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8 VI
The Spring Show of the Academy
By Royal Cortissoz

In its new home at Fifth Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street the Academy of Design brings forward its spring exhibition to great advantage. The distribution of the paintings and sculptures through sufficiently spacious yet not too large rooms permits a fairly intimate approach to them, and the effect is ingratiating. This is based, too, upon excellence in the exhibits, which testify in general to the Academy's historic insistence upon honest workmanship. There are numerous meritorious pictures on the walls. Portraits and landscapes predominate, with a dozen or more figure subjects and nudes scattered here and there. The nudes are distinctly acceptable. Isabel Bishop's "Nude by Stream" is quite the best thing she has done, lightly touched but clearly sound in modeling and having about it a note of style. Will Foster's "Sleeping Figure" is another good canvas in this category, very skillfully drawn and painted, and William Auerbach-Levy's "Dancer" is also to be appreciatively noted, as are the nude figures in Leon Kroll's handsome landscape, "Quarry on the Cape." These about exhaust the number of works in which bodily form is treated for its own sake.
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Subject Pictures

An ambitious subject picture is Hugo Ballin's "Allegory, Medieval Medicine," in which he gives a canvas of limited dimensions something of the character of a big mural decoration. In spite of a slight overcrowding he leaves his composition well knit and animated into the bargain. It makes a welcome episode in the exhibition. Very welcome, too, is "The Revealing Wilderness" of Frank Vincent Du Mond, a beautiful picture in which the stately figure of Christ is set like a pillar in a vast landscape under a faintly starlit sky. It is a true work of religious art, marked by feeling and great dignity. There are a few other painters who attack grave themes. Eugene Higgins, for example, is impressively dramatic in his "Abandoned," depicting the flight of survivors from a sinking ship. His accustomed somber tone is peculiarly appropriate. Salvatore Lascari essays poetic symbolism in his "Interlude," but while the design is agreeable his execution of it is a little stiff. That expert veteran Irving R. Wiles calls his interior with two figures "The Poet," and he makes his point, but what one chiefly enjoys here is just the manual dexterity the artist has employed. Ivan Albright, in "The Blacksmith of Warrensville," successfully makes a picture out of a portrait but his rather mannered mode of painting leaves, on the whole, a disappointing impression. Apropos of this question of mannerism, John E. Costigan, who has often labored under its handicap, seems more and more to be escaping from it. Witness the easy breadth of "The Two Youngsters," which registers a definite advance. There are other cheering things to be observed, like the vigorous "Fishermen's Wives" of Jon Corbino, the sensitive "Left Behind" of Hilda B. Kayn, the blithe "Music in the Park" of Ettore Caser, the forceful "Happy Birthday" of Sidney E. Dickinson, the picturesque costume study, "Promenade in Seville," of Louis Kronberg, and the charming "Autumn Symphony" of J. Scott Williams. I must allude likewise to the paintings of Albert K. Murray, Lilian Genth and S. Simkhovitch. One picture I mention as an odd illustration of the extreme realism which is so often practiced by painters today, the "Death of a Horse," by Maurice Kish. It is well enough done, but what a dreary subject to contemplate!
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Nude by Stream
[[image - photograph]]
From the painting by Isabel Bishop, at the Academy of Design

The Portraits

Realism is much in evidence, as is quite proper, amongst the portraits, purely formal design mostly going by the board. At the same time, it is realism exercised with taste and skill, wherefore it commands sympathy and appreciation. Perhaps the most conspicuous example is the "Hobart Nichols" of Wayman Adams. It is a perfect portrayal of the president of the Academy and it is brilliantly done. There are, to be sure, numerous admirable portraits in the exhibition, portraits which are persuasive as studies in characterization and have in each instance a certain accent of individualized technique. I speak not only of the portrait in the strict sense but of the portrait which bears a more impersonal title, like Gene A. Walker's beautifully executed picture of "The Letter," or the jolly "Old Trouper" by Guy Pene du Bois. The latter strikes a new note in this portrait picture and strikes it with delightful authority. Sometimes the quality that arrests the beholder is one of sheer charm. It is so with the lovely "Harriet Ann" of Lilian Westcott Hale, with Margery Ryerson's engaging portrait of a child, "Trouble Ahead," with Leopold Seyffert's deft "Portrait of George" and with "The Paper Hat" of Dorothea Chace. More often it is an assertive energy that is bestowed upon portraiture, as in the "Self-Portrait" of A. G. Bogdanove, the "Paul P. Juley" of George Elmer Browne, the "Albert Groll" of Albert D. Smith and the creditable productions of Albert Sterner, Jere R. Wickwire and Waldo Peirce. For adroitness in touch I would admiringly cite also Paul C. Burns, Edward R. Strawbridge, Randall Davey, Ivan Olinsky, Edmund Greacen, Jerry Farnsworth, Frank H. Schwartz, William A. McCloy, Luigi Lucioni and Charles C. Curran. I wish I could pause in detail upon their works, they have so much merit. But the landscapes call.
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Out of Doors

