From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee

by Edward Simmons

Chapter X: Democracy and the Fine Arts

Money, commerce and the Protestant faith have been drawbacks to the progress of the fine arts in America—the last do not believe in beauty, as do the Roman Catholics. Better than Mohammedanism, though, whose Koran does not allow the right of man to copy even the meanest of God-made creatures, the Eastern art is a constant struggle between religion and the desire to make representations of living things. Autocracy’s motto—”væ victis,” or to the devil with the hindmost—is the proper one for the fine arts. The taste of a whole community is the dead level of mediocrity, and a proof of the scant attention paid to art in America is the place given it in the newspapers—before the fashions and after the dog fights.

Last week a statue of General Grant was unveiled with much celebration. Although the sculptor who made it had spent fifteen years of his life doing the work, there was no mention of his name in the account in the papers, but the wives of the Senators and Congressmen present were featured by photographs in the Sunday supplements. In France it is different. The committee would probably be mentioned first, but the artist’s name would come second. Public opinion rules, and the arts will come back when the people want them; and then the fact will be recorded on that thermometer—the newspapers.

Most of our organizations, in my opinion, have been a complete failure, due to this democratic idea. I was in at the beginning of the Institute of Arts and Letters. Holbrook Curtis came to me one day, telling me of the proposition and that I had been chosen as the member of the initial committee to represent painting, sculpture, and architecture. The little group who met to start the society consisted of William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, Marion Crawford, Johnson of the Century, Doctor Curtis, and myself. Alas! the literary element prevailed!

I was asked to hand in a list of those whom I thought worthy of becoming the first members, so brought into the next meeting the names of Whistler, Sargent, and (ex officio) myself to represent painting; Charles McKim for architecture; and Augustus Saint-Gaudens for sculpture. To my astonishment, a list of more than a hundred writers was offered to me. I objected on the ground that to belong to this Institute was a prize, to be given for extraordinary merit; therefore, the greater the number the less the honor. There was much talking and arguing, during which I could see I was becoming exceedingly unpopular among those who believed in the “American advertisement” point of view. Finally, Marion Crawford, who had hitherto kept silent, said:

“Oh, Simmons, leave these people to stew in their own juice. Our host here has some very good Scotch whisky. Come with me and we’ll sample it.”

Later I was given a list of more than a hundred names of painters, to mark those of which I approved. I refused and stuck to my theory, that only a few should have the honor—and I automatically became an outcast. I never had anything more to do with them until I was invited to read a paper on the fine arts at one of their meetings. But, if asked to-day, I could not tell whether I belong to the organization or not.

This experience being so disappointing, I was always loath to join any group of artists. It seemed to me that it was impossible to have it work out successfully, as the purpose on the surface of things was never the real underlying one, and it was impossible to mix democracy and the fine arts. The Ten American Painters was started quite by accident, and when the too-human elements began to enter, it died a natural death. We never called ourselves the “Ten”; in fact, we never called ourselves anything and it was our purpose, at first, to have twelve. We were just a group who wanted to make a showing and left the society as a protest against big exhibits. At our first exhibition at the Durand Ruel’s Gallery, we merely put out the sign—“Show of Ten American Painters”—and it was the reporters and critics speaking of us who gave us the name. In the original group were Twachtman, Dewing, Metcalf, Reid, Hassam, Weir, Benson, De Camp, Tarbell, and myself. After the death of Twachtman, Chase was voted in to take his place. We had asked both Winslow Homer and Abbot Thayer to join us. Homer replied that he would have been mighty glad to be a member, but that he never meant to paint again, that he was tired of it all; and as far as I know he never did. Thayer accepted with enthusiasm, but later wrote: “Tell the boys I must decline. The poor society needs me too much.”

The first few years we divided the wall into equal spaces and drew lots for them, each man having the right to use it as he saw fit, hanging one picture or a number of pictures. As long as we adhered to that idea all went well. But then objections came in. I, being a mural decorator, had large work, and those members with small canvases naturally did not want them hung next to mine. This, of course, restricted me in my showing. At last, to save controversy, we left the hanging to the dealer, and he placed those which sold the best in the choice parts of the room and the others elsewhere.

