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July, 1930 433

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[[caption]] ETCHING - "THE POOL" BY WHISTLER [[/caption]]
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[[caption]] ETCHING - "BEAUVAIS" BY D.Y CAMERON [[/caption]]
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[[caption]] DRY POINT - "OXFORDSHIRE" BY MUIRHEAD BONE [[/caption]]

Many promising men may be pointed out in all sections of the country. It is not be intention that the names of all these men are excluded here. The few who have been mentioned here are merely typical in the larger body who form the backbone of our national art.

A great deal of progress has been made in other mediums than etching. Lithography and wood-engraving are challenging the long reign of the copper-plate, and in truth a period of original expression in all the graphic mediums seems to be well under way.

FROM fine prints we turn to another class which is not necessarily inferior artistically, but in which the stronger appeal is made through its subject matter - historical or, as they are sometimes called, story telling prints. Historical prints are in reality records of people, places, and events that have been of sufficient importance to warrant a pictorial description. Their value in supplying material for research cannot be underestimated, and a few written accounts tell so graphic a story as a well conceived picture which is truthful in the news it presents. The demand for prints of this qualification has always been insistent. Students and collectors in general have helped to preserve the all too meager supply.

Within only a few generations America has begun to realize that it has a tradition and to be proud of it. Today we are offered the spectacle of a people frantic in their desire to own some example of the arts and crafts of their forebears. Collectors of a few years ago who refused to be warned by a tendency of the masses to insert a finger rather gingerly into their pie, now find that the pastry has been almost completely consumed, and their wrath at the discovery is not diminished by the fact that the cost of their particular delicacy has advanced, in proportion to its popularity.

A few years ago the names of Currier and Ives were known only to those who grew up in the "Mauve Decade" and to certain remarkable pioneers who seem always to anticipate the trend of public favor. Today, if these purveyors to the popular palate are unknown to a single inhabitant of the states he must be a modern Rip Van Winkle, completely isolated from the world. The artists employed by Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives may not always have been skillful but they were certainly industrious. A veritable flood of pictures was prepared for the delectation of a receptive populace whose response to this kindness kept the wheels of progress turning for some fifty years without a break.

It is only just to say that there were artists of real talent among those who drew for Currier and Ives and in the class of large folio prints such as the clipper ships, the western and railroading subjects, the rural, sporting and city views, there is evidence of able, even though unpolished, genius. On the other hand we cannot overlook such ludicrous flights of fancy as characterize a pair of prints which is before the writer at the moment. "The Fairies' Home," in which a group of gambolling sprites make merry within a wooded dell, under the light of a benignant and very yellow full moon, while the approach to their retreat is guarded by two mother-of-pearl and coral-colored sea monsters of impossible proportions, is ideally mated to its companion, "The Bower of Roses," which reveals the graces of a reclining and somnolent maiden to her palpitant gallant, a youth of raven locks, attired luxuriously in a scarlet and somewhat abbreviated costume. His attitude of astonished admiration is heightened by a graceful fluttering of the right hand and a delicately poised position upon the ball of the foot, which we feel sure will not maintain his equilibrium indefinitely, and which we fondly hope will precipitate him into the swiftly flowing stream upon whose brink he rests, (Continued on page 462)

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[[image: a pier housing many rowboats, one with a man inside if it]] [[image: a large building on the corner of two streets with a door on it's diagonal surface]] [[image: a wide street that leads to a bridge populated by horse carriages]]