Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-08-13
HIS OLD COSTUMES.
DAN BEARD EXPLAINS THEIR UTlLl-
Tv IN HIS WORK. {sss

Now Emphasized by the Best Artists.
IanpbabIe Examples of the Nonobserv-
ance of This Rule.
Poetry, romance, pathos and humor
are all packed in that chest, If one only
could know the history of its contents.
There is a century of the outer man
packed away there, and your great great
grandfather or mine may have paid the
bills for some Of those things that the
moths got more use of than he did. =
Mr. Dan Beard, the artist and illustra-
tor, was standing by a huge old fashioned
wooden chest in his picturesque studio In
the midst of an assortment of quaint gar
ments, which he had carefully spread out
on the floor. :'..
| There were long, heavy warm overcoats
made to keep out the winter blasts OF q
century ago, buckskin Jackets of the kind
in which our forefathers hunted, rutfled
coats, with many friils, which they Wore
to the wooing of their ladyloves III the
days when wooing was a dignlt1ed and
elaborate ceremony, and military outfits
once of brave colors, but now faded and
defaced perhaps in the bitter campaign of
Valley Forge or the long retreat OF the
blacksmith general, Greene.
| Many of them were moth eaten and torn,
but Mr. Beard handled them as If they
were priceless treasures. Turning to Wal
lace Bruce, the poet, to whom he had been
speaking, he continued:
! 'tIf 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 l
never knew of any one making speciality
of old clothes except our friends on Bax-
ter street. There is more romance than
display in your collection ~.. @1..-
ITO tell the truth, t." said Mr.. Beard, smil-
ing, it is seldom that l think of the 70
nance of those clothes. They are simply
business with me--part of my stock in
trade. They act rs sort of magic cloak
to carry me, not forward, like the prince in
the fairy tale, but back into the centuries,
and there 1 sit and transfer my revered
ancestors and perhaps yours to the present
time in the form of pictures. " q
Not mine, l think" returned Mr..
Bruce, 'unless you have the tartan and
plaid of the canny Highlander"
| $50 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 a picture
asked Mr.. Bruce, and dress your models
in them?"
Il have the clothes, or if haven't got
them l get them, but | don't dress my
models in them. They are too flimsy,
most of thcm-the clothes, l mean. Moths
and time have made them pretty light of
texture, SO / simply take them to q tailor,
who uses them as patterns TO build me the
clothes for my models to wcaE"
How long is it, Mr.. Beard" asked Mr..
Bruce, that artists began to be so &C
curatc III the matter of historical drcss?"
Only few years." returned the artist.
"Formerly an outfit with ruffles and a
fancy waistcoat was supposed to furnish
atmosphere for a picture of any date from
1890 TO 1850. Abbey is the pioneer in this
movement. Harry Ogden, Y. de Shul-
strup, myself and 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 Il picture of any particular
date we surround ourselves with objects of
that date. ! have a 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, a well known
artist recently drew picture of Oil time
life in this country for Il London magazine.
Hero is the picture: The youth in the fore
ground is fearfully and wonderfully made,
and the nine tailors that made him picccd
him out with the fashions of 40 years.
Now, here is his sword, of n kind not car
ried until 1898, so we will suppose him to
be at that date. Now, why should "a man
of good sense wear in the year Of grace
1888 q hat that had been out of fashion
since 1912? ... -.
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--
| 1r90-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 vin-
tage of 1920? ..y..,
These are things that I have puzzled
over much. II
Snow look at these female figures In
the background. You would take those
for his sisters or admiring friends perhaps.
Well they're not. They're ghosts l don't
like to accuse brother artist of any thing
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 the seventeenth
I'm not particularly impressionablc, 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 a war hat 20 years
old and II small sword against collection
of ghosts two centuries old, and female
ghosts at that.
Here's another peculiarly inaccurate
picture" continued the speaker, showing
an engraving of a boat with people on the
deck. There's packet boat, with a
pleasure party aboard. Now, the clothes
and boat are all correct, but you sec the
people are 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