The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1891-12-16
ART And The ARTISTS.
Work of American Painters Shown
in New York.
HAMILTON, GIBSON AND SMEDLEY
The Christmas Numbers Of the Art Maga-
sines-The French Peasants OF Mr.
stokes-Art Notes and Queries.

progress at the American art galleries,
the exhibitors are F. w. Stokes, w. T.
Smedley, w. Hamilton Gibson, r. V. v.
Sewell and Amanda Brewster Sewell.
The pictures that will call out most
comment, some of it no doubt hostile,
are those of Mr.. and Mrs. Sewell.
Robert V. V. Sewell treats all kinds of
matters in an artistic style, with sense
of color, refinement and harmony, and
he is strongly attracted by the grace of
the nude. His nudes are realistic, but
they can hardly be regarded as de-
moralizing, for they offer themselves to
the eye as examples of grace rather than
as anatomical facts, and it may at least
be said In their favor that they present
no appearance of diseased self conscious
ness. They are of classic elegance of
form and they have a sprightliness of
gesture and action that is captivating.
Notice, for these qualities, his bac-
chantes. his spartan hunter, his sprites,
his witch and his boys bathing.
Occasionally he makes more of
his composition, as in "A Tale of Troy"
where a venerable minstrel, who might
almost be Homer himself, is telling the
story of the siege, and accompanying his
words by chords struck on the strings OF
Tyre, fashioned from the shell of tur-
tie and the horns of an OK, while long
haired Greek and his wife and maid
listen with keen attention. In these
more serious efforts he imparts dignity
to his faces, but in his more fanciful
groups his faces are a trifie weak.
Amanda Brewster, who has recently
added the name of Sewell to her own, is
possessed Of charming talent, and
discloses individuality in larger meas
ures than most of the women painters,
though she seems to be affected by her
husbands choice of subjects to slight
extent. She has the same fondness for
delicate color and the same felicitous ex-
preston of grace, but she clothes her
figures more, and she imparts more of
repose to her groups. In her "Sappho"
she represents the poet giving a recital
TO her friends and standing before them
with eyes lifted in inspiration. Her fig
ure is strikingly suggestive of that of the
Venus di Milo, and is undoubtedly quite
as that was before it suffered injury.
Her draperies, though sufficient, are also
diaphanous, so that one feels If not sees
the form beneath them. Her portraits
painted few years ago are large, firm,
striking and forcible.
w. Hamilton Gibson shows nearly
eighty water colors and pastels, mostly
from the delectable hills that environ
his summer home in Connecticut, and
that he has represented in all conditions
and under all phases that have invited
his soul-a soul attuned to the fine and
warm and sweet in nature, yet that has
its moments of pleasing melancholy.
His use of body color has sometimes an
effect of slight opacity, but there is a
gain in texture and firmness where
water colAr is used in way similar to
oils. Mr.. Gibson's large knowledge is
manifested as clearly in some of his
pictures as his love for nature, for he
has traced every bird to its nest and
every insect to its hole and he knows
the form of every leaf and the way Of
every shrub. His painted days are full
of warmth and bird song and his
Novembers are elegiac.
Mr.. Stokes has been studying in
France, and he deals in topics that have
now become hackneyed, though he
strikes out new path for himself once
in while, as indeed he must do if he is
to make the blue clad clodhoppers of
Normandy q people to be admired
much longer. His Procession of the
Virgin" is one of his most pleasing sub
jects, though he merely tries to do what
Jules Breton has done better before him.
The two girls in the foreground who
hang their heads so modestly and with
such saint like assumption are pro-
badly aware that they are being painted,
and perhaps, they even have the notion
that it is well TO stand in front of the
pear tree and the lilies for decorative
effect.
w. T. Smedley follows the fifty-six,
pictures of Stokes with over a hundred
drawings and paintings of his own; pic
lures that most of the visitors will recog-
nize, for they have done service already
in the magazines. Mr.. Smedley has
been unfortunate in the choice of sub
jects given to him, for he has had to IL
lustrate the inane people of the inane
stories that have begun TO pervade the
magazines-people always calling and
talking and exhibiting their dresses;
people who have no touch of American
ism and whose existence in fiction is as
wearisome as their existence in the
flesh is depressing. When he leaves the
400 and takes up with people who have
little more nature in them he can be in
teresting. His hints of Indian life, his
Salvation Army wedding, his bits of
Italy and the east are as full of life and
character as his tennis and his hotel ve-
randas and his club room and his parlors
and his horse show groups are frivolous
and unworthy.
The December number Of the Deco
rator and Fuunisher has varied table
of contents. Probably the most inter-
esting thing in it is the imagined resto-
ration, by Chipiez and Perrot, of the
hall in Solomon's temple-a room of i'm
mense height, lighted from pillared
openings at the top of the side walls,
decorated from floor to roof, and set
about with tables and platforms of gol-
den vessels. The figure decorations on
the walls are cross between the Egyp-
tian and Assyrian, taking the form of
winged women and winged, lion-headed
men facing each other in pairs. Christ
mas decoration for churches is a season.
able paper that is adequately illustrated.
and among the designs for furniture
and ornament in other articles and pic
lures are several that are commendable.
Tho 7 MSfr0fed JUleric0O has a Moor