Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-01-18
VTTHAT is a lumino?


w 1 suppose you might describe it as
painting with light.
1t is fact that painting of every sort
might be defined in the same words. What
the artist does is to shut out certain rays of
light from his canvas by cunningly mixed
pigments of one sort or Notwithstanding
exactly the rays he wants. Where he uses
paint the umlno-artist uses paper 1t is the
only difference. Paper of varying thickness
of colors and form-are laid upon glass,
as pigments are laid upon canvas; and the
light streaming through makes the picture.
Simple, is it not?
1t is simple exquisite and impressive; and
it is, I think, the beginning of a new art
that will reyolutionize fenestral decoration
it will be tc the modern home what stained
glass was to the medieval cathedral. And
when, in days to come, the art historian asks
you for an account of the origin of the lum-
ino just tell him it was invented for Nine.
Mariska Adrich's beefsteax dinner. l need
not tell you who Nine. Mariska Aldrch, of
the Metropolitan Opera House, is-the mag
nifcent Hungarian prima donna with the
voice of bronze and gold
Like Looking Through a Window
That beefsteak dinner was given 10 years
ago in the cellar of house in Buffalo To
William c. Cornwall, the New York banker,
was entrusted the business of decorating the
cellar. Before he was drawn away to money
making Mr. Cornwall was-in his youth-a
student at Jullien's in Paris; withal a good
artist. He stretched transparent paper
screens across the cellar windows and painted
them merry subjects; the light did the
rest And So in haphazard way, the lum-
ino was born. Ten years of experimentation
went to perfecting the new art. Just how
perfect 1t is now may be seen at the expo
sition of Mr.. Cornwall's latest luminos.
The room you enter is dark. Then an
electric button is touched, and abruptly
lumno appears. 1t is as though a window
had opened in the wall and you were looking
through 1t, out upon woodland scene-a
cold dawn with faint sun rising among the
trees, It's amazingly well done. Never has
painter put on canvas 80 true a thing. His
medium was sodden and thick compared to
this living medium of light in which the
lumino-artist works. Never was the cold
radiance Of dawn so perfectly recorded.
How It's Done
Here is another one, The light has leaped
out and, as 1t were through a great window
you SEQ the dark Mediterranean. heaving to
a coming storm-the moon not yet gone; and
a fisherman's boat labors heavily. The boat
casts shadow-which is not paint. When
you go close and examine the lumIno in an
open light you see that it is made Of translu-
cent colored papers modelled in thin or thick
masses That curiously real shadow was got
by leaving the strip OF paper, which makes
1t. loose and floating. The light. OF course,
comes from behind; 1t is regulated to give
just the right strength and the picture, as
the French artists say, comes through" at
you. There is art, OF course, in modelling the
picture in this fragile material. Technically,
Mr., Cornwalfs work has tremendous merit
1t is the work OF a savant artist. But he
must have had fancy, charming spells OF
artistic agony in mastering the transmission
of his light.
In one picture bather sits by a stretch
of water that pulses and shines. nude
woman
How did you get that flesh tint2 1t is
uncanny." 1 said.
The luminartist. who is tan large man,
with the head OF Napoleon III, laughed.
"And how did you get that modelingY T.
could walk around her ana look at her from
the other side-if were not a modest man.
There are half dozen sheets Of paper
in that figure he explained. tone upon
tone that gives the nesh tint ana then the
hsure Is modelled exactly as though Il yers
modelled in clay. except that It Is modelled
in two materials-in paper end in light"
In the experiments he made for that nota
bic beefsteak dinner Mr. Cornwall found that
It was easy enough to initiate stained glass.
simple application OF eolored paper pro
dueed the exact effect It was almost By
accident he discovered that layers OF paper
Of different eolofs. superimnossd with due
regard e color values. made s window look
when - hsas sams fhFeash Il Ike