We left the society as a protest, not believing that an art show should be like a child’s bouquet—all higgledy-piggledy with all the flowers that can be picked. We were accused of starting as an advertisement, and, indeed, it proved a big one, but there was no such idea in the mind of any one of us. Many others took it up, and a group followed us, calling themselves “The Eight” in an attempt to boil the egg over again. When the wives of our members “butted in” and made the proposals of sandwiches and tea and finally wanted us to have music at our openings (music with painting is like sugar on oysters), we struck. The “pep” and enthusiasm of youth started the Ten American Painters and age has finished it. Peace to its ashes!

It is years since I have acted on a jury for the choice of pictures for an exhibit. I do not understand the politics of the affairs and always get myself much disliked, for one reason or another, so I gave it up long ago.

American juries never have full authority. They are always dominated by some bugbear of politics or obligation, and I always found them very disgusting affairs. In Paris, in 1889, I was chosen as a member of the jury for the World’s Fair. The United States government, through our ambassador, issued a statement that our acts would be absolutely final, and we had every hope of making this show a beautiful affair. We had the money and we had the painters, but we reckoned without democracy and—Rush C. Hawkins, the commissioner. As Whistler afterward said, “How intensely American to appoint a colonel of dragoons at the head of art!” The first thing that he did was to beautify the room—without asking the advice of any of us, of course—and the result was a triumph. The pièce de résistance of the occasion was a great big ripe red-plush tomato, or rather something that looked like one tomato on top of another, plunked right down in the center of the room, ostensibly for the people to sit on. It must have cost thousands!

Mr. Hawkins’s next act was to “invite” a number of prominent painters to exhibit their work and then send them before the jury. Whistler was one of these. He had been invited by the Prince of Wales to send to the British exhibit, but had been patriotic enough to prefer to be represented in the American section. When he found that he had to go before the jury, he promptly withdrew his pictures—a portrait and twenty-six etchings. The voting was such a farce. We had handed the black-and-white section over to Stanley Reinhart, telling him to do as he pleased. When the question of the Whistler etchings arose, a prominent member of the jury insisted that we all pass on them. I objected, as I could see that the etchings had been carefully chosen as a group and all should go together. A half dozen men were on my side, but we were overridden, and the spectacle of those artists having these etchings by Jimmie Whistler passed before them, one by one, and choosing five or six from this priceless collection (when they had accepted all of Abbey’s and Reinhart’s without discussion) was ludicrous. The result was that Whistler sent all of his work over to the English show, where it was one of the cards. I was so ashamed of my country!

Speaking afterward to the prominent member of the jury who had insisted upon this farcical voting, I forced him to give me his reason. He said that he did not like Whistler, and would not vote for anything by him, anyway!

There were many other reasons why we did not have a good show. One was the number of jurymen who had favorite pupils and must have a place for their work. Most of these we succeeded in eliminating, but they crept in in spite of us. I remember one man telling us of a beautiful girl, one of the capital F’s of the F. F. V.’s of Virginia (whose family had been stricken with poverty by the Civil War), now supporting her invalid mother by her art—not a word about the merit of the work. We had rejected a portrait by the young lady, but took it back, not on account of the story, but because it was so offensive to see this particular juryman weep about it.

Then there were the indignant American citizens who appealed to the ambassador over our decisions. The United States government had given us the final power of acceptance or refusal, but overrode us in a number of cases. A noted American sculptor, whose position socially was unimpeachable, but whose work was fundamentally “rotten,” had gone so far as to have his several groups of large statuary placed where he thought they should eventually rest, and there was consternation when we refused them. A member of the jury tackled Alexander Harrison and myself on the subject one night with the argument that we were in duty bound to recognize the work of a man so highly placed socially.

Harrison replied: “You may think that in talking to Simmons and me you are speaking to two gentlemen with social position. But you are not; you are only talking to two Puritans. We do not think it is right.”

But the American government stepped in and the sculpture was duly accepted.

In another case the ambassador came to us with a pathetic appeal for protection, asking us to reconsider our opinion of a portrait we had rejected.

“The lady who painted it sleeps on my doormat,” he said, “and she’s got to be removed.” With laughter we took it back.

Once in Philadelphia I was one of a committee that was to decide a competition for the decoration of one of the public buildings. It was a great plum, for in addition to the actual payment for the work, the winner was to get a prize of two thousand dollars for his proposition. All through our meeting I felt a strange and subtle influence at work, although I must confess I was not approached or asked to use my vote in any way for any contestant. Edwin Abbey had sent a sketch, very good, but the charming part of it had been done by a young architect in London and it was very doubtful that it would keep its beauty if carried out in a large design. The majority decided for a younger painter, and the award was given to him. Right after the decision there was a large reception at the home of George W. Elkins, who, if I mistake not, had given the prize. I shall never forget his look of surprise and then chagrin as we filed in and announced our decision.

