The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-11-17
AMATEUR ARTISTS.
THE PERSONS WHO WORK FOR
PLEASURE AND NOToRlETY.

Affecting the Various Professions In /
which Mankind Is Trying to Earn a Iiv.
ing-A Metropolitan View.
The other day 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.
III tell you," cried young painter of
great talent that the professional art
list in this country is worse off than ever
There was time some 10 or 20 years
ago when his prospects lool:ed 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 us quoth
one of his hearers. "The supply ex-
ceeds the demand, and we are simply
paying, as i'll other walks of life, for the
crime of overproduction."
There are not too many of us" re.
lated the first speaker. Its the infer
nal amateurs who are doing work al
most as good as ours, and who are I'M
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, i'll 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
~. l. ,,,,, |, N,,a cfA,N
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 cyists 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 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 a guild which
practically starves out the profession.
And the worst of it is that the amateur S
work is nothing like as conspicuously
bad in all instances as it used to be.
Sxetchy 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
Dish.
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
During the season they undertake per
formances Of the severest professional
character with a prodigality of energ,
and expenditure almost amounting t
profigate 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 Yorl
fairly swarm with unpaid vocalists whit
acquit themselves in many instance
quite as well as their professional sister
and brothers, and there are already 81
many amateur instrumentalists in thi
city eager to play in public who have NJ
urgent pecuniary need to do so that it il
doubtful if the Musical Protective unioi
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, W,
find bowling swells like Sutfern Tale
basing their regulations entirely on thei
knack of driving four-in-hands en- ANA
teur, so that the amateur coachman ha
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 o
the plain, uncelebrated every day pc
hunters of Maryland and Pennsylvania
the performances afield of George Worl
and Edgar Murphy and De Forrest Mau
rice and the rest of them seem positivel,
puerile. But none the less are these lat
ter knights of the trigger exalted and ex
tolled by the newspapers as marvels O
skill and Wanted among the possession
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 BARRIERS, amateur tailors, anna
teur plumbers, amateur icemen, evel
amateur day laborers, perhaps. Gu
streets will be patrolled by amateur pc
licemen, our conhagrations extinguisheC
by amateur fremen. And who can tel
when the amateur will have so profound
ly exhausted the honest occupations tina
he will have to become an amateur Grim
inal?
Then shall we have our amateur bur
glars, our amateur pickpockets, our am
ateur highwaymen, our amateur murder
ers. The amateur shoplifter is already
formidable extant fact. What on eartl
is there in our social code to make TIN
amateur homicide and the amateur rive
pirate impossible?
Yes, j. faith, this is the reign of tn
amateur with vengeance
Gordon in New York Recorder