The star and Newark advertiser., 1908-05-07
FOREIGN PORTRAIT PAINTERS
REAP A HARVEST HERE.

Few persons are aware of the great
harvest of American money gathered
each season by foreign portrait painters
who come TO the United States. They
work in a circuit of cities during
short season of two or three months,
and paint mary canvases Millions OF
dollars have been paid them by
American sitters in the last few years.
After two or three seasons here most
of these painters amass a sufficient for
tune and retire to live in luxury in
Europe. America is their Ell Dorado,
says a sarcastic observer in the New
Broadway Magazine.
Chartran, Carolus-Duran. Madrazo,
Bertier, Benjamin Constant, Boldini,
Zorn, Raffaelli. Gandara. Ferraris, Emil
Fuchs, Sargent, Story, Richard Hall.
Hubert Vos, Shannon, Herkomer Eu-
gene, Seymour Thomas, Troubetzkoy,
Thaddeus. and many more have all
garnered their share of American dol
lars. These men represent all degrees
of talent and variety.
Portraiture is the most difficult
branch of art, and requires gifts of
the highest order Closer observation
and greater intuition is needed to por-
tray human beings of distinct indi-
viduality than to portray human
beings of indefinite character, as in the
usual figure compositions. Life is such
a variable, evanescent, moodful condi-
tion, that only one who knows and
feels for mankind can ever adequately
portray its many types and variations.
Many Who'll paint portraits are deficient
in knowledge of life and character, and
their work has little of lasting value.
These foreign painters know that
their sitters, being mostly women, pre-
fer that stress be given their snowy
gowns laces, opera cloaks, patent
feathers and jewels-the parts of
portrait easiest of attainment-and in
so painting they give little thought to
individuality and characteristics. For
this reason alone 1t is not a cause for
wonderment that these innumerable
canvases are of doubtful value. Re-
naming only a few months in this
country, these men never become IA
miliar with the personality, tastes, or
home life of American women, but por-
tray them in their Paris-made cos
tunes in the same manner they do the
French women of wholly different per-
sonal characteristics whom they do
know.
Nothing would seem to them more
absurd than that Mr.. Chase. Mr.. Wiles
or Mr. Beckwith should go to Paris for
a season to paint the women of France,
although our painters. having acquired
their education abroad, are far better
Iprepared to paint French women than
these. foreigners are to do justice to
American women. Then, too, between
an admirable character portrait of a
simply dressed woman and a stupidity
painted portrait of a garishIy dressed
woman, they know the public will usu-
ally choose the latter as something
stunning"
Now these foreign artists are men of
pronounced business instincts; they
come here solely for the money they
can get, and they keep one eye on the
result in arranging their sitters. 1t re-
quires time to reproduce the plainly
clad sitter in such a way that the result
is a notable success-that is, to bring
out the individual expression, distinc-
tion, or that elemental humaneness
which underlies character. But to them
time is money, and money is more
easily won by a dextrous rendering of
silk and velvet gowns, with side shad-
ows of rich background draperies.