Art in America: A Critical and Historial SketchBenjamin, S. G. W. (Samuel Greene Wheeler)
History
Art in America: A Critical and Historial Sketch
Benjamin, S. G. W. (Samuel Greene Wheeler)
Art, American
The power of Mr. Hunt was still more widely felt in directing a large
number of young art-students to visit Paris, and eventually also Munich,
at each of which the tendency has been for some years toward bolder
methods in the technics of art. The result has been to introduce to this
country a truer perception of the vital importance of style in the
present stage of our art, and to emphasize the truth that he who has
anything to say will make it much more effective if he knows how to
give it adequate utterance.
Of the many Boston artists who have profited by foreign study and are
now resident in that city, we can mention but three or four. John J.
Enneking, a graduate of the studios of Munich and Paris, can hardly be
called an idealist. There is little evidence of imagination in his
canvases; but in seizing the effects of the brilliant lights of sunset,
or the varied grays of a lowering sky on a cloudy day, he shows himself
equally happy in color, _chiaro-oscuro_, and technical skill in handling
pigments. His versatility is remarkable. He can render the figure from
life with a vigor and freshness scarcely less than that of his
landscapes. There is, unfortunately, an evidence of haste in too many of
his works, which cannot be too much regretted, for he thus fails to do
justice to the very decided ability he possesses. Having studied both in
Munich and Paris, and given careful attention to all the European
schools of art, and adding to this knowledge sturdy independence of
opinion and great earnestness and energy, Mr. Enneking ought to be
strongly influential in the present stage of American art.
We find much that is interesting in the paintings of E. L. Weeks. They
are marked by a powerful individuality, which delights in glowing
effects of light, and revels in the brilliant coloring of tropical
scenery or the varied splendor of Oriental architecture and costumes.
There is something Byronic in the fervor of this artist's enthusiasm for
the East, and the easy adaptability that has enabled a son of New
England to identify himself with the life and scenery of lands so
exactly the opposite of his own. Although a pupil of Bonnât, and an
ardent admirer of the excessive realism now affected by some of the
followers of the later French school, Mr. Weeks is, in spite of himself,
an idealist, and no imitator of any style. This has, perhaps, been an
injury to him, for he finds difficulty in mastering the technical or
mechanical problems of his profession. A lack of knowledge or feeling
for form, a weakness in drawing which is too often perceptible in his
works, and sometimes an apparent opaqueness in his pigments, impair the
quality of compositions which are inspired by the fire of genius.
[Illustration: "THE BURGOMASTER."--[H. MUHRMAN.]]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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