The herald., 1893-06-26
AMATEUR ARTISTS.
THE PERSONS wsio WORK FOR
PLEASURE AND NoTDRlETY.


The other day company of American
artists seated at tho cheap but filing re-
lection of Gruyere cheese and the beer
of the country amused itself by discuss
ing the serious want of patronage from
which American art is just now suffer
ing.
II tell you," cried young painter of
great talent, "that the professional art
ist in this country is worse off than ever.
There was a time some 15 or 90 years
ago when his prospects looked bright
and his outlook cheerful. But today he
wastes all his time and energy on pot
boiling, and even his pot boilers have to
go at sacrifice"
"There are too many Of u.s." quoth
one of his hearers. 'The supply ex-
ceeds the demand, and we are simply
paying, as in other walks Of life, for the
crime Of overproduction."
"There are not too many of us" re-
lated the first speaker. "It's tho infer
nal amateurs who are doing work al
most as good as ours, and who are un-
derselling us. 1t is the reign of the am
ateurs which has taken all the gilt off
the gingerbread of the professional"
True, absolutely true, in almost every
highway and byway of modern industry.
The amateur is rapidly displacing the
professional to his own slight-some-
times imperceptible benefit, and always
| to the others injury. When one stops
to consider this truism, one is fairly
stunned by the magnitude and quantity
of the illustrations which proveit. Take,
for instance, the field to which the dis
cussion above quoted has relation. The
woods are full of amateur artists"
Hardly family now exists but has an
"artistic" son or daughter who neces-
sarily babbles the jargon of the craft
and spoils more canvas and wastes more
paint in a week than most professional
artists can afford in year.
Not only do their execrable compost
tons degrade the standard Of art, they
do worse and more material harm by
making values ridiculously cheap. Glad
to get anything at all-half the cost
sometimes of the material they use. The
amateur painters of New York alone
constitute unconsciously guild which
practically starves out the profession.
And the worst of it is that the amateurs
work is nothing like as conspicuously
bad in all instances as it used to be.
Sketchy and thin as the best of it may
be, it certainly complies with the ele-
mentary rules of art, and he must in
deed be bold critic who, comparing it
with the efforts of trained and expert
professionals, should unhesitatingly pro-
nounce it without exception rot and rub
bish.
The amateur actor and the amateur
actress have inflicted incalculable injury
on what calls itself specifically the pro-
fession. 1t is an open secret, for exam
pie, that the once profitable city of
Brooklyn has been made a positively
"bad show town." as the phrase goes. by
the number and audacity of its amateurs
---'s--'-.-t, s-,.v l.s4-
formances Of the severest professional
character with prodigality of energy
and expenditure almost amounting to
prohigate extravaganza which utterly
eclipses the productions of the regular
theaters. In fact, the Brooklyn amateurs
have all but destroyed the professional
drama in that city
Again, the concert rooms Of New York
fairly swarm with unpaid vocalists who
acquit themselves in many instances
quite as well as their professional sisters
and brothers, and there are already so
many amateur instrumentalists in this
city eager to play in public who have no
urgent pecuniary need to do SO that it is
doubtful if the Musical Protective union
dare order another general strike here
so enormous would be the rush of fairly
competent amateur fiddlers and others
to take the places of the strikers.
Rising higher in the social world, we
find howling swells like Suffern Taller
basing their regulations entirely on their
knack of driving four hands en- anna
teur, SO that the amateur coachman has
become really an important public char
acter and worthy of incessant notice.
The amateur wing shot is another So
cial lion. Compared with the feats Of
the plain, uncelebrated every day pot
hunters of Maryland and Pennsylvania,
the performances afeld of George Work
and Edgar Murphy and De Forrest Mau-
rice and the rest of them seem positively
puerile. But none the less are these lat
ter knights of the trigger exalted and ex-
tolled by the newspapers as marvels of
skill and vaunted among the possessions
Of which we ought all to be enthusiastic
ally proud. For are they not amateurs?
At the present rate of development
one cannot be certain of the ultimate
limit of amateur expansion. We shall.
beyond doubt. have amateur surgeons,
amateur lawyers, amateur journalists,
amateur barDers. amateur tailors, anna
teur plumbers, amateur icemen, even
amateur day laborers, perhaps. Our
streets will be petrolled by amateur po-
licemen, our conAagrations extinguished
by amateur firemen. And who can tell
when the amateur will have so profound
ly exhausted the honest occupations that
he will have to become an amateur Grim
inal?
Then shall we have our amateur bur
glars our amateur piclfpoclSets. our am
ateur highwaymen, our amateur murder-
ers. The amateur shoplifter is alreadya
formidable extant fact. What on earth
is there in our social code to make the
amateur homicide and the amateur river
pirate impossible?
Yes, i faith. this is the reign of the
amateur with vengeance Archibald
Gordon in New York Recorder.
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The Trouble witt, tho vvater