“Why,” he said, “I thought it had been all arranged that Abbey was to have it.”

Needless to say, the young artist never got a chance to carry out his work, although they were obliged to give him his prize money.

Speaking of competitions, I once entered one for the decoration of a prominent New York hotel. There were three members on the jury. I lost, in spite of the fact that all three of them came to me, separately, and told me in strictest confidence that he had voted for my proposition.

Some of my most humorous experiences have happened when working for women. Two or three things almost always occur. Women either insist upon having the kind of work their social set considers the fashion for the moment, or they try to control the color scheme, or the composition, and always the meaning. A well-known interior decorator and I spent the better part of two years in attempting to make beautiful the reception room of a magnate’s wife, only to have our efforts frustrated at the last moment. She hung up two pairs of very handsome damask curtains of a deep orange color lined with cold pink. The windows faced to the south and the light coming through them made an effect of rotten eggs—for the rest of the room was lilac, ivory, and old gold. When we remonstrated we were met with:

“Now I have you artist men! At the sale, when I bought these, Mr. Whistler bought an identical set. I suppose that his taste is as good as yours?”

It was useless to explain that Whistler had a very different setting for his. This same lady was almost inclined to treat me as a workman and seemed rather put out when her husband invited me to luncheon. The only reference she ever made to my painting was to say that it was a pity my name was not “Simoni.” It would make such an interesting signature!

Once I was directed by a spirit as to how to paint a portrait. It was out in the Middle West. Not quite so bad as the woman in London who used to have interviews with one of her children born dead. In this case it was the ouija board that operated every night and gave me my instructions for the next day as to how to get the right expression upon the face of this elderly woman who was sitting to me. A brother, born four years before herself, had died at the age of five, and in that other life, “over there,” he had kept in touch with the march of events down here. When his sister journeyed, he journeyed with her, miraculously learning the language of each country in which she happened to stop, so that he could send her messages with a foreign flavor. He told her what to do when she was ill and how to meet every problem of life, but with all this vast knowledge he could not, or did not, tell her how to keep young; and I had just as hard a time disguising the wrinkles on her cheek and the cords in her neck as if she had been an ordinary human being with no little brother guiding her from another world. I could not but think—what a dull heaven to live in—so irrevocably tied to this earth. This spirit was at the beck and call of his sister, doomed to follow her every thought and action, with far less freedom than if he had remained a poor mortal. I would rather sit on a cloud with a ready-made halo about my head, and at least have time for contemplation.

Now that I am on the subject of women—I do not mean to criticize harshly (I have loved them all my life), but one thought leads to another. There is the case of Mrs. McAllister. Of course, that was not her name, but it will do as well as any other. Virgil Williams and myself were once invited to her house in San Francisco to see a statue she had made. We were told beforehand that this woman was one of the few beings who disproved the theory that starving in a garret was necessary to be a success in the fine arts. The death of her husband left her enormously wealthy, and she decided to show her talents. First she wrote a best seller; then she composed a concerto; then she painted and finally, probably holding the belief that all the arts are interrelated, she tried her hand at sculpture. This, a statue of Eve, was the object we were asked to view. Williams, after looking at it awhile, said:

“Happily, Mrs. McAllister, we have both been married, and so I can speak most freely. You have evidently forgotten one thing which is more important than you think. You have neglected to put in the navel.”

“Oh, not forgetfulness, Mr. Williams,” cried this ultramodern woman (psychoanalysis and sex discussion were not so free as they are to-day). “In consulting with my spiritual adviser, the Reverend Mr. McCann, we decided that as Eve was not born of woman, a navel was unnecessary.”

It has always delighted me to see William Hunt’s hesitation about that sort of thing in his fine work for the Capitol at Albany. If he did really put breasts and a navel on the figure at the stern of the boat, they, like the decorations by the magician painter of the story, are not to be seen by vulgar eyes. Oh, those inhibitions of Boston! As my uncle George used to say, “Edward, anything but the physical or the material.” I was too young then to realize that in talking so much about it he proved his taste for it. But I am unkind; blind men should not be called to account for the spots on their clothing.

