The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-11-20
FHEARr OUTLOOK IN SAN FRANCISCO
Local Color From the Studios in This
Community.

| uSIc ID SItdI pledSuic W ehO al
lover in the fall exhibit now being held
at the Hopkins Art Institute, also in the art
work on view in the various studios of the
| City-much that is more than excellent.
California has furnished so many beautiful
| and grand subjects for the brush that the
artist who has wisely sought for native
| scenes has not failed in the finding nor in
securing the appreciation of the public.
Landscape painting belongs to modern art.
With Claude and Poussin, we are told, it
was in favor more as a setting or back
ground for some Arcadian scene or as per-
spective where Ionic or Corinthian temple
was thrown in relief against light and
| shadow, thus making its beauty relative or
subjective. In these later days both poet
and painter take their lessons from nature,
and to discover some secret spot where the
earth has disclosed her loneliness possesses
for them a supreme charm indeed, its very
isolation gives such scene all the fresh
ness of revelation direct{rom the Creator
to the artist. William Keith has the true
enlargement of this-that discernment
which "lays nature bare in her divine in
tegrlty.' This is to discover another note
in the harmony of the universe, which
practically must be translated as sense of
proportion when brought to the canvas.
Lord Kames, in his elements of Criti-
cism," limits beauty to the sense of sight.
He should have gone further and acknowi-
edged that vision conveys the truth and
beauty to the soul which feels.
In Mr.. Keitb's picture, "Fog Over the
Berkeley Hills" he comes nearer to the
haunts of man, and awakeus that human
intere st which the familiar always brings
home to the heart. The beauty of this
painting is unexcelled, the tender light of
the perspective, the fog breaking away,
leaving over all dewy freshness. as per-
feet as the atmosphere of Corot. There
was painting at the. spring exhibit OF
this year which l noted at the time, and
which it is to be hoped is included in the
present exhibit; the picture is. called
Evening on the Italian Coast by Jor-
gensen. This painting has the silence, the
stiffness which is desolation, for silence
and stiffness are many meaning mysteries.
The silence and stiffness OF the night.
The silence and stiffness of the forest.
The stiffness and silence of the sea. In
the night and in the forest are unseen
presences. On the sea are voiceless secrets.
This canvas holds the speechlessness OF
its desolation.
We are taught there is general kind OF
beauty called Eurarithmy, 1.-THE beauty
which is relative to the contemplating
mind" We intuitively feel there must be
harmony without superfices, for acct
dental notes, while helpful in music, are
dangerous ventures in painting; they dis
turb an isolated scene, obtruding from the
external commonplace upon the sacred
ness and secrecy of some abiding place of
nature, making a discord, a dissonance OF
effect. Gleghorn says: 1.-The human
| mind can easily take in but limited num-
| Der of parts, of members of features, OF
| hues, OF sounds" The theme must not be
crowded out of its singleness of purpose or
meaning. One must not be bewildered by
| the complex, only admirable in heroic or
epic subjects. Technique is the surgery
of the arts, the incision of the beautiful,
laying bare the pulse and vein and artery
of its structure. The artist discovers the
possible, and brings forth renaissance of
the material clothed in a spiritual pres
ence. To the artist analysis of form and
| outline, this finding and fixing the rules
| of parallelism and opposition, the CHA
roscuro, the tones and valeus is the neces-
| sity of his work.
With those who only study technique by
way of experimenting results, to these it
| is only the raison d'etre of the thing. 1t is
| to the artist, but in a higher degree. What
| botany is to the botanist, where tender
! flowers, petal and calyx and anther are
uncovered to the eye of science. TO the
/ general public of beautv-loyers it is the
story the painter paints in the true colors.
of life and living. 1t is the appeal to the
| heart of emotion, the sympathy aroused
which each interprets in his own language
| to his soul, he feels according to his sensi-
| biity TO sentiment This public is not
critical-it is instructive, as was in evil
dence at the Worlds Fair when the
crowd passing by great masterpieces gath
| cred about the pathetic scene, Breaking
/ Home Ties" (by Thomas Hoyenden). It
was the directness of the homing shaft;
they stood about it spellbound. There
was only one voice. only one heartbeat,
SO concentrated, SO intense was their sense
! of 1.-THE young, with an agitation
an apprehension they felt, bur could not
fully understand; the old, with the echo
| of recall like the reverberation of a far-off
knell borne back into their lives from
something forever vanished. some dear
face forever gone from the home hearth.
1t is the same in Eterature-it is what
! enters the soul when one reads Ian Nc
Laren. or Crockett's stories, or in our own
land it is the tear in the eye called up by
! the homely but exquisite pathos of Mel
| son Pare or some tender child-poem be-
queathed from the stilled hand of Eugene
/ Field. 1t is the undertone in most lives,
this strain OF sadness and sorrow. Our
artists have not only engathered the very
core of beauty from California, but they
have laid other lands tribute to their ant.
They have brought as symphonies and
! figures and sonatas in color from foreign
| shores some rhythmic canto of love in its
lights and shades, or some drama or
tragedy of distant peoples told to us in
the colature and tunes of an universal
language. Victor Hugo says. supreme
art is the reign of equals" The artist in
any of the arts leaves the earth for other
worlds of his own creating. A word now
about the Iuminists and impressionists.
! Van Dyke says: ''That movement in art
which passes under the misleading name
of impressionism has established new
views and new methods of handling lights
and shadows. True enough its opponents,
men like Claude Monet and Renoir, are
just now painting snatches and sketches OF
nature rather than pictures; they are
cutting off piece of what is before
them rather than composing, but even
so they have proved that the picture may
exist and be a picture without the wedg-
ing and centering OF light and without the
opposition of strong lights to darks \ = \
The luminarists may be credited with
new and important technical discovery,
one that is destined in all probability to
influence the entire future of art Van
Dyke goes on to say that "when painting
came out of the Middle Ages the technique
| OF art had fO hp laarnad avar