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Many persons paused before John Car roll's Three People. At a small table sat two women in low-neck, a youth in a felt hat. There was a siphon bottle, glasses. Painter Carroll's first interest is character, which he sharply exposes. Technique is subservient. The utter spiritual inertia on the three faces suggested a U. S. speak easy scene. But the realistic 1 franc 50 centimes mark on a dish confessed France.
American Thomas Dewing's Spring halted the sentimentalists. Two voluminous-skirted, unmistakable ladies sat in a twilight garden. One played on the cello. The other put hands to heart. Puffy Victorian gentlemen sighed, passed on to Austrian Victor Hammer's portait of Miss Elinor Patterson as The Nun in The Miracle. Exquisite are the features of this daughter of Joseph Medill Patterson, famed Chicago newspaper tycoon. Defined by the austerity of the nun's habit they resulted in a formal study of severe beauty. Italian Anselmo Bucci's The Drinker, wore both belt and suspenders, gazed out over the rim of his glass with the tender, bleary eyes of the veteran toper.
This endless medley of styles, subjects, nations was bewildering. Tracing the stylistic lineage of the paintings would be as difficult as noting the forebears of the scattered painters. Homer St. Gaudens, son of the late, famed sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens, faced a dilemma as Fine Arts Director of the Institute. His duty was to interpret the exhibition for the public. "At no time," he said, "has art, like society, offered so varied an interest, or so confused a program." Optimists, like Director St. Gaudens, foresee the evolution of a more stable, unified expression. Pessimists sense the breaking down of all styles, the dissolution of Western art.
The Carnegie Jury of Award, Director Homer St. Gaudens, Painters Anto Carte (Belgium), Colin Gill (England), Rockwell Kent, Ernest Lawson (U. S.), had to pick a first-prize painting from the welter of contrasting appeal. To the amazement of all they were able to declare unanimously. They chose Andre Derain's large still life of game birds, shotgun, shooting jacket. Frenchman Derain once mixed with Us Fauves (the Wild Beasts) a belligerent group which sought new, ex citing expression. Lately he has reverted to a sobriety almost classic. Still life ignores the panoramic, the massive, the personal. If the award signified anything it was the triumph of this traditional dig nity over recent, threatening hysterias in paint.
*Pittsburgh, until Dec. 9; Cleveland, Jan. 7-Feb. 17; Chicago, March 11-April 21. In Cleveland and Chicago only the European section will be shown.