Women are generally utterly ruthless where their vanity is concerned—equal suffrage is doing away with this, however—and will sacrifice the poor artist to its desires. The Ten American Painters were having a retrospective show in Philadelphia. Naturally, we were trying to get hold of all our good work, so I asked a society woman who owned one of my best paintings to lend it for exhibition purposes. She replied that she was having a tea that week and it would make a spot on her wall to take it down. This was quite a contrast to Andrew Carnegie, who not only gladly lent me a marine he had purchased some years before, but had his agent box it, insure it, and send it all at his own expense.

Portrait painters have the hardest time, though, as every woman wishes to see herself idealized or as she was twenty years before. Poor Meissonier was asked to paint in Paris, a portrait of the wife of an American millionaire well known for having made his money in the gold-strike days of California. I knew the lady and I saw the portrait. It was admirable in the sense of being a perfect likeness and bringing out all of her limitations. She looked like a cook and he painted her like a cook. She refused to pay for the work, saying that it was utterly worthless; consequently, Meissonier took her into the courts. In France, the artist has a better show than here, and he won. The lady paid the bill, but announced that as soon as she got home she intended to burn the portrait. Whereupon Meissonier’s counsel asked that the court forbid this, as such an act would establish a bad precedent. It would lie within the power of a wealthy man, wishing to revenge himself, to buy up all the work of a client more than seventy years old, and, by destroying it, render the artist’s life a vain and useless thing. The court took his view and forbade the lady in question to injure the portrait. In spite of the fact that she declared she would disobey, I saw the portrait twenty years after.

When the fine arts and literature meet, many interesting things happen. We have our critics. Some of them are wise and some of them are dull, but not many of them have the slyness of Mr. Emerson when he answered Daniel French’s question as to what he thought of the bust the sculptor had just finished of him, “That is the face I shave.” A queer thing—the literary mind. I objected once to Gilder because he was criticizing a picture, saying that it was not fair, as he was not a painter. He replied that he had heard me discuss a sonnet.

“Yes,” I maintained, “but I have used the English language since my earliest years. I am therefore a professional. You are not a painter. You may say that you do not like a picture, but you may not say what is the matter with it, as you did.”

Every time I think of Gilder I recall something he once told me about the dead Lincoln. He had gone to view the body and was one of a long line of people passing about the form as it lay on its bier, and was much impressed by the august and noble smile on the dead President’s face. So much was he affected by it that he turned to a man standing beside him and mentioned it.

“Yes,” the man replied, “We rather flatter ourselves on our smiles.” It was the undertaker.

It was surprising to see, after that, a sonnet by Gilder on Lincoln’s smile. Sometimes an editor’s sense of humor becomes a trifle dulled. I sat and heard a number of them discuss perfectly seriously whether the word “hell” should be allowed in its entirety, printed “h—l,” or cut out altogether.

I was once foolish enough to contract to make some covers for a well-known magazine. All went well as long as I was allowed to choose my own subjects, but when the editor got the brilliant idea of taking characters out of the Bible and drawing them as modern men, I struck. Take David, for instance; what financier would care to be represented in such fashion? If the gentleman were alive to-day he would be in jail. The editor threw up his hands and said, “But he is in the Bible.” Of course it ended by my displeasing him.

I was called up on the telephone one day by Mr. J——, editor of one of our yellow publications. He said his magazine was considering an article on Decoration and told me to forward, without delay, permission to publish a reproduction of my “Justice,” upon which there is a copyright. I asked what there was in it for me. He was astonished that I did not realize the enormous advertisement it would mean for me. I answered that as Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, etc. (at that time) always sent me a check for seventy-five dollars when they reproduced anything of mine, I though a thousand would just about pay me for dropping to the level of his magazine.

This same gentleman had, in addition to his other interests, once owned a string of grocery stores. Guy Wetmore Carryl told me this. It appears that he sold a story to the magazine, and this thrifty editor (later finding no use for it) wrote to Guy and asked him if he would take it back and return the cash he had received. Guy refused. Then the editor wrote and asked him to try to sell it to some one else and “cash up.” This was too much. Stopping at one of the editor’s grocery stores one afternoon, he bought a can of tomatoes which he took home and opened, chose a tomato, bit into it and put it back into the can again. Then wrapping it up, he left it on the editor’s desk with this note.

Dear J——:—I bought this can at your store and do not like it. Won’t you be good enough to try and sell it for me and send me the money?

Needless to say, they did not speak after that.

