The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-06-28
AMATEUR ARTISTS.
The Persons Who Work for Pleasure
and NotOriety.

The other day a company Of American
artists seated at the 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 q young painter Of
great talent, chat the professional art
list in this country is worse off than ever.
There was time some is or 20 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 a 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."
'sThere are not too many Of us" re.
lated the first speaker. ss1t's the infer
nal amateurs who are doing work al
most as good as ours, and who are I'M
derselling us. It 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
times imperceptible benefit, and always
to the others injury. When one stops
to consider this tr1ism, 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 'sartists."
Hardly q family now exists but has an
'sartistic" 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
tions degrade the standard Of art, they
do worse and more material harm by
making values ridiculously cheap. Glad
to get anything at all-ha1f the cost
sometimes Of the material they use. The
amateur painters of New York alone
constitute unconsciously a guild which
practically starves out the profession.
And the worst of 1t 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 itwithout exception rot and rub
bish.
The amateur actor and the amateur
actress have inflicted incalcu1able injury
on what calls itself specifically the pro-
fession. It 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 audaeity Of it's amateurs
During the season they undertake per
formances of the severest professional
character with productivity Of energy
and expenditure almost amounting to
profigate extravaganza which utterly
eclipses the productions Of the regular
theaters. Intact, the Brooklyn amateurs
have all but destroyed the professional
drama in that city.
Again, the concert rooms of New York
fairly swarm with unpaid vocahsts 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
- ~ 4I,,4 1 l.
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 bowling swells like Sutfern Taller
basing their regulations entirely on their
knack of driving four-in-hands en- an1a-
teur, SO that the amateur coachman has
become really an important public char
acter and worthy of incessart 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
1tilo ilN6ot 4a al PlAy ebho IL - CkAOop MAUI
rice and the rest Of them seem positively
puerile. But none the less are these lat
ter knights Of the trigger exalted and Elk
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 alnateursf
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 BARRIERS, amateur tailors, anna
tour plumbers, amateur icemen, even
amateur day laborers, perhaps. Our
streets will be patrolled by amateur po-
licemen, our confagrations 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
| inalp
Then shall we have our amateur bur-