Then there is a picture my teachers, Chase and Henri, were never weary of
praising, the Girl with the Parrot, by Manet. Here continence in nervous
force, expressed by low relief and restraint in tone, is carried to its
ultimate point. I should call this an imagist painting, made before there
were such people as imagist poets. It is a perpetual sermon to those that
would thresh around to no avail, be they orators, melodramatists, or
makers of photoplays with an alleged heart-interest.
Let us consider Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington. This painter's
notion of personal dignity has far more of the intellectual quality than
Van Dyck. He loves to give us stately, able, fairly conscientious gentry,
rather than overdone royalty. His work represents a certain mood in
design that in architecture is called colonial. Such portraits go with
houses like Mount Vernon. Let the photographer study the flat blacks in
the garments. Let him note the transparent impression of the laces and
flesh-tints that seem to be painted on glass, observing especially the
crystalline whiteness of the wigs. Let him inspect also the
silhouette-like outlines, noting the courtly self-possession they convey.
Then let the photographer, the producer, and the author, be they one man
or six men, stick to this type of picturization through one entire
production, till any artist in the audience will say, "This photoplay was
painted by a pupil of Gilbert Stuart"; and the layman will say, "It looks
like those stately days." And let us not have battle, but a Mount Vernon
fireside tale.
Both the Chicago and New York museums contain many phases of one same
family group, painted by George de Forest Brush. There is a touch of the
hearthstone priestess about the woman. The force of sex has turned to the
austere comforting passion of motherhood. From the children, under the
wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life. There is
nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating
of the inner fire, without which all outer action is mockery.
Hearthstone tales keyed to the mood and using the brush stroke that
delineates this especial circle would be unmistakable in their
distinction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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