New-York tribune., 1922-10-29
A Progressive Type
ir. HawtIlorne's Readiness to
Enter New Paths

There opens at the Macbeth gallery
o-morrow an exhibition Of paintings
Charles w. Hawthorne which is not
,nIy arresting in itself but incidentally
,ets ono to thinking of this artists
hole career. We we'll remember its
eginnings. He was one of the clever
st of Chase's pupils, and when his
tork first appeared in the '90s it was
lain that he would justify his train
ag in the right way, using sound
echnique and beating out a manner
Z his own. 1t was broad but, as we
,eeall it, rather deliberate and careful
lanner. He did not emulate the dash
characteristic of Chase. There was
certain gravity about him. 1t told
9th in his technique and in the sub
tance of his art. The picturesque fig
,res which come back TO the memory
rom canvases of his painted in italy
ere not illustrative of any dramatic
anecdotic motive, but the painter did
OF rely upon their surface pictur-
squeness alone. They touched his
Imagination and he somehow contrived
{ make the observer feel this. There
'as suggestion of meditative thought
his work. He had, too, faculty for
oior, and as he saw his subjects
lrgely, depicting them on generous
Gale, the general impression he left
as OF boldness, of boldness always
smpered by that deiiberation to which
e have referred. An inspiriting am
itude has been characteristic Of him
1ycr since.
He began as thoughtful realist. He
,ent on to spiritualize his realism
his came out in studies of women and
aildren, portraits in which he subtly
ifted them above the plane of the
rdinary life in which he was, never
aeless, content to find them. Numer,
= aus modern artists have sought to give
- their studies of motherhood the ele-
alton of the Madonna without depart.
ag from the costume and gesture OF
aeir own time. They put the emphasis
expression. simply Hawthorne has
ono this. In the present exhibition
lis American Motherhood" embodies a
heme which he has painted over and
yer again. The beauty with which he
ayests it varies, but his high serious
css and his tenderness have been
teadily maintained. Steadily, also. he
as kept his grasp upon reality. The
anger, OF course, in work of this kind
tho danger of falling between two
tools. Seeking to fuse spiritual and
mundane traits an artist risks the loss
Il perfect balance. His worst peril lies
n the direction OF sentimentality,
hawthorne has never touched It. His
women may not be precisely radiant
,ut at any rate they are genuine. So,
100, with his paintings of children: the
sweetness which is partly of his models
and partly of his own emotion is abso.
utely free from anything mawkish 0,
cloying.
His is a very wholesome, manly art
and the explanation would seem to bs
that the emotion just cited is allied
with life itself. At the very moment
in which he gives rein to his in.agina-
tion he is careful 10 keep has eye on
the object before him, to aim stead
sastly st the trath. There was time
when we used to wonder If he were
drifting into habit Of picture making
In the routine sense. consciously or ua-
consciously responding TO the fact,
soon enough hspriiy deyeloned, that
svary museum had 70 have "a Haw-
thorne.' There is, after all, sneh .
EAing IS painting ssHawthornesD instead
u wcyas ef arr. But SO westkarsd