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Included in the exhibition are the famous Athenaeum paintings of George and Martha Washington. Of them spoke John Neal in the Atlantic Monthly (1868), saying: "If Washington should return to life and stand side by side with the portrait and not resemble it he would be called an impostor." Also included are the portraits of the first five Presidents, painted on mahogany panels planned to resemble the texture of canvas; the first painting ever done by Stuart (at the age of 12); the alleged last painting he ever did (of Mrs. John Forrester); that of Commodore Oliver Hazzard Perry.
Dying at 72, Artist Stuart's brushwork remained unimpaired, though he is said to have been forced to ask a friend (George Brimmer) to sign a canvas for him, his hand being too shaky. As a rule he neither signed nor completed portraits. His daughter Jane is said to have completed many of them for him, his interest ending when he had done the face.
Said Artist Stuart on being asked why he rarely signed his work: "I mark them all over!" Said he of the famed Washington portrait: "When I painted him he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face."
Washington sat for three portraits. Of these, one was scratched out by Stuart ; the other two were retained unfinished by him in order that he might copy and sell them in quantities. When he needed money, said his daughter, he would copy one in a few hours.
The exhibition, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, lasts until Dec. 9.
Pittsburgh Pigments
He who would see the year's best group of contemporary paintings must go to Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Chicago. Nowhere else will the Carnegie Institute's 27th International Exhibition be shown.* Reproductions will be plentiful, but they are makeshifts. They indicate form, com position, but lose the sumptuous significance of color.
In Pittsburgh a conglomerate swarm padded about the galleries, grouped itself according to tastes before 381 paintings. Esthetes looked at landscapes, still life, murmured abstrusely of planes, tonality, feeling. Paintings from these categories won most of the prizes. The great philistine majority, as usual, neglected pots, petunias, pastures; it preferred pictures containing human figures.
Of the nudes, some, including Italian Achille Funi's The Awakening of Venus, had little to commend them. Others were sensational, like Britisher Laura Knight's baldly anatomical Dressing for the Ballet. This study was too frank to be voluptuous. Squeamish persons felt as if they had opened the wrong door. But Eileen, a seated girl in a chemise, thrilled everyone with its pliancy of shoulders, arms, tapering hands. A soft sidewise fall of light allowed Miss Dod Procter the use of tremulous chiaroscuro. She is an adept in the nuances of reflected light, a familiar phase of architectural rendering, an annoying technical problem.