The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-04-12
VETERAN PAINTERS
LANDSCAPE EXHIBIT
Frederic Crowninshield Has
a Likable Sturdiness
of Design.
GOODNESS IN WORKS
Touch of the Mural Decora-
tor Makes for a Lack
of Magic"
GOODNESS IN WORKS
(National News Association)

| National News Association)
NEW YORK, April 1.-THE exhi-
bition of recent paintings by Frede-
rick Crowninshield at the Folsom gal
lery serves not only to bring forward
the work of one of the best known
of the American artists but to suggest
to the visitor how quickly traditions
are formed and how rapidly one set
of figures in the long perspective of
art activity is replaced by another.
Mr.. Crowninshield is not by any
means an old man, as age is regard
ed nowadays, but in Miss Florence
Levy's introduction to the catalogue
| one learns that he was a pupil in
Paris of two painters whose names
are already surrounded with the mists
that spell remoteness from contempt
rary life. Cabanel and Couture. The
latter especially begins to seem not
greatly separated from DelacroiX and
Ingres, though of course when the
dates are compared there is respect
able lapse of time between them.
In London Mr. Crowninshield studied
with RowbOtham, and in Rome with
| Benouville. His Paris period was
spent not only with the two French
painters named, but at the Ecole des
BeauX Arts. And when he returned
to his native Boston to paint and to
teach there were among his pupils
two young men who are now artists
of mature age and settled regulations,
Edmund c. Tarbell and Frank Ben
son. Yet all this happened in the car
reer of man born as late as 1S45.
Mr.. Crowninshield is only 68 years
| old.
| The New York activities of Mr..
Crowninshield date from the early sos
and his work here has been mainly
in mural decoration and in stained
glass. He was president of the Fedora
ton Of fine Arts from 1900 to 1909,
and after that he was for two years di-
rector of the American Academy at
Rome. Besides his work in painting
and in glass, Mr.. Crowninshield has
been a writer of several volumes Of
verse and an illustrator of books His
villa Mirafiore," lately published,
bears the title of the building that
houses in Rome the thriving institu-
ton in which American painters, archi-
tects and sculptors who have won
scholarships sojourn to broaden and
deepen their art experience, and it was
this academy of which Mr.. Crownin-
shield was the head.
| Remembering his mural decorations,
which embody the accepted way of
looking at nature for the preservation
of flat surfaces in the designs paint
ed upon walls, the visitor at the cur
rent display at the Folsom gallery will
find traces of similar ideals now and
again. But in the main, the land
scapes, especially those in water col
or, seem to have been made with suf-
ficient regard for what is idiomatic, for
what relates to the size and the man
ner in which they were to be carried
out.
Many of them touch upon themes
closely connected with the beautiful
villa of Rome, others still more recent
| set forth the fascinating aspects of
Taormina, with the blue water of the
Mediterranean sweeping in large
curves upon the Sicilian shore and
with rugged turrets of rock as princi-
pal factors in the composition. Again,
there are earlier landscapes painted in
the neighborhood of Stockbridge, in
the Berkshire Hills and these are as
| likable as any, and as sharply differ
ent in character from the Italian set as
could be we'll imagined.
Coming closer to the paint, the &C
tual pigment in these oils, it may as
we'll be said that Mr.. Crowninshield
does not disclose any marked power Of
touch, of brushwork in the way of
making it alluring. There is New
| England GOODNESS in his work that per
sists. You can admire the sturdy de-
sign of one composition after anoth-
er, the truth of his observation, the
dom from affectation, from mere man
nerism. 1t is honest, able work, and in
the surface counts for less, perhaps, as
factor Of disappointment, than it
does in the oils.
! Despite the broad holiness of the
brush strokes in the latter, the little
blobs of color that make up the sur
face are not eloquent. They come near
est to being so in the blue Taormina
water, but even here, they are only
half persuavise. And this. after all is
one of the radical things. But the exhi-
bition as a whole will interest many
and it furnishes new proof of the YER
! satility and the accomplishment of a
respected veteran in art
LOOK TO YOUR PLUMBING.
| You know what happens in a house
in oh 4hn nj, &c ~