Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-27
AMONG THE ARTISTS.
Vanishing Day at the Academy
Picture Show in New York.
OPEN DISPLAY OF TEMPERAMENTS,
A Chatty Column About the Painters and
Well-Known Art Writers.
SOME OF THE PRETTY LADIES THERE

NEW YORK, April 26.-The Academy
picture show Is always abused, but it is
nevertheless the one everybody goes to see.
You must always see it, if it is only to
know how bad it is. That is at least the
view of many artists. With the Philistine
world, the Academy is the Academy, and
consequently of more importance than any
other exhibition. In the opening of the
Academy various different sets OF people
are to be seen on various days. First is
vanishing day. That used to be frequently
one and the same as press day, but
last year the press, in its own
expressive language, got up on its ear
because they were only given half of yarn
ishing day and the whole place was full all
the time of painters and ladders, and paint
ers with varnish pots, and painters showing
their things to each other. The press con-
sidered it did not have half a show, and it
howled. Press howlings are extremely apt
to be effective in New York, SO this year
the vanishing took place in seclusion and
the press had the whole place to itself for a
whole day, a week before it was opened to
the public.
And before this public opening another
invitation affair always comes of, that is the
reception and private view. That is the
most varied and democratic of all. Press
people, painters, students, models and
swells are all in one red crush blent. I love
to get my first glimpse at the very begin
ming on vanishing day. The painters show
their temperaments in the different ways
they act. Don't imagine that they stand in
rows all around the place. Most Of them
don't avail themselves of the privileges Of
II k1,asr fofu
all the varnish they think they need before
they send them, but some men always like
to give them a final coat after they are hung,
and some even paint q little touch or SO on
them after they see them in their places.
A PICTURES SURROUNDINGS.
Probably they would all like to paint
them in their places, and with all their
neighbors in position, if they could. A
picture can be made or killed, In degree,
BY its surroundings, and the painters tell it
of T. s. Church that when only year or
SO ago that great man was discovered sur
reptitiously painting on one of his delicate
canvasses the little yellow ticket bearing
the word Sold" which is the badge of the
fortunate at the Academy. He said he was
doing it to see how the yellow ticket would
harmonize with his color scheme. He didn't
want the effect to be spoiled if it had the
luck to sell.
Arthur Parton is always on hand on var
nishing day giving his poetic, rugged bits
OF landscape fresh coat. I saw him be-
fore his "Willows" the other day. He is
poetical looking without being rugged. He
has the typical painter manners. utterly
simple and unaffected, half shy and would
be wholly so but that he is so unconscious.
Just the same kind are the manners OF
Gilbert Gaul, the battle painter. I saw him
before his "Cheering the Line" 1t is the
finest thing he ever did, and he looked at it
lovingly. He Is the last in New York you
would pick out for battle painter. No un-
consciousness can save him FROM being the
shyest creature that ever lived in house,
and his pretty, dark-eyed little wife (he is
pretty and dark-eyed, too) is only less shy
than he is. One wonders how they ever got
together.
BIG AND CoMPANIoNABLE.
T. W. Dewing lounges in and takes look
at his mastery little portrait of lady In
black, but seems to conclude to let it alone.
He is great big man who would be hand
some if he would carry himself like band
some man, and he loves to paint lovely little
bits of pictures. He mods pleasantly to the
other men, and even goes and stands by one
way, but it never seems to occur to him to
say anything. He has the air always of
finding words perfectly artificial, unsatis-
factory method of communication-now If
you'd give him canvas and a brush he'd
tell YOU somethingi He has great vogue
among the painters, and is great light to
the grooming generation.
How different the air of the men who
pass in an out on press day. They talk
more and in a more humorous, careless
manner. only of course one could never
associate anything humorous or careless
with Ripley Hitchcock, the critic of the
Tribune and general writer on art, and
Hitchcock is one of the critics ye have al
ways with you. He earns his salary. He
never misses an exhibition. He looks like
the hero of a woman's novel, grand, gloomy
and peculiar, with the quick turn of the
dark eye, the brow stamped with restless
ambition, the cheek slcklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought and all the rest OF 1t.
think he must have been getting
worried lately for he don't wear as good
clothes as he used to. know that IS what
is the matter with Charles DeKay, the
Times man and literateur in general. He
has been declining and falling steadily ever
since he married that prettiesr of all girls,
Miss Coffee, a couple of years ago. He is
positively shabby now, which is shame
and shows lack of artistic conscience, for
he used to be sort OF professional beauty
himself, and ought to feel bound to display
himself to advantage. He used to.
REAL NEWSPAPER MAN.
Van Cleve, of the Herald, is the regular
newspaper man of the lot. His clothes are
good, and he sets his Derby on the back of
his head and walks up to the pictures with
the look of man that is going to know
what's what, or find out the reason why.
He buttonholes any unfortunate painter
who falls in his way, and in his own way,
and in his own language, tells him more
art in ten minutes than be could find out by
himself in six months. Not many painters
are likely to be in the way. As class they
have horror of newspaper people, though
some of the canny ones try to dissemble it.
One misses this year the familiar, pretty
figure of poor Charlotte Adams, who used
to be on hand as regularly as the familiar
old woman at the door. She used to be al
ways the gayest figure at press view,
sometimes in very good clothes, sometimes
in very shabby ones, but always full of
bright talk with the various men she knew.
Now she is in Bloomingdale Asylum, and
thev say she will never come out.
Let us turn from the press view, where
we miss her, to the cram and jam OF the re-
ception, where we can miss no one, but will
be sure to catch glimpses OF various inter-
estine people. The tabled buyer is here in
force, but he is not one of the interesting
people. No one cares anything about him
but to get him to spend his money. Let us
leave him in undisturbed obscurity and
look at the painters and their wives and
their friends, who are out in force. The
most interesting of their wives to see is Mrs.
f. D. Millet, because she is the prettiest, at
least there is no one to dispute that claim
with her, now that Mrs. Blashfeld is
abroad.