Evening star., 1925-08-07

What is all the talk about Wash
lngton's becoming the Art Capital of
America?
We have our National Art Museum
and, like pearls cast before swine
tor the bones of antediluvian ami
mals) the pictures are crowding the
stuffed specimens of science, and
there Is agitation to induce Congress
to finance a new and appropriate
building for art. and give the needed
space in the Museum to what it was
originally intended. and for which
it is now much needed. II there
were adequate room in the Ma
tional Art Gallery, millions of dollars
worth of pictures and objects dart
would come from patriotic bequests.
~
There is the ultra-precious collec-
ton of the Freer Gallery. little high
brow for the masses, but with stand
ards to which even the proletariat
may yet be instructed. The average
visitor whispers in wonder as he passes
the great Japanese screen and glass
ed-in vases, and is aStonished at the
gilded peacock room and the mystic
little canvases of Whistler-some dark
to discern, but beautiful IL discerned.
And then the joy of the Thayers and
the Freer collection-chaste, correct,
marble cold, austere, mystic! Even
such a high-brow show appeals to the
common people.
And last, but most democratic, is
the Corcoran Gallery. with its Ameri-
can and European canvases! To the
Corcoran Gallery has now come the
special art collection bequeathed by
the late Senator w. A. Clark. The
Metropolitan Gallery of New York re-
jected it because it was stipulated that
the collection must be kept intact for
ever as the CLARK Collection. 1t
could not be split up and distributed
among other works, where 1t would
fit into the Metropolitan own scheme
of classifications Of pictures, periods
and schools of art. So we are to
have, as our Capitals treasures, %
Corots, % Cazins, 21 Montecellos.
Fortuny's masterpiece, "The Choice of
a Model; Jules Breton's Harvesting
Poppies"; works of Turner, Gaines
borough, Daubigny, Diaz, Rembrandt,
Ribera, Halls, Greuze, LIE Brun and
the choice of 125 other pictures from
the great Clark collection.
What real interest has Art (spelled
with big Al 1or the common masses
who do not paint, nor even buy
hand. painted pictures, for private
collections What is Art? If one
might gliblv answer that most famous
question of PLATE: What is Truth?'
then, in a line, he could answer.
What is Art?" for Art is Truth, and
through all the centuries men are
seeking essential truth.
Every art student knows that Art
is not imitation of any scene or object
In nature. True Art Is truer than any
actual scene nature ever achieved, for
Art selects only the typical, the es-
sential facts, with which the particu-
lar beauties of a scene are to be i'm
pressed upon the beholder. The acci-
dental details, which distract attention
from the real spirit. are eliminated,
for adventitious details are ugly blots
upon pure, essential truth.
All the arts are alike in that par
ticular. Music never initiates nature.
but suggests it's spirit in the bit Of
bird warble or the roar Of thunder or
the tinkling of dripping water or the
signing wind. For a picture to resort
to gold leaf for the brilliance Of set
ting sun would be neither Turner
esqus nor natural. The painter who