The age-herald., 1900-05-06
ELIHU VIDDER OF ROME

From the New York Evening Post. "I like to spend most of my time in Rome" said Elihu Vedder, the American painter who was recently in New York Because life is easy there. It is quiet and peaceful. Ones friends turn up every year and one doesn't have to be riding on the cars all the time"
 Don't you get out of touch with Ameri- can art by living abroad? Just now in New York there is an attempt to organize an American salon one step to bring about distinctive American art"
 What is distinctive American art?V re- pliced MT. Vedder. "If you get hold of 1t you will often find it is Irish, German, Dutch or what not. Is the Indian the dis tinctive thing? There was a time when everybody had to paint an Indian. Ideas are the thing in art, and ideas are not De- culiar to any country. Spimts have no lo- cal color. s: "Of course" he continued, "there are some distinctive American things that are good. But there are also distinctiysly American things that are bad. Our drive and rush, our haste and worry is Amefi can, and it is bad for art When we get that distinctive thing into our art it will be bad art. That is why so many artists go away to get little quiet, little trfn- quility, which is very necessary for artss
 "Why should they say,' he resumed, 'that I am not an American painter be- cause I spend most of my time in Rome? Robert Browning wrote some pretty good English poetry, although he lived in Italy. I did not see any desire among the English to repudiate him. I never studied in con tinental school. I developed in my own way, worked out my own style, and Tam as American as the rest of them. t
 ''If they want a distinctive American art" he proceeded, '1et them buy Ameri- can paintings. Every public has the art it deserves"
 The reporter spoke of the serious, rather sombre quality in all of Mir. Vedder's paintings, and asked the artist whether he put his life philosophy into his work.
 "I am cheerful" replied the painter. smiling, and. l enjoy life, but when I think, it is different I always have an idea before I paint picture and I am al- . ways bound to be serious. If I try some thing bright it is apt to be rather satircal.
 'The sad fact in the life of many artists" he said, lis poverty. There is a frightful fallacy in the public mind that poverty is a good thing to develop an artist; 1t doesn't apply to others-only to artists-but it is great mistake, for it applies to him least of all. An artist who is worried and dis tressed is terribly handicapped in his art. He should feel at rest. There is danger of a real artist not working hard Some of the best artists have been well off from the beginning, and what advantages they have hadi Sargent and John Lafarge, two of our most distinguished artists, have never bothered about money Every artist ought to have a modest income. Those who would not work if they had a little money are not artists, and ought to turn to something else. But everybody works now, wealthy not. The millionaire works now as hard as anybody. Many an artist is maimed by poverty Some osie e-1.s1 T l. II. could never eat with as much grace as a man who had always lived we'll"
 MT. Vedder has painted picture, which is in the present exhibition, of a tree blast ed at the top. It is near a wall, beyond which is the invisible sea, the cause of it's partial atrephy It is gloomy enough in it's bare suggestiveness, and starts the .rs1et- nation. It suggests the remarks of the painters about artists maimed through poverty Of this tree MT. Vedder said:
 T might have put some children play:=s underneath, but I never go outside cf nIy idea in order to get a pleasant, popular subject. I wanted to suggest that that was the tree where the pirates were hanged or underneath which Captain Kidd buried his treasure. I always try to have dramatic idea.
 Tt is feeling that counts in art' he re- Sumed Take Rembrandt. He has many faults, but he expressed a new feeling-the mystery of shadow. His technique was simple and easily initiated, and now there have been thousands who initiate him without getting his feeling It is the same with Cofot. But with an artist of great learning pathological knowledge and min ute and complicated technique like Man tegna, for instance, imitation is next to impossible.
 'I don't like interviews" he concluded, "because it is very rare that an artist is natural on any formal occasion. He feels stiff, i'll at ease. The way to interview him is to see his work to see him in his shirt sleeves at his club. Then you may get the real thing, the genuine man."