The wisdom of a large policy is to be found on every hand. The Exposition has been called a dream, and as it is so soon to vanish may well be one; but if the intent had been to deceive, it could hardly have been made more deceptive. To one in the gondolas or the launches speeding between these walls, they stand as though for all time; and for one walking in the long arcades, detail and veracity of construction force themselves on the attention most plausibly. It has been too often described how the architects, adopting certain dimensions, have obtained a conformity of effect; but that once obtained, they have shown the greatest freedom, and though all of them are men of many works, they have never perhaps been more happily inspired. The Administration building is the appropriate crown to the buildings leading up to it, and Mr. McKim’s Agricultural building is characterized by great charm of proportion, and though heavily charged with sculptured decoration is in nowise overloaded. In addition to the very decorative sculptures due to Mr. Martiny, there is on this building some of the most satisfactory ornament in purely classical vein that I can remember on any modern structure. In fact, though the treatment of this group of buildings is thoroughly classic, it is pleasant to record the belief that in no other country would the traditions have been so well observed and at the same time so revivified as in ours. Our men owe their education to the Old World, chiefly to France; but it seems as though a certain separation from the influences of their schools had given them an independence which their foreign schoolmates lack. It is probable that had Paris in 1889 adopted the programme followed here the result would have been as correct, as thorough, as noble as this; but the result as a whole would have been colder, and lacking in the individual character observable here, where every man seems to continue the tradition rather than follow it. Mr. Post had long accustomed us to his capacity to build big and well; but never to build so big and so well as in the Liberal Arts building. When sailing along the lake-front one appreciates the immensity of the structure, which seems to equal that of all the other buildings combined; but near at hand one feels its beauty more than its bigness, and the simplicity by which this result is arrived at. The portals, taking almost all the decorative features, are admirable. Mr. Atwood’s Fine Arts building is perhaps the best where all is so good, owing almost nothing to its decorative features—which, as the building is to be permanent, one may hope to see changed. The frieze of the Parthenon should hardly be borrowed to grace so fine a modern building. At night Mr. Atwood’s building is seen in all its beauty of proportion, and the nights when it is illuminated best of all. The torches running along the top of the building burn great flames of natural gas, and the illumination is at once simple and effective. On the roof of the Administration building something of the same effect is obtained in conjunction with the electric light outlining the dome; but as the torches on the Fine Arts building are seen against the sky, the effect is finer.
Night and electric light play a great part in the spectacular side of the Fair. Solomon in all his glory never saw such a sight as the plain people of this continent have had on illumination nights this summer. Innumerable incandescent lights sparkle along the cornices and pediments; the top of the wall inclosing the grand basin is outlined in fire; search-lights from the top of the Liberal Arts building cut their wide swaths of light in gigantic circles, resting for a moment here and there to bring out now this detail or to throw into dazzling relief a
CENTRAL PORTION OF MACMONNIES FOUNTAIN—EFFECT OF ELECTRIC-LIGHT.
sculptured figure or beast. It lingers longest on MacMonnies’s fountain, the fitting jewel resting lightly on the bosom of this Venetian beauty whom but yesterday we called Chicago; and well it may, as in a degree the fountain is the clou of the Exposition. It seems but fair to call this fountain the most important of all the decorative sculptures. Every exposition has its great fountain, and the choice of Mr. MacMonnies to execute this one was most happy. Our sculptors as a rule have had too little opportunity to exercise the decorative side of their art, and we do not possess as does France a small army of sculptors who can be, as they were in ’89, turned loose to decorate a great exposition with groups and figures. It demands not only a decorative instinct but practice as well, a certain habit of and delight in handling huge masses of form which men who are capable perhaps of graver and more ponderated work may lack or have lost. Thus fifteen years ago Saint-Gaudens, fresh from school and filled with its traditions, would have in the course of natural selection been the man for the work; but with years and widening experience it is a question whether he would have undertaken to design and carry out in the short space of time that which his brilliant pupil has undertaken and carried through with all the audacity and fire of youth, tempered by a delicacy of taste which gives it after all its greatest value. Anything more typical of the youth and hope which we fondly believe to be the characteristic of our nation is hard to conceive; and if, as is to be so greatly desired, the monument is to be made permanent (which the completeness of the modelling of individual parts, an unusual quality in works like this, would render easy), it might well stand to represent an era. Mr. French’s massive and dignified figure of America may be taken as the matron of this generation, tried and made strong through war; but MacMonnies’s epitome of youth represents the future of our as yet experimental civilization, and though the boat is propelled by the arts and sciences, it is the young girl who fills such a large part in our experiment who is really to the fore. It is Smith and Wellesley who row with the young girl enthroned; and vogue la galère, with pleasant waters ahead and a safe port at last!
