The San Francisco call., 1896-03-06
SOME STUDIO GL|MPSES
The Arts and Crafts Guild Will
Hold a Novel Exhibi.
ton.
It Is Proposed to Show the Public
How Pictures Are Really
Made.

The Guild of'Arts and Crafts has decided
to hold an exhibition in April which will
be entirely novel in character. Instead Of
hanging framed and glazed pictures ready
to suspend in a room the exhibition will
partake a little of the character of studio
nearly all the exhibits will be unframed
and many of the sketches will be untin-
ished.
The desire of the guild is to hold an ex-
hibition which will not clash with the
spring show at the Art Institute, and after
considering several schemes it was finally
resolved that sketch exhibition would be
novel as well as instructive.
Another thing that has been resolved
upon is that there shall be no jury to ac-
cept or reject pictures at its own will or Ca
price.
The members of the guild say they do
not want anything or any one to 'boss"
the coming exhibition, and in pursuance
of this plan, even committee work in con-
nection with the affair will be curtailed as
much as possible.
Each artist belonging to the guild will
be assigned certain space, and it will be
his duty to see that it is filled. He may
hang his own work or any one else's he
pleases, but he will be considered respon-
siple for the chara cter of work exhibited
in his own section, and woe betide him if
on the vanishing day his space is found
to consist of empty walls.
It is believed that the exhibition of
sketches will encourage artists to bring
studies, old and new, out of their studios.
If picture is only just sketched it may be
hung, for people who are not in the habit
of painting themselves or visiting studios
will learn from the sketch how artists set
to work to make a picture, and 1t is in
tended that the coming exhibition shall
let the public have a peep behind the
scenes of studio work.
There is an illusion, so say the artists,
among good well-meaning people who
know nothing about art, that all painter
has to do is to think out subject, sketch
it III, slap his colors on the canvas and
have a picture as the result of his labors.
The arts and crafts guild says it means to
show the public thing or two about how
an artist goes to work to paint pictures.
Paintings will be shown and beside them
will be all the drawings and studies made
to reach the final positions. One art
ist will show an open-air picture and be-
side it will be six months preliminary
work, IN the way of studies Of foreground
background, middle distance, trees, grass,
More sketches will show how these
sketches were welded together till the de-
sired composition was finally reached and
the picture itself was begun.
The members Of the guild say that after
going to the coming exhibition no one
will harbor the delusion that pictures are
mere hand work, painted according 10
rules learned at school. They pledge
themselves to show how much hard work
there is in picture, and they will also let
the public see that good deal more paint
is wasted than appears on the canvas. In
fact, they have undertaken the task of
proving that a good picture means good
deal more i'll lacor and thought than the
paint on the canvas and the mans time in
laying it on.
In order that the exhibition may not be
too dldactic there will be a number of
finished pictures in addition to the
sketches, and studies of half-completed
paintings, but the charm of novelty will
really lie in the exhibition of the unfinished
work. 1t is believed that at the last some
of the painters will shrink from exposing
their completed work to the cold criti-
cism OF the world, and for these retiring
ones looDhole OF escape has been left by
allowing any artist to fill his space with
finished and framed work if he chooses to
do so.
At the same time there is a good deal of
talk about "yanking" the works out of the
studios by force and hanging them, des-
of the exhibition are not fully covered by
the beginning of next month.
The place for holding the sketch exhibit
has not yet been fully decided upon,
though it will probably be chosen in the
course of the next week or ten days.