The American idea is frequently to honor a foreigner because he is a foreigner and not because his work merits the praise. Change a good old Yankee cognomen into something that sounds like Italian or Russian, and the singer is assured a far better hearing. The same in painting. If a third-rate Italian should be in competition with Sargent for a public decoration or a portrait of a President, the Italian would probably get it. About the year 1894 Charles McKim, the architect, was getting ready to beautify Washington and have it cleaned of all its horrors. He died before he accomplished his purpose, but he made a beginning, and that was to decorate the interior of the Library of Congress.

There was a great question in mind as to whether I should join the group of men who were doing the work. The United States always paid less than anyone else, and I was tempted to take more profitable work. I could have accepted any number of orders and hired assistants to carry them out, but I have always felt this was unfair to myself as well as to the public. A decoration is a creative thing and, as such, can be carried out only by the mind that conceives it.

In the Library of Congress I was given one of the rooms to the left of the doorway on the first floor of the building. It is called a curtain corridor. There were nine semicircular panels, nine feet in width at the bottom; therefore the radius was four and a half feet. All such tympanums are stilted, making this radius in reality about four feet ten inches. The argument was, how to get the human figure into a space so low. I did not want to make them half size or even under life, and my decision proved very wise. Elihu Vedder made his figures undersize and the result was that the rest of us dwarfed him. My choice of subject was the Nine Muses, and I resolved to make them sitting down. Terpsichore, the Muse of Dancing, sitting? I contrived to bend her over so that she just squeezed in. There is an old work of the early Greeks in bas-relief of Terpsichore that is one of the most beautiful compositions I know of. She is bending down and arranging her sandal. If I had not been fundamentally opposed to that class of theft, I would have used the idea; but a copy of anything, no matter how great, is never so good as one’s own conception. It is always unwise for an artist to have the classics about him at any time, and he should never have any of them near by to influence him when he is doing compositional work.

There were thirty-six pendentives in the domes of the ceiling, which I decorated with little figures, using no models, but painting directly upon the walls, composing as I went along. I shall never forget this experience. It was in the summertime, and a hot spell struck Washington. Anyone who knows the capital will realize what this means. I was under contract to finish it at a certain time, and here I was working in these little sealed domes (which never were and never could be ventilated), while the thermometer was so high that eighty people died one day from sunstroke. It was mephitic. I was so terrified that I almost lived on milk and limewater.

Right here I would like to say something about health. It is important, perhaps even more for an artist than for any other class of person, to keep himself in trim. Burning up tons of nervous energy, living perhaps a precarious existence, it is necessary that he take himself in hand early in life and learn about his own body. We are not all constituted the same and what is one man’s weakness is another man’s strength. In my own case, I was practically an invalid up to thirty, when I made up my mind to overcome my ailments. Artistic effort needs a tremendous amount of vitality back of it to carry it out, and the sensitiveness which accompanies the creative temperament is easily a prey to small discomforts. Learn your limitations and you can correct them beforehand. Knowing my stomach was my weak link, I treated it with care during the heat at Washington and came out with no disaster.

Several amusing occurrences of that summer come to mind, showing how many contacts an artist has with different walks of life. I was approached by the delegate of a trades-union—a man with dirty fingernails and collar, black sweeping mustache, fat, sweaty, and insolent—who asked me if I were a member of the union.

“What union?” I inquired.

“Paperhangers.”

My assistant did belong, and the other four men working on the walls were furnished by the United States government. He looked rather foolish when I suggested that he call them off the job. He started to leave, when he turned around and asked:

“Why don’t you belong to the union?”

“I’ve never been asked,” I replied.

“Well, I ask you.”

“I accept,” I said, “but I will not lose money by joining, though. I am making forty dollars a day. What class can I go in?”

He departed.

Another day, I was up on my scaffold, when my assistant came up and whispered in my ear that there was a man down below who wanted to “lick” me. I called down to him and he said he would like a word with me. He was a burly Irishman, and I was not anxious to start anything with him.

“Did you do that picture?” he said, pointing to my figure of Melpomene, “and who is it?”

I told him that one of my relatives had been the model, and something in my manner made him see that I was telling the truth. Then he broke down and almost wept.

“It’s the image of a daughter of mine who went wrong two years ago.”

When my work was all finished except a little varnishing on one panel and I was feeling very proud of the effect, I was honored by a visit from Mark Hanna. He was showing some ladies around the building. Rushing in at the head of his party, he gave a cursory glance up and down, and then hurried out, saying:

“Come on; there’s nothing here.”

Just so much notice does politics give the fine arts.

“MELPOMENE”
Panel by Edward Simmons, Gallery Of the Muses, Congressional Library, Washington
Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print, Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston