This limitation of the Fine Arts exhibit has made room for a great representation of the men of today. The Palace contains a multitude of splendid pictures. While of course, as in all such collections, there is some inferior work, the most pertinent criticism is that there are too many really notable things, and the scope of the collection is too broad, to be seen with due appreciation in a limited time. There is so liberal a showing of different schools, styles and lands, that one is liable at first to be bewildered. But the exhibit is most popular. The great number of visitors constantly thronging the galleries is significant of the value the people put upon art. Excellent as the collection is as a school for artists, it was made for popular enjoyment and education. The best result to be looked for is its stimulation and culture of the public taste. The people are already in love with it, and what they love they make their own.
The exhibits are arranged in fifteen sections, consisting of national, sectional, or personal, collections of paintings, besides many important displays of miniatures, etchings, prints, drawings, and tapestries. The art of the sculptor is abundantly illustrated in grouped statuary, single pieces, panels in low or high relief, and wood carvings. Passing the heroic emblems of history or allegory in marble, bronze or plaster, nothing is more beautiful or appealing than the hundreds of small bronzes shown. In brief, the Fine Arts exhibit embraces all the classifications of modern art, save the "arts and crafts" exhibits, which are scattered among the several exhibit palaces.
First in importance to a citizen of this country is the art of the United States. Possibly it may also be of first importance to foreign visitors. For the phrase "American art" no longer raises a doubt. It is at last recognized that America has something of its own to offer the world,—a style developed within the last, two decades. The prime movement of the times presenting boldness, brilliance and a laxity of detail in portrayal, the art of America, as shown in this exhibition, embodies these characteristics without emphasizing them. Keeping in mind the fact that the Palace contains little American art earlier than 1905, American artists are showing marked individualities, even in their acceptance of popular precepts. The virile men of the day love luminosity; it dominates all else, and marks their canvases with light; they restrain the too bold stroke of the radical Impressionist, but outline with firmness, so that details are more easily imagined by the observer, even when an expected delineation is absent. Even the older men, though still under the influence of earlier tradition, show a distinctiveness of style that sets them well apart from their English, French or German contemporaries.
The International Section, in Room 108 and in the Annex, is peculiarly interesting in that it makes easy a comparison of the characteristic fingerprints of each country represented. There is ample opportunity here for a discriminating and profitable study. Unfortunately, because of the war, the gallery contains no special rooms for the art of England and Germany. Both countries are represented only by loan collections. Of German art there are forty well chosen paintings.
France, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Portugal, Japan, China and several of the South American countries have installed representative collections in the Palace; while the Annex, made necessary by the unexpected number of pictures from Europe, contains a large exhibit of Hungarian art, a Norwegian display, filling seven rooms, a large British exhibit, and a small group of pictures by Spanish painters, showing that the influence of Velasquez is still powerful in Spanish art. The Norwegian display is one of the largest foreign sections, quite as characteristic as the Swedish, and certain to arouse discussion because of its extreme modernism. The ultra-radical art of Edvard Munch, who is called the greatest of Norwegian painters, and to whom a special room is assigned, is sure to be a bone of contention among the critics. The work of Harald Sohlberg (medal of honor) and Halfdan Strom (gold medal), differing widely from Munch's, though hardly less modern in style, will also attract much attention. The omission of Munch from the honor list is really a tribute to his eminence. An artist who has won the Grand Prix at Rome and awards in every other European capital was deemed outside of competition here.
Axel Gallen-Kallela, the celebrated Finnish painter, winner of the Exposition's medal of honor, fills another room in the Annex. This room, covering adequately Gallen's progress through twenty-five years, is the only one in the Exposition to illustrate the development of a great painter from his student days. The collection runs from his earliest academic work, photographic in its care for detail, to his present mastery of Impressionism, wherein by a few strokes he expresses all the essentials.
The Italian Futurists are well shown in the Annex, and for the first time in this country. The Futurist pictures hitherto seen in America have been French imitations of the Italian originators of the mode. A sample Futurist title, "Architectural Construction of a Woman on the Beach," may or may not indicate what these pictures reveal. The Annex, too, has a splendid exhibit of the etchings of Frank Brangwyn, the great Englishman, who is no less renowned as an etcher than as a painter, and who has won the Exposition's medal of honor in the International Section.
The arrangement of the rooms in the Fine Arts Gallery becomes simple enough when the key is supplied. The United States section is in the center, and, with the historical rooms, occupies, roughly, half the space, flanked by the foreign rooms at either end of the building. Four rooms of the United States section are separated from the rest and form a narrow strip across the extreme north end of the gallery. The prints, drawings, miniatures, and medals are installed in rooms forming a strip along the west wall of the building.
The United States section is opened by a central hall opposite the main entrance, and by a corridor extending on either side through to the foreign sections. The central hall is chiefly devoted to sculpture, including Karl Bitter's strong and characteristic group, "The Signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty," Daniel Chester French's "Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial," both winners of the medal of honor, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's fine central fountain, and other important work. The walls are hung with ancient tapestries of great interest, and paintings, mostly decorative, though Robert Vonnoh's "Poppies" and Ben Au Haggin's "Little White Dancer" are admirable. Vonnoh won a gold medal.
Historical Section.—South of the United States section, a block of ten rooms, with Room 54 at the southwest angle of the central hall, is devoted to painters who either have influenced American art or represent its earlier stages. Room 91, on the east side of the block, contains old Dutch, Flemish, French, and Italian pictures, none very interesting, though Teniers, Watteau and Tintoretto are represented. Rooms 92, 62, and 61, constituting the tier next to the Italian section, show chiefly examples of the French painters, including those of the Barbizon school, who have influenced later American painting. Along with other names less known, Room 92 displays canvases by Daubigny, Courbet, Charles Le Brun, Meissonier, Tissot, Monticelli and Rousseau. It has two Corots, one a delight. Room 62 is even more important. It offers a Millet, far from typical; a capital Schreyer, two portraits by the German Von Lenbach, a small but interesting sample of Alma Tadema's finished style, and the sensational "Consolatrix Afflictorum" by Dagnan-Bouveret. Better still, in Jules Breton's "The Vintage" and Troyon's "Landscape and Cattle" it has two of the noblest paintings to be seen in the entire Palace,— pictures that show these great masters at their best.