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Phila. Inquirer. Sun. Mch 19th 1939

8 SO a

'Ten' Group Holds Annual

Rich Diversity In Lively Show

By C.H. Bonte

Perhaps there is some subtle significance and symbolism in the circumstance that one of the most striking and effective pictures in the just opened exhibition at the ARt Club is a wonderful portrayal of St. Mark's in Venice.  For the showing of pictures is made by that now almost historic organization of painters known as "The Ten" and only a few hundred feet behind the facade of St. Mark's in the attached Ducal Palace is a chamber dedicated to the sinister, always fateful and sometimes fatal activities of another Ten, a group which aided in the oligarchical government of that city in the days when Titian and Tintoretto flourished.

The Philadelphia Ten have been in existence well over a dozen years.  Its membership,  though always entirely feminine, has altered from season to season for various causes, but through all the changes and chances of life those who have been enrolled in the decimal company have held high the glowing torch.

WITH THE SCULPTORS

The sculptor members of the Ten are Harriet Whitney Frishmuth and Mary Lawser.  This year's guest exhibitors, Cornelia Van A. Chapin and Genevieve Karr Hamlin, both of New York, are likewise exponents of this form of art.  The main Frishmuth contribution is a graceful fountain piece called Humoresque, which is supplemented by six smaller examples of this artist's gifts.  Miss Lawser's strong feeling for fun is tastefully combined with excellent workmanship and artistic sense in her fountain figure, the Whale and Jonah.

The hero of that aqueous tale, after being down in the mouth, so to speak, for some time, is seen emerging happily from the maw of the monster.  The conception  is in a way a stylized sculptured version of the scene as so quaintly depicted in mosaic on the pulpit of the cathedral at Ravello, that town made famous in recent days by Mr. Stokowski and Miss Garbo.  Miss Lawser's heads, Mitzi and Albert, (the artist's father) are well modeled portraits.

The Chapin offerings are a penguin in black granite, a Belgian hair in eboy and Greek marble.  Zoo-logicial enthusiasm is also manifest in the Hamlin dogs of African wonderstone and Caen stone, and in that lion of music, Toscanini, who appears in bas-relief on a plaque.

"The Ten."

In the annual exhibition at the Art Club, 220 S. Broad St., staged by "The Ten," Philadelphia's group of women artists, sculptors and painters are almost evenly divided, there being four of the former to six of the latter.

Two sculptors, Genevieve Karr Hamlin and Cornelia Van A. Chapin, are guest exhibitors from New York.  With concern for forms other than human, the former offers in "Jamie" a baby scotty, alter of eye, relaxed of body, an especially appealing commentary; while the latter, through greater severity in the simplification of forms, reduces to mass and line "Granite Penguin," "Pelican in Repose" and an ebony Belgian hare.

Dancing figures, slim and undulating, provide Miss Frishmuth with material for a series of little bronzes, and for the largest of the sculptures shown, a girl and fish fountain.

Mary Lawser, like Miss Chapin, leans toward greater conventionalization, but indulges richer decorative values.  Outstanding is her fountain composition, "The Whale and Jonah," with hint of humor in the tiny bearded Biblical figure crouched in the mouth of the great whale.

Simplification

If the modern sculptor turns toward simplification, the modern painter can play at the same game.

Phila Record.


ARTS IN PHILADELPHIA

...With their usual amplitude, The Ten with guest exhibitors Cornelia Chapin and Genevieve Hamlin, offered another solid and balanced show at the Art Club.  All well-known Philadelphia exhibitors, they offered this year a number of pieces of more than average interest.  Especially satisfying were S. Gertrude Schell's burnt orange and turquoise "Fall," Sue May Gill's study in whites, "Gardenias," Emma Fordyce MacRae's sculpturesque "Andre," and Cornelia Chapin's animal sculptures...Current at the Art Alliance is an illuminating show of contemporary American ceramics, entirely justifying native craftsmen's high rank.