The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1891-12-30
IN The WORLD OF ART.
Rhode Island as a Summer Home
for the Artist.
A LITTLE HINT TO HOTEL MEN.
Can't We Lure Hither the Men of Brush
and Palette-Oscar Wilde's Little Boom
in France-The Work OF the Artists I'm
the Magazines.

CIdItIlb art uOb DtttLl dBBittiattu W viz
hordes of artists and art students who
swarm out of New York and Boston
every season with the promise of hot
weather?
1t certainly is not for lack Of scenic
material. Small as the State Is, and de-
void of mountain scenery, it yet has
goodly hills, and pretty stretches of
wood and meadow more suited to the
touch of the quiet landscapist. 1t has
been long settled, and the hand OF time
has spared in the older towns many
quaint structures, some of great historic
interest, which would make rich mate
rial in the portfolio of the genre or his
torical painter, while the irregular out
line of Narragansett bay and the beaches
offer every opportunity to the marine
painter.
A good example of the abundance of
picturable themes in the State is fur
nished by the Rhode Island calendar Just
published by Preston & Rounds. Here
are portrayed in finely executed mono
chrome six or seven scenes any one of
which might be the inspiration of no
BILE painting. 1.-The Death of King Philip
at Mount Hope" What subject for
Remington! 1.-THE Palatine Light" and
the "Eiopement of Hannah Robertson"
are fine themes for DE Haas and Wiles.
"The Burning Of the Gaspee," with its
splendid possibilities of fire glow against
the inky blackness of night, and the
Capture of Gen. Prescott" are fine sub
jects for the ambitious historical
painter.
There is material advantage i'm getting
xl,a a,t,o otc har.. if ~ no Hpna Snba-
veningen, in Holland, was discovered by
the men Of brush and crayon. Now it
has big hotels and swarmS of tourists.
Barbizon, once a quiet place in the
wilderness where Millett lived and
worked in peace, is overrun by French
men and Englishmen with money burn
ing i'm their pockets. In our own coun-
try. Easthampton, on Long island, was
discovered by Bruce Crane and a few
others. IL was merely long, sleepy
village with windmilf-at each end and
beach near at hand, but its very quiet
charmed the artists and they stayed and
sketched, and their pictures brought
horde of summer people," and prices
Immediately rose so high that the artists
couldn't afford to go back, as one of
them told me with sigh. Artists and
literary men have slender purses, but
they are in the long run the most profit
able patrons of any place within easy
reach of summer travel.
OF course the artist world knows
something about Newport, Narragansett
Pier and Block Island, but these do not
Is there not hint here for our railroad
companies and hotel and boarding house
keepers!
Rather cynical allegory by Alfred
Stevens, is done into etching for the
frontispiece of the January number of
the Magazine of Art. 1t is called THE
Young Widow" and represents her lady
ship in black, il is true, but seated before
her mirror and trying the effect of a
flower in her hair. The door of an ad-
joining chamber is half closed against
portrait that is surmised TO be that of
the dear departed, while from beneath
the table cloth Cupid is creeping with
wings spread and bow and arrow in
hand-the same tiresome Cupid who has
been on duty for 1000 years and whose
long service in behalf of a strained and
fantastic notion of the origin of love en-
titles him to well earned repose for at
least 2 1000 years to come. The picture
is clever and the drawing and representa-
ton of textures are all that could be
wished. the face Of Cupid alone being
empty and unatractive.
The monthly chronicle is posted up to
the time Of publication, the iAmerican
record containing notices of doings in
New York Boston. Chicago, Providence,
Denver. Cleveland, Detroit and Little
Rock that hint at the importance of art
in these days even from an industrial
standpoint.
In the January number of !Scribner's
there is a review of the life and work of
Washington Allston, a painter, of whose
work il Is hard to discover specimens,
except in Boston, but man of large
mind, dignifed expression and tastes
for the classic and commanding. He
had the gift of composition, and he had
that quality which painters who have it
not affect TO slight, namely, imagina-
ton. Technically, he stood with the
other men of his day, and on that fact
sundry living painters will soothe them
selves with fiattering JUNCTION If they
are led to compare his work with their
own, but Allston, like Rimmer, West,
Copley, Trumbull, Cole and other
fathers of our art. will always deserve
10 DE we'll CODSlutTeu lOI lib lnNtIlllDll,
research and the glow of inspiration
that can be traced in his subjects, atti-
tudes and groupings.
Hdrper's Magazine for January pre-
sents Mr.. Smedley in his typical form.
The people in Mr. Howelrs light and un-
actable farce-he can't be serious in sup
posing, for an instant, that such things
can be put on the stage-are realized by
Mr.. Smedley, who found some rare good
models for his figures. His Englishman
on page 2j3 is unilattering, but true !;
big, homely, all elbows and knuckles,
the kind of man who makes himself even
more conspicuous than nature meant
him to be wearing fuzzy clothes and
monocles. Remington depicts some of
the grandeurs of Brtish Columbia and
the superlatively ugly people who are its
aborigines no longer ugly in temper,
but not pretty 10 look at His boat
plunging through the whitening waves
Is highly spirited.
a.. L. =. II