Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-01-12
Rv MRS. LETA MOORE MEYER
m HE sixty oil paintings which
the Omaha Society of Fine
r

I'm he sixty OIL paintings WliSA
the Omaha Society of Fine
Il Arts exhibits for ten days at
the Fontenelle, are mostly of very
serious and sincere nature.
The nine Monticellis afford the
student an unusually good oppor-
tunity for study. All done in his
distinctive manner of poetic beauty
and mystery, they show two dis
tinct phases of his work and the
transition between them. He was
contemporary of the Barbizon
school in France about the time
when it was considered an iron
bound rule that all landscapes must
be first Stumbled in brown, raw UNI
Der, and the lights only thickly
painted in, the. explosion of which
theory gained Constable his fame.
The two pictures, THE Peacock
Garden" and THE Pet Dove" show
a half-hearted conformity to the
rule and were evidently done in his
earlier years. He gets away from it
in "Star of Bethlehem" and in the
somewhat stilted and timid THE
Lark" and still farther in Feeding
the Chickens" when he was begin
ming to use the thick impasto char
acteristic of most of his work. The
other four pictures are done in the
usual style of his maturity.
The two styles of George Inness
can also be studied. The Roman
Campagna," is done in the stilted
Photographic style Of the days when
he was a soldier in the civil war
and when he was considered hope
less as an artist. "Moonrise" is In
ness at his best and is done in the
Stumbled brown method above men
toned, with the lights painted in
heavily and gives a beautiful effect
of night and its beauty.
Robert Henri, instructor at the
Art league in New York and one of
the most popular of our teachers, es-
pecially among the new cult that
believes in finishing a six-foot can
vass in one day, is also well rep
resented by two, for him, very small
portraits, also his transitional style.
The large, breezy pictures of his
earlier years, disregarding drawing
and structure and which expressed
his inspiring enthusiastic PERSONAL
ity, have now given place to those
painted mostly of the Indians of
the southwest, accurate and right in
structure and drawing and technique
but rather lifeless and wooden. The
two here shown are evidently be-
tween the two and possess the vir-
tues of both. Irish Girl" partic-
ularly has fine feeling of the bony
structure of the head and of the
body and he has very successfully
made use Of the old method of
scraping out the dress entirely.
These two pictures are unfortunately
hung in the hall where one cannot
get much distance on them. Some
years ago the French government
bought one of Mr.. Henri's pictures
for the Luxembourg and it is said
the price was $4,000. He is one of
the most interesting characters in
New York art circles. Intensely
sincere and independent, he has
more than once created a sensation
on New York exhibition juries.
To those familiar with the work of
Charles w. Hawthorne, the we'll
known instructor at the Art league
and the summer school at Province
town, Mass, his "The Story Book"
is a surprise. Very different from
his other work, it is done in glaze,
that method of painting the picture
color, grinding it down and
then putting the color thinly over
it, which was used by the old mas
tiers and which so many modern art
lists are experimenting with. This |
picture is more broad, sincere and
simple and pleasing in color than his |
other work.
Singularly Joseph Isreals is rep
resented by portrait, for he always |
painted genre. Fritz Thaulow, the |
great painter of waterIin motion, has
a fine example. He did such fine