His successor, a young man of education, of refinement, and of apparent ambition, although undoubtedly handicapped by the legacy of sterile contentions and discouragements left him by his predecessor, has still a very brilliant opportunity before him. Will he succeed ultimately where his master has so conspicuously failed? We sincerely hope so, and trust that some few of our misgivings, arising from what we fear is a tendency to cultivate the noisy and pretentious few at the expense of the more modest, but by far the more musical, majority may prove after all to be groundless.
Nothing so forcibly illustrates the inability of even educated persons to distinguish between the good and the bad as the family portrait. How seldom one sees in houses otherwise marked by refinement and good taste this really necessary and, to future generations, valuable object characterized by sufficient artistic merit to insure to it one’s attention for five minutes. And how often it is a mere caricature of the person whose portrayal has been attempted. What man dare call himself educated who has not sufficiently acquainted himself with the elements of drawing and color to know when he, or some member of his family, is being transferred to canvas for no better purpose than to afford amusement for persons of greater knowledge and judgment. It is true all of us cannot spare the time to acquire even the elements of an art education, but then it is equally true that the upper class of Americans is not truly a cultivated class, is not possessed of the culture of the same class in Europe. This is lamentable; but sadder still is the knowledge that the egotism (widely known as the American spirit) of the average man of refinement will preclude for a long time to come a betterment of the situation.
Baltimore, among other cities noted for their educated class, has been, and still is, an easy victim to the artist of the solar-print. Nothing more thoroughly delights the heart of a Baltimorean of average development than to come into possession of one of those family portraits that exhibit all the rotundity of objects turned on a lathe, the burnish (in the high lights) of excessively polished metal-ware, and the finish of a miniature done under the glass of a microscope. In such work the ideal of portrait painting is reached—for the Baltimorean of average development. The revered canvas is given the place of honor in the most prominent room of the house and there left for the adoration of all who enter—no one daring to call down upon his head, for adverse criticism, the pitying scorn of the deluded family. “It is a speaking likeness rendered with unusual technical skill.” One often wishes, as a relief for tortured eyes, that painters could do without technique altogether, and might be allowed to indulge the wildest flights of imagination conceivable in depicting the features of beloved relatives and friends.
But little can be said in defense of the “artist” who produces this class of work. It is the result of either a base commercial spirit or of untalented affrontery that trades on the ignorance of those who should blush for their little knowledge. In many instances these painters have had every opportunity for study at home and abroad, and yet seek to degrade a profession they can in no wise benefit. Have the patrons of these men concluded that honesty has lost its worth, and that a bad painter is more useful that a good photographer? An almost hopeless ignorance of art is, in these cases, the true explanation of why this phase of brush-work has not long since disappeared from among intelligent people. As long as men are found willing to pay for a bad thing the parodists of art will continue to flourish. That it is not the ignorant, or unscrupulous, painter who needs to be educated is easily seen.
Baltimore, with its unusually large number of thinking people, is not altogether hopeless of improvement in its ideas of art. Fortunately there are here a few families that have true judgment in such matters, and whose influence, although at present but little felt, has a tendency to create a future favorable to good work. May that happy epoch not be synchronous with the Millennium.
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