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13 
TELEPHONE 8860 CHELSEA
ntended for CL Freer. 

"O wad some power the giftie gi'e us 
To see oursel's as ithers see us."
 
HENRY ROMEIKE, Inc. 
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From EVENING TRANSCRIPT 
Address: Boston, Mass. 
Date [[stamp]] May 10 1919 [[/stamp]]
Establi

ABBOTT THAYER'S IDEAS
The Divine Gift of Vision-True Report-ing of the Great Facts of Nature-Intuitive Selection

New and interesting information about Abbott H. Thayer and his ideas is given in the introduction to the catalogue of the loan exhibition of his works at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa. Very justly does the writer of this admirable monograph remark that nothing that could be written about Thayer would be as interesting or as valuable as his own expression of opinion touching art. His judgment is based upon his unquestioned power as a painter, and is the result of a lifetime of earnest study and of keen observation.
 "The artist is born, as the poet is born" says Thayer. "You cannot make an artist. To the artist is given the divine gift of vision-of seeing. To present on canvas the vision seen, this from of beauty conceived in the mind of the artist, becomes the need of the painter. But the vision must first be seen, and the conception of a picture is a God-given gift. No amount of work could make the vision, and no amount of work could possibly make an artist." 

"It is as though a man were shown a crystal." he continues, "a perfect thing. gleaming below depths of water, far down beyond reach. He would dive, and dive again, driven by his great desire to secure it, until finally, all dripping, he brought it up. But that in the end he could bring it, a perfect thing, to us, was solely possible because he had first seen it gleaming there. Others might dive and dive, might work and labor with endless patience and endless pain, but, unless they had first seen the crystal, unless they had been given this divine gift of seeing, the vision, they would come up empty-handed. The occasional so-called genius does not make the crystal, but he alone sees it, where it lies gleaming below depths of water, and by his effort brings it to us. The whole question is how absolutely, how perfectly the artist sees the vision.

"After the artist has lived for a certain period in worship of some particular specimen or type of the form of beauty dearest to him, this crystal-like vision forms, clearer and clearer, at the bottom of his mind,  which is, so to speak, his sea of consciousness, until at last the vision is plainly visible to him, and the all-strain and danger-facing time has come for putting it into the form in which as one of the world's treasure, it is to live on."

That the artist should ever be able to record on his canvas to his own absolute satisfaction the vision of beauty that he has seen. Thayer considers improbable. He may have moments of great elation, he may at times be thrilled by his own works, but in the end he has usually to be satisfied that he has come as close as he has to the vision.

"Everything in art," Thayer continues, "in poetry, music, sculpture or painting, however fantastic it looks to people who are not far enough on that road. is nothing but a truth-telling, true reporting of nature-of the universe. Music has emerged from the world's noise and jangle by the same law of intuitive selection, causing the original music-discoverer to begin by perceiving in the jangle each incidental harmony. . . . stand as they do, illuminating beacons through the ages. without having adamantine, crystal truth at their core?"

The fifty pictures by Thayer in the Pittsburgh exhibition include the "Caritas" lent by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston a work which enjoys great popularity, and deservedly so, since it is one of the masterpieces. There are also the "Winged Figure," dated 1880, owned by Smith College; the "Stevenson Memorial" from the collection of Mr. John J. Albright of the Buffalo; two paintings owned by the Worcester Art Museum, a portrait of a young girl and a "Bowl of Roses"; a group of ten pictures lent by the Smithsonian Institution (Freer Collection), which comprises "The Virgin," "Diana," "Winged Figure," "Portrait of the Artist's Daughter," "Portrait of the Artist's Son," "Capri," "Sketch of Cornish  Headlands," "Winter Dawn on Monadnock," and "The Angel."

The other loans include the portrait of Alice Freeman Palmer, lent by Wellesley College; a sketch for an angel lent by Mr. William James; "The Donkey," lent by Mrs. W W. Fenn; "My Children," owned by Carnegie Institute; a portrait of a young woman, lent by Mr. J. Alden  Weir; a "Study in White," lent by the American Committee for Devastated France; an "Ideal Head" and a portrait of Miss Anne Palmer, lent by Mr.Charles Lansing Baldwin; a "Winged Figure" of 1912, lent by Mr. John F. Braun; a portrait of a girl lent by Mr. Walter Hunnewell; a "Portrait of Joe Evans" and "Crossing the Ferry," lent by Mr.Charles C. Burlingham; portrait of Susan Fenn Sage, lent by Mr. James Fenimore Cooper; the portrait of Raphael Pumpelly, lent by Mr. H. A. Hammond Smith; four or five pictures belonging to Miss Mary A. Greene, including the original sketch for the lunette in the Walker Art Building of Bowdoin College depicting "Florence Protecting the Arts"; three pictures belonging to Mrs. E. M. Whiting and others belonging to Miss Ellen J. Stone, Mrs. Adeline Olcott, Miss Louise L. Kane, Mr. Victor G. Bloede, Dr. Henry Taber, Mrs. Samuel Bancroft, Jr., Mrs. Hendrick S. Holden, and the artist himself.        

W. H. D.
  

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