The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1883-11-24
OUR LETTER FROM BROADBRlM.

A Dissel tation upon the Fine Arts-Xan-
kee Conceit Humblc1-Our Recent Prog
ress-IIenry Irving, the Opera, Etc.
NEW York, November II, 1883.
EDITOR CHIEF:
In my last letter l promised to drop, for
one week at least, tho current news and
gossip, to talk about matters of art. Prob
ably no city in the world has mado the
progress in art that New York has in the
past eight years; l say eight years because
place our grand starting point Oh the
first day of May, 1876, when the Ccnten-
nial Exposition at Philadelphia threw its
gates open to the people of the United
States and to tho world. Up to that time
our supreme and superlative egotism had
led the mass of our people to believe that
the great and universal Yankee nation was
ahead Of all creation. The few who had
Travelled abroad knew better, but they were
compelled to hold thcir tongues or else be
constantly exposed to the unmerciful riGi-
cule of their neighbors. But the Centen-
NAL Exposition brought US face to face
with hard granite facts-facts that could
not be controverted, and which convinced
the widest loosier, the most ignorant COW
boy, the most arrogant New Yorker, Or
conceited Yankee, that there was some lit
tie genius outside of the United States, and
that in matters of high art we might be
ranked in the Biographies as soni-barba-
rous. This was indeed humiiating con-
fession for q high strung and conceited
people but there was no getting aside from
it, and as we passed by the wonderful ia
panese collection, with its marvellous
bronzes, its lacquered ware, its lovely
screens, its porcelain and mats, its exquisite
papers wrought into multiplied and won
derful uses, we took off our hats, humbly
confessing that some good might indeed
come out of Nazareth. Even the untutored
Brazilian, from the broad pampas of tho
south, taught us to make tho most beauti-
full flowers from the feathers of the birds
of the air-fowcrs which seemed to lack
only perfume 10 make them rivals of Gods
own handiwork. The semi -barbarous Chi
naman wrought miracles in ivory and silk
and even Australia, regarded as q wild out
lying territory between the equator and
the pole, challenged our admiration by her
wonderful 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, Ger
many and France that We felt Yankee
doodledon was not yet in possession of the
entire world. Then there was the Inagnif-
icent art collection from Italy, its beauti-
full statues and its wonderful mosaics, and
we felt Ill such q presence we breathed q
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 sud
denly unloosed their purse strings, giving
thousands upon thousands for pictures that
they could not possibly appreciate, and
untold sums for ancient curios, of whose
archaeological value they had no more con-
ception 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
and clean above all the rubbish and fraud,
chicanery, and cheating, and violence of
the time: that New York is to-day becom-
ing one of the great art centres of the
world. It is not enough to-day for man
to be worth one or two hundred millions.
He can swallow railroads and telegraphs,
engulph banks, ruin his fellow-men by
thousands; but when he has piled his mill
ions up with a power that, has ground
every thing beneath him to powder, like
grain upon the neither millstone, behind
him stands a law, inexorable as fate, that he
must pay tribute to art, if he wishes to oc-
copy any sort of position among his fellow
men.
The artist is no longer a ragged mendi-
cant, waiting, cup in hand, for q customer
to give him the price of breakfast or a
dinner. He has sumptuous studio, he
receives his customers and friends in vel
vet jacket, embroidered caps, and fancy
slippers; he has his town house and his
country house, and when he seeks inspi-
ration from nature, from May till October,
his rural entertainers are only too glad to
chalk his hat D. H. if he will only give thom
a sketch of the house with Maria and James
standing Oh the front porch, with favor
ite horse or dog thrown in on the fore
ground.
A. T. Stewart dead, is doing more to-day
for art than ever A. I. Stewart did while
living. The mighty diapason which thun-
ders through the fretted aisles of the beau
tiful cathedral, at Garden City, from the
largest organ in the world, is a tribute
to art, grander far than the cathedral itself
Or the costly mausoleum in its crypt, which
seems to laugh i'll mockery at the ambi-
ton which shall never be gratitied till the
judgment trumpet sounds.
In the marble pile on the Fifth Avenue
where the dry goods autocrat died, is gal
lery of pictures worth a quarter Of q mil
lion which, although a sealed book to the
public to-day, sooner or later will be the
heritage Of the million. Inside OF that mar