Omaha daily bee., 1883-12-10
OIbPAINTINGs BY WHOLESALE
A Novel Chicago Manutactory-pic-
lures by the Hundred.

Chicago News.
"Oil. paintings, the finest in tho land,
manufactured for the trade by the dozen
or in Job lots to suit" are turned out of
a mandatory or Franklin street. The
establishment occupies the third and
fourth floors of a double building for the
picture mill. The third floor has rooms
where paintings are boxed, shipped, and
this floor. 1t is necessary to have a guide
if you wish to visit the fourth floor, for
the doors of the apartments there are not
distinguishable from the outside, and no
II is allowed to enter through them
without giving a series of mystic signals
and q pass word. The visitor who gained
entrance first encountered two young
women stretching canvas over and lacking
it on plain wooden frames for the backs
of the paintings. In the next room a
boy and a girl were engaged in dipping
the crudely- framed canvas i'll great watts
of paint, and standing them in a row to
dry. This is the sizing process, and
smoothes the canvas for the groundwork
of the painting. The groundwork, how
ever, is put on by strong armed yappren-
tees i'll another room. They use long,
wide brushes ''at short-range' for this,
with remarkable effect. Besides this,
four active apprentices were supplying
eight or nine finishing artists with out
lined paintings in which the sky, rocks
and trees were positively distinguishable
from the birds and the flowers. All were
in bas-relief, however, and were 'fnish-
ed' largely with the knife.
W.. n.l..knIA n,La L. Az. Co., ,,1l,1
Finishing or touching up are either
Incorporate or %impecunious knights of
the brush and pallet, unable to exc out
even a precarious subsistence in any
other way. Some of them do fair work,
but they are almost invariably unreli-
able and incorporate. Each one Of them
has n specially which he can develop
more rapidly than any of his colleagues.
There's the eight weight" or "calm-
weather-marine" man, for instance; the
"Swiss-cottage' artist, the ''cast-iron-
farm-scenery" expert, the 'mountain-de-
file-and. roaring -canon' sketchist, the
''animal- portrate- painter-an livestock"
delineator, "the- ale-forme-diyine" de-
Letter, and many others. A protege of
poor II. A. Elkins does the really most
creditable work Of any one in these pro-
duction works. His specially is western
scenery. He is the Pixies peak illusion
list.
AS to the paintings themselves, they
are sold to dealers throughout the city
and country by sample by regular sala-
ried salesmon and travelling men. Each
workman is required to paint several
miniatures Of every piece of work that he
docs. in this way the statesmen are furn-
iahed with samples, and dealers give their
orders from seeing them, by the dozen or
hundred, perhaps. The prices of these
prices OF these paintings vary from "a TO
So TO any amount that people may be in
veipled into paying for them. There must
be over twenty-five hundred paintings in
the stock, and the proprietor of the con
Germ said thai il wa utterly impossible
60 ill the orders which lad already been
received for his oily commodities. The
net profit on these goods to be manu-
f~acturer must amount to 100 or 200 per
cent.