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THOMAS POLLOCK ANSHUTZ.

In the death of Thomas Pollock Anshutz students of the Academy for more than three decades past feel that they have suffered a personal bereavement.  There are few distinguished American artists of the day who have not a greater or lesser debt to acknowledge to his patient, thorough and invariably sympathetic tutelage

"Tommy" Anshutz, as his pupils affectionately styled him, was a painter whose art did not "strive nor cry aloud" for popular recognition, and the medals and honors that were his portion did not come to him as the result of any deliberate attempt to capture them.  Indeed, he decried the medal as laying an artificial emphasis on the work of a man which might be very little better than that of his undecorated fellow, and he earnestly insisted that the ascription of superlative merit was largely a matter of the individual opinion of the juryman.  He had no exaggerated idea of the merit of his own work.  A personality more utterly unpretentious it would be impossible to imagine.  His manner was simple and direct, his modesty disclaimed his worth, and he was fond of saying—as he believed—that his pupils taught him more than he taught them.

If the highest order of romantic imagination was absent in Mr. Anshutz's pictures, there was never lacking the most scrupulous technique and that infinite capacity for taking pains which is so often held to be tantamount to genius.  This was a teacher who not merely pointed the way, but set an example.  He never spared himself.  He labored to the end.  With his passing there is removed from the teaching staff of the Academy one whose influence was always inspiring and ennobling, as his art was sincere and honest and expressive of the man himself.