THEY represent, inevitably, much winter work and the use of studio light. I was struck again, as I noted in this place last week when discussing some landscapes, by the prevalence of a low key. It does not matter. It cannot deprive these outdoor impressions of their spontaneity or lessen the force expended upon them. Over and over again one is moved by the boldness with which the landscape painters deal with their problems. It crops out, to name a few examples, in the "Cabin Under Nubble Mountain," by John C. Pellew; in the "New England Farm" of Hobart Nichols; in "The Creek" of William Thon, in the "Adirondacks" of John Folinsbee. At rare intervals one comes upon a slight infusion of romantic sentiment, as in the colorful "Venice Moonlight" by George H. Bogert or the "Castle Top Mountain" of Joseph H. Boston. And once, in the curious "Walden Pond Revisited," a tribute to Thoreau by N. C. Wyeth, the scene embraces a more or less ghostly figure. The effect presumably intended, I may add, does not quite come off, though there is some good painting in this canvas and one cannot but be grateful for the artist's imaginative aim. In the main we have in this exhibition nature interpreted directly and in strong terms, such as those used by Ann Brockman in her exceptionally good "Quarry Sunset," by John F. Carlson in his similarly satisfying "Winter Morning," by Andrew Winter in his striking picture, "Happy Lobstering Ground," by Roy Mason in his "Douglas Fir"-notable both for its truth and its color-by Van Dearing Perrine in his flashing "Symphony of Light and Color," by Sidney Laufman in his "On the Road to Grafton." The lighter, more delicate stroke is not absent. Edward Dufner illustrates it in the crisply handled "Hazy Morning," a picture which has noticeably efficient draughtsmanship behind it. The representative landscapes remain, however, those which are marked by a distinct breadth of treatment. It is very attractive, there being something fresh, unspoilt and characteristically American about it. Native, indeed, is our school. The old charge of undue French influence no longer holds. Our painters are their own men, as this Academy exhibition proves. The proof lies in so many of the paintings I have signalized and there are still others, like Frank W. Benson's stunningly painted "Bald Eagles," the solid "Two Ducks" of Rose White, and the fine flower pieces by Leslie P. Thompson, Maud M. Mason, Dines Carlsen and others.

Sculpture

THE showing of sculptures, like the showing of paintings, benefits from its placing. Some of the pieces are established in various rooms. A considerable number have a large, well lighted room to themselves. There is the usual array of ably modeled heads, and occasionally a plausible design appears, like the somewhat heavy but still graceful "Senora Pablo Suarez" of J. Mortimer Lichtenauer. There is distinction of style attaching to Edward McCartan's "Miss Linda Lindeberg," which recaptures a measure of the subtle beauty of a Renaissance bust, and Malvina Hoffman exhibits a moving portrait in her "Paderewski: The Last Phase." I lingered, too, over the little "Head in Marble" by Berenice Langton, being reminded by it of what MacMonnies once remarked. "Anybody can model a likeness," he said to me, "but it takes a true sculptor to give it expression." Miss Langton's "Head in Marble" has expression. So has Marion Sanford's "Miss Chapin Working," one of the most interesting things in the exhibition. And there is interest of a decisive order, the interest of finished technique wreaked upon animal character and movement, in Anna Hyatt Huntington's happily designed "Red Deer of Scotland." The visitor will be rewarded also when he stops before the sculptures by Frederick G. Roth, Anthony de Francisci, Stephen McNeely, Attilio Picirilli, Gleb Derujinsky and Georg Lober, and the little case of distinguished plaques and medals by John Flanagan. But save for the artists I have named the company is far from exciting. The trouble with too many of the exhibits is simply that they are uninteresting. Apart from the few artists of indubitable talent, the contributors pass muster as to craftsmanship but want invention and the saving grace of style.