The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1894-07-22
HIS OLD COSTUMES.
DAN BEARE EXPLAINS THEIR uTILl-
TY IN HIS WORK.
Historical Accuracy In Details Is Feature
Now Emphasized by the Best Artists.
Laughab1o Examples of the Nonobserv-
ance of This Rule.

| Now Emphasized by the Best Artist
Laughab1o Examples of the Nonobser,
ance of Tn Rule.
Poetry, romance, pathos and hume
arc oil packeAl in that chest, If one onl
could know lne history of it's contents
There Is &c injury of the outer ma
packed awsy tn ere, and your great-groat
grandfather or mine may have paid tn
bills for some Of those things that tn
moths got moro m'e of than he did,"
Mr.. Dan Beard, the artist and illustro
tor, was standing b. hugo old fashionet
wooden chest in his picturesque studio il
tho midst of an assortment of quaint gar
ments, which he had carefully spread GU
on tho floor.
There were long, heavy warm overccat.
made to keep out the winter blasts of ;
century ago, buckskin Jackets of the kins
In which our forefathers hunted, rufflee
coats, with many friKs, which they wor,
to the wooing of thetr ladyloves in tn,
days when wooing was dignifled ant
elaborate ceremony, and military outfits
once OF bravo colors, but now faded and
defaced perhaps In the bittsr campai gn OF
Valley Forge or tho long retreat Of thu
blacksmith general Greene.
Many of them were moth eaten and torn.
but Mr. Beard handled them as il they
wero priceless treasures. Turning to Wal
lace Bruce, the poet, TO whom he had been
speaking, he continued:
If these clothes could tell you their
story, Mr.. Bruce, you would have ma
terials for poems to last throughout your
lifetime
80 you are collector of curios, - re-
piled the poet Il knew that all artists had
hobbies for collecting something, but 1
never knew of any one making speciality
of old clothes except our friends on Bay
ter street. There is more romance than
display in your collection"
ITO tell the truth, said Mr. Beard, smil-
Ing lit is seldom that l think of the TO-
nance of those clothes. They are simply
business with me-part of my stock in
trade. They act as a sort of magic cloak
to carry me, not forward, like the prince in
the fairy tale but back into the centuries,
and there I sit and transfer my revered
ancestors and perhaps yours to the present
time in the form of pictures. -
Not mine. Think returned Mr.
Bruce, unless you have the tartan and
plaid OF the canny highlander. -
80 l have, somewhere about, but not |
here. These are mostly American clothes, /
and very handsome some of them are,
much more so than those we now wear, al |
though the picturesque is not entirely lack
ing in this prosaic present.
And do you have clothes Of every period |
of which you want to make PICTURE
asked Mr.. Bruce, land dress your models
in them?"
81 have the clothes, or if 1 haven't got
4 how, T T
models in them. They are too f]irnsy, |
most OF them-the clothes, Imean. Moths
and time have made them pretty light of |
texture, SO simply take them to tailor,
who uses them as patterns to build me the |
clothes for my models to wear"
How long is it, Mr.. Beard asked Mr..
Bruce, that artists began to be SO ao-
curate in the matter of historical dress?" |
'Only a few years, returned the artist. |
Formerly an outfit with ruffles and G.
fancy waistcoat was supposed to furnish
atmosphere for picture of any date from
1890 to 1850. Abbey ia the pioneer in this
movement. Harry Ogden, 4. dc Shul-
strup, myself and a number of others are
now following him in making point of
obtaining absolute accuracy in all old
fashioned pictures. We collect all the old |
fashioned clothing we can, and when we
want to paint picture of any particular |
date we surround ourselves with objects of |
that date. l have complete set Of fashion
plates from 1899 up to date, and also a |
number Of old books on dress, fashions and |
such things.
''After one begins to study these things
none of the pictures now produced seems
very funny. For instance we'll known
artist recently drew picture of old time
life in this country for a London magazine.
Here is the picture: The youth in the fore
ground is fearfully and wonderfully made,
and the nine tailors that made him pieced |
him out with tho fashions Of 40 years |
Now here is his sword, of kind not car I
ried until 1888, SO wo will suppose him to
be at that date. Now, why should man
of good sense wear in the year of grace |
1888 hat that had been out of fashion |
since 1872
by what mental process would he de- |
eide to insert his up to date legs in trou-
sers of the time of his fathers boyhood-
1790-and did he think it would be only |
right to strike an average elsewhere, and is |
that the reason that his coat is of the vim
tage of 1890?
"Those are things that have puzzled |
over much
NOW, lOOk dU UQcS6 leul3lC LRufeS IN |
the background. You would take those
for his sisters or admiring friends perhaps.
Well, they re not. They're ghosts. don't |
like to accuse q brother artist of anything
uncanny, but they must be ghosts. If they
aren t, why should they sport about in the |
middle Of the nineteenth century wearing
clothes of the middle Of tho seventeenth
I'm not particularly impressionable, but
tell you it gives me shudders to think of a
young man in the prime Of life and his IA
theirs old trousers standing coolly up with |
no more protection than war hat 20 years |
pld and small sword against a collection
of ghosts two centuries old, and female |
ghosts at that
Here's another peculiarly inaccurate |
PICTURE continued tho speaker. showing
an engraving of boat with people on the
deck. "There's a packet boat, with |
pleasure party aboard. Now, the clothes
and boat are all correct, but you see the |
people arc all sitting on chairs on the up
per deck. No packet boat ever allowed |
chairs on the upper deck because of the
low bridges-so low, many of them, that |
the passengers had to lie down fiat to es-
cape being hit.
my father has told me how he and |
some other gentlemen got into political
discussion on a packet boat, and in the
midst of tho excitement neglected to evade
a low bridge, which terminated the argu-
ment and cooled the debaters by scraping