Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1893-08-11
"No1NG" THE ART GALLERY.

~SA - AAV
is a painting labeled, foreclosure of the
Mortgages" and before it one nearly al.
ways finds a crowd of ruralists gazing in
silence and with a sympathy that can be
felt.
It is indeed q fine painting. All the
cultured people say SO, and even a com.
mon man can notice it. But that is not
the chief attraction, for there are still
finer paintings at which these people sim.
ply glance and pass on. The scene is that
in a chair evidently just recovering from
a long illness. Before him stands the law.
yer or bailiff reading the formal notice to
quit. The wife and mother has buried
her face in her hands and bowed down on
the table and in the corner the aged
grandmother has shrunk in her chair as if
crushed. 1t seems that one can see the
dresses OF the women culver with the sup
pressed sobs which shake their frames.
The Oldest girl looks from the window,
through which one can see the play.
ground, with a face upon which the cares
OF age seem to have come suddenly, while
the other children, too young to realize
the appalling calamity, are so awed by
that atmosphere of sorrow that their little
faces have a look to make ones heart
ache.
THAT'S mighty tough, h'aint it Billa"
asked one visitor Of his comrade.
you bet it is, and you won't have to go
out o. our township to see the likes of it
before the snow flies"
saw several women turn way with a
suspicious moisture in their eyes and
few signs were audible. There must be
something more than mere artistic merit
in a picture which can excite such emo
tions. The painter (the catalogue names
g. A. Reid, of Toronto) has selected q sub
ject of unusual popular interest just now
There ought to be some way, I think, of
shutting many alleged religious pict-
ures" out Of the public galleries. They
are, to my uncultured eye at least, indie.
scribably horrible, and I cannot help
thinking that they degrade the religious
instinct. They are CHASTITY, they are
morbid, they certainly do indicate a dis.
eased and sickly s~entimentality. In one
room of the French department., for in.
stance, there is a picture with a title of
which the purport is that these people
died a fortunate death. It represents
the discovered heads of some beautiful
women, martyrs 1 presume, floating on
the water into which they have apparent
ly just been thrown, for they are either
resting lightly on the water or held up by
the vegetation enough to show that they
are just cut off. Now, what healthy mind
and what ~imperverted taste could find
pleasure in q lot of bloody women's heads
on a bed Of water lilies?
In the same department is a Mater
Dolorosa in which the artist, not satisfied
with painting Christ as dead, has gone
Qhnrk nino Hovo for<hon 81 ho,ro,,r a 6n.
ure OF speech from Huckleberry Finn.
Right beside it is q perfectly gorgeous
Venus, represented as having Just stepped
on q thorn and comforting herself accord.
ingly, and q the tints are almost too life
like and the costume of the prevailing
French style in art, the painting has been
objected to by various American visitors.
But Venus has at least one great merit
she's alive. Likewise she is kicking.
Cupid has come up and is trying to re-
move the thorn and altogether the picture
Is as pretty as can be imagined. The
French section is of course the most
piquant in the building, but it is not near
ly so piquant as it was. One famous pict-
ure was excluded from the United States
section and put in the French where 1t
was slightly yelled with a very thin gauze.
But even when yelled it scared the women
away and SO 1t had to be removed.
While the larger pictures are as . rule
beautiful, some are as aforesaid truly awful
n among the statues it IL still worse, In
the German section especially. Keeping
within bounds l should say there are at
least 1000 "Christs," painted or carved. in
every conceivable attitude of agony end
bodily distortion. Ordinary Laocoons and
Lincolns and Prometheuses and Orpheus-
in-Hells and all those other groups in
which the victims are wrestling with fire,
snakes and furies, l can stand. but this !
do assert-that any nervousy sensitive
French pictures and German statues Of .
so-called religious character" who will
really take In the whole significance and
feel 1t, will have the tremens after it II he
never tasted whisky in his life.
J.. H. BEADLR