Charles W. Hawthorne has pictures in Chicago and New York that imply the
Intimate-and-friendly Photoplay. The Trousseau in the Metropolitan Museum
shows a gentle girl, an unfashionable home-body with a sweetly sheltered
air. Behind her glimmers the patient mother's face. The older woman is
busy about fitting the dress. The picture is a tribute to the qualities
of many unknown gentlewomen. Such an illumination as this, on faces so
innocently eloquent, is the light that should shine on the countenance of
the photoplay actress who really desires greatness in the field of the
Intimate Motion Picture. There is in Chicago, Hawthorne's painting of
Sylvia: a little girl standing with her back to a mirror, a few blossoms
in one hand and a vase of flowers on the mirror shelf. It is as sound a
composition as Hawthorne ever produced. The painting of the child is
another tribute to the physical-spiritual textures from which humanity is
made. Ah, you producer who have grown squeaky whipping your people into
what you called action, consider the dynamics of these figures that
would be almost motionless in real life. Remember there must be a
spirit-action under the other, or all is dead.
Yet that soul may be the muse of Comedy. If Hawthorne and his kind are
not your fashion, turn to models that have their feet on the earth
always, yet successfully aspire. Key some of your intimate humorous
scenes to the Dutch Little Masters of Painting, such pictures as Gerard
Terburg's Music Lesson in the Chicago Art Institute. The thing is as well
designed as a Dutch house, wind-mill, or clock. And it is more elegant
than any of these. There is humor enough in the picture to last one reel
through. The society dame of the period, in her pretty raiment, fingers
the strings of her musical instrument, while the master stands by her
with the baton. The painter has enjoyed the satire, from her elegant
little hands to the teacher's well-combed locks. It is very plain that
she does not want to study music with any sincerity, and he does not
desire to develop the ability of this particular person. There may be a
flirtation in the background. Yet these people are not hollow as gourds,
and they are not caricatured. The Dutch Little Masters have indulged in
numberless characterizations of mundane humanity. But they are never so
preoccupied with the story that it is an anecdote rather than a picture.
It is, first of all, a piece of elegant painting-fabric. Next it is a
scrap of Dutch philosophy or aspiration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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