. behind him stands law, mex
orable as fate, that he must pay tribute
to art, if he wishes to occupy any sort of
| position among his fellow-men.
The artist is no longer ragged mendi-
cant, waiting, cup in hand, for Gus
toner to give him the price of break
fast or dinner. He has a sumptuous
studio, he receives his customers and
friends in velvet jacket, embroidered
caps, and fancy slippers; he has his town
house and his country house, and when
he seeks inspiration from nature, from
May till October, his rural entertainers
are only too glad to chalk his hat D. H.
if he will only give them a sketch of the
house with Maria and James standing on
the front porch, with u favorite horse or
dog thrown in on the foreground.
A. T. Stewart dead, is doing more to.
day for art than ever A. T. Stewart did
while living.
The mighty diapason which thunders
through the fretted aisles of the beauti-
cathedral, at Garden City. from the lar
gest organ in the world, is tribute to
art, grander, far than the cathedral it.
self or the costly mausoleum in it's crypt,
which seems to laugh in mockery at the
ambition which shall never be gratified
till the judgment trumpet sounds.
In the marble pile on the Fifth Avenue
where the dry goods autocrat died, is a
gallery of pictures worth "a quarter of a
million which, although sealed book to
the public to-day, sooner or later will be
the heritage of the million. Inside of
that marble gallery are priceless treas
ures which only wait the death of their
custodian to be given to the world. She
fingers on the verge of four-score, SO that
the end cannot be far off.
No doubt Judge Hilton looks upon
himself as the executor of this childless
widow. Let Us hope that these art treas
ures will serve nobler purpose than to
swell the possessions of this grasping
money getter; and that these children of
genius wrung from the blood and sweat
of millions may yet find their way into
some grand public gallery, where gener-
atiOns to come may gaze upon their
beauty and be instructed by their art,
who never heard the name Of the donor,
or care a fig whether his worthless bones
rest in the splendid mausoleum at Garden
City or in Potter's field
We are now rejoicing in the exhibition
of the Society of American Artists.
"While not as deep as well nor as wide
as church door, it is enough" There
is much to praise and but little to con-