Of Mr. Saint-Gaudens we have only a figure of Columbus, which he has signed in collaboration with another of his pupils, Miss Mary G. Lawrence. It is a good exemplification of what has already been said that at the first glance this figure seems almost out of place here. It is of a character—the highest character—of work which depends on the most serious study. Conception and pose are reduced to the simplest, almost archaic form, and while it does not seem quite as successful, it is of the same family as the Lincoln here in Chicago or the Deacon Chapin in Springfield. The best of the sculpture here, while subject to the limitations twice mentioned, has perhaps gained a quality more essentially American by the absence of what may be called the ready-made decorative quality. The quadriga on the Peristyle, by French & Potter, the Indian girl and the bull, and indeed all the figures and animals at which these artists have worked together, are thoroughly satisfactory as decoration, and more native and appropriate to our soil than the lighter touch and greater facility of the sculpture at the exhibition on the Champ de Mars would have been.
The painters of the band of allied artists had the more difficult task. In the first place our country has arbitrarily forced our painters to work on a miniature scale, and with little exception our men affronted their task with theory and enthusiasm as their preparation. The sculptors had at least the practice of modelling large works; but with the exception of Mr. Maynard, who has taken Pompeian motives and given us under the porches of the Agricultural building a thoroughly architectural and adequate decoration in which his past experience has rendered him service, the painters were virtually winning their first spurs. Taking this into consideration their success is marked. Tried by the standard that the space allotted to a decoration should be filled, and filled by a composition which could not serve within any other shaped space than that for which it is devised, Mr. Blashfield’s seems the most successful. In addition to this quality it has great charm of color and dignity of conception, which latter quality, combined with clean, workmanlike drawing, is shared by Mr. Cox. Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Weir’s domes also have charming qualities, while Mr. Shirlaw’s gives one the impression of a complete mastery of his scheme and intention. At the southern end of the Liberal Arts building, Mr. Melchers and Mr. McEwen have large compositions, those of the latter being marked perhaps by the greater individuality; but while they are all (each painter having two compositions) executed in a very able manner, they seem somewhat lacking in spontaneity. In another part of the grounds in the Women’s building the feminine contingent makes a brave show. Mrs. MacMonnies here leads the van with a composition sober in line and excellent in color. Miss Cassatt, having apparently defied the laws of decoration, has divided her space in three parts, in each of which she has painted pictures which, from her previous work, must be judged to be of excellent quality, but which, from the height at which they are seen and by reason of the small scale of the figures, are virtually lost. But this partial and cursory enumeration of what may be seen at the Fair could be continued beyond the limits of an article like this, and still leave unnamed and apparently unappreciated much that is admirable and more that is hopeful. Of the delights of living in the midst of this, of seeing our people in holiday trim and, albeit, taking their pleasure somewhat sadly and getting as much instruction combined with it as possible, still enjoying it, much could be said. No mention has been made of the State buildings, which give, however, so much character to the grounds. New York’s imperial palace, bright and luxurious, is flanked on one side by Massachusetts’s staid and trim reproduction of John Hancock’s mansion, with additions of a character which must temper the smile of gentle reproof with which it regards its frivolous neighbor; while on the other stands Pennsylvania’s broad piazzaed home which shelters the Liberty bell. New Jersey reproduces a colonial “Head-quarters” mansion, and Washington is big and new and booming; California shows her fruits and extols her wines in a lowlying structure which recalls the adobe missions of her first settlers; and each and every State has here its home, first for its own people and then for the neighbors. Strange neighbors we have too, for the Midway Plaisance is not far away with its turbaned, sandalled, greased, and befeathered inhabitants, with its German and Austrian bands, its great difference of tongues and great similarity of cuisine. The outdoor life which is made so much of in Europe here seems unappreciated; the numberless cafés and out-of-door restaurants which make up so much of the comfort with which one sees an exposition there still “leave to be desired” here. But these are details and of things earthy. The moral of the tale is short and easily read.