Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-24
NEWS OF THE CAPITAL.
Raum Likely to Soon Leave the Pen
sion Office for Good.
MILLS SAYS HE WILL BE SPEAKER.
Some of the Real Estate Schemes Based on
National Park.
THE CORC0RAN GAILERY'S PURCHASE
rrRoM A STAFF CORRESPONDENT

|
by one who ought to know that Commits
sioner Raum will pass out from the Bureau
of Pensions with the advent of the autumn
frosts; that he is only waiting to complete
business arrangements that will enable him
to resign without serious lapse of income.
| Whether he is to devote himself to his
precious refrigerator which seems to have
been the cause of most of his misery, am
not informed.
Shrcwd inventors and men versed in the
value of patents say there is nothing in the
refrigerator-tha the cold manufactured by
it cost more than would the quantity of ice
necessary to produce an equal degree of
temperature. However that may be the
machine has narrowly escaped being the
ruin of more than one person who has been
caught in Its complicated meshes.
CoRCoRAN PURCHASE.
AT last the Corcoran Gallery of Art has
purchased a landscape by George Inness.
This institution has been strangely back
ward in its patronage of American artists,
except those of the old and now obsolete
school Recently the trustees purchased a
large canvas with sheep and shepherdess by
|
| Truesdell who is merely spoken of as a
looming man." but whose place in art is
not by any means assured; and now they
| have bought an InnesS.
1t would seem that Inness ought to have
| preceded Truesdell, as he is conceded by
artists to be at the head of the modern land
scape school in this country. The picture
purchased the other day is canvas of COM
mendable gallery size, and represents a
forest interior, with sharp glints of sunshine
cutting through the deep shadows, the grand
aim being the imitation of the reflection of
dazzling sunshine from the trunk Of beech
in the foreground, while this glaring effect
is somewhat counteracted by a vista at the
| end of which there is a mellow sheen. A
composition that would be otherwise digni-
fed is made trivial if not repulsive by the
mere technical trick of reproducing q spot
of sunlight, apparently regardless of color
harmony.
The general tone is brown and dingy, and
the glaring lights do not assimilate them
selves to it at all. 1t is picture much be-
meath the reputation of the artist, and the
gallery trustees should not have lent them
selves as whole to the idea of some of
their number that purchases should be
made only of pictures that may catch the
popular eye, or of pictures by artists who
have had a great name manufactured for
them mostly by the dealers.
LITTLE ART CRITICISM.
The Lafayette Monument makes quite
noticeable pile at one corner of the delight
full little park variously known as jackson
Square" and Lafayette Square" 1t would
be very gratifying, however, to those who
have some comprehension OF form and pro-
portion, if some enthusiastic Fourth of July
cherub would place a giant cracker on the
spot of the pedestal where two alleged
"Children of Liberty" are comfortably
seated. These twin children look like idiots
with astoundingly abnormal development
of their heads In all the grotesque piles
of this and other countries 1 have not else
where seen anything quite so bad as this
feature. 1t is well for the artists that they
are citizens of France. To mob or lynch
them would result in disagreeable diplo-
matte complication. 1 would not like to be
an American and the author of this vile
composition. But We are used to much
that is execrable in the name of art, and
possibly the thing may be endured.
wonder if the time will ever come when
en- artist of reputation will be called upon
to decorate the White House and other pub
lie buildings. Hitherto the ornamentation
OF the White House has been in accordance
with the ideas of the mistress of the man.
sion, or of the master, in the absence of a
mistress, and these have known nothing
of real art, and have usually been content
with the taste of the paperhanger.
ONE MONUMENT.
It is true, President Arthur called upon
Tiffany to redecorate, but the most con-
spicuous of his works is the stained glass
partition which cuts off a corridor from
what used to be the main entrance hall, and
which is about the most repulsive invention
that could be fancied. This stands as a
monument of Tiffany. Most of his other
decorations have appeared under the con-
flicting taste of subsequent masters, mis-
tresses and paperhangers, and so the torture
of decorative art goes on. Under the tuition
of Indifferent artists Mrs. Harrison is
enabled to do Indifferent water colors and
china decoration, and therefore she is an
''artist," and is devoting personal genius to
the redecoration this year Of the Executive
Mansion, not rejecting, perhaps, that it
will be her home, for which you and 1 are
paying the rent and expenses, for only lit
tie more than a year more, when another
will ruthlessiy tear away the bad form and
coloring of her devices. possibly to supplant
them with worse. 1t is to be hoped that her
successor will have no alleged ideas in re-
gard to art, and that Congress can be in
duced, when making an appropriation for
ton that an artist of worldwide reputation
shall come and uproot tho vandalism that
has made this property of the people an
abiding place for the grotesque fancies of
the egotistical ignorant tenants, without
grant or hindrance on the part of the real
owners.
A CHAT WITH MILLS.
Roger Quarles Mills is in town, and tells
me that he will be the next Speaker of the
House of Representatives. That he may is
the fervent hope of every Republican with
whom have conversed. With Mills in the
chair Reeds opportunity will come to pun
ish his enemies and brutal assailants of the
last Congress, and he is quite capable of
putting them to the most delightful and
commendable torture. Mills is pleasant
enough, usually, but when his temper is
aroused it is almost ungovernable. He can
be depended on to make an exhibition of
his fury at least once every day during the
term and his fury is of the kind that breaks
forth in expletives that are as unparlia-
mentary as anything that could be i'm
agined.
Mr.. Paul Wolff one of the handsomest
and most picturesque of the gentlemen of
the "Row," who has been for years the cor
respondent of that wealthy and influential
journal, the New Yorker Stats Zeit,mg, is
about to divorce himself from us to take
the chief editorship of that other wealthy
and influential journal, the Illinois Stats
Zeitang, of which Mr.. A. c. Hesing, the
great German politician of Chicogo, is pro-
prietor. To be so summoned is high COM
pliment to Wolff, as the late editor, whose
death is lamented deeply, was one of the
most brilliant German journalists known to
this country. 1t was at his dying request, I
am informed that Hesinp sent for Wolff, to