Charles I and Painting

1895

The national bias in favor of portraiture received in King Charles' time a most powerful stimulus in the naturalization of probably the most notable genius in that walk of art whom the world has seen — Vandyke. An earlier and in some respects even greater portrait painter, Hans Holbein, had, it is true, in the preceding century planted the germs of the art in British soil. Holbein's example developed itself in after time in England chiefly in the direction of portrait painting in miniature, in which he himself had contributed inimitably beautiful works, and by Nicholas Hillyard, the Olivers, Cooper Hoskins and other native professors of the art, his successors in the land, the great school of English portrait miniature painting was rapidly developed. This national specialty, be it said, by the way, down even to our own times unrivaled in any other country, we have ourselves seen virtually extinguished by a deadening frost of scientific discovery — photography, that democratic leveler in art and inevitable bane of true genius.

Charles I, with all his artistic instincts, seems nevertheless to have had but comparatively narrow views and aims in the matter of collecting. At the very time that he acquired the famous Mantau collection of pictures or soon afterward he had expatriated a wonderful and most precious series of works of art, nothing less than the ancient gatherings of the English crown in goldsmiths' work and jewelry — historic treasure of infinite interest, which at the present time would be of untold pecuniary value. — Nineteenth Century.

Francis Wilson's Picture

1895

A Touching Painting of Organ Grinder Sorrowing Over Dead Monkey.

It is rare that an artist nowadays paints a pivotal picture — one that will turn the minds of the people, making them reflective and more considerate of the common phases of life. Surely Abbott Graves has touched a chord of nature which makes the whole world kin in a work which is destined to make a national reputation for him. Graves is an artist and is known far and wide for his flower paintings, but he sees and studies all sides of life, and in this recent work, entitled "The Silent Partner," has struck the most pathetic incident he has ever undertaken.

The scene presents an organ grinder seated on a corner of his idle and untuned instrument. His hands are resting on his knees, his head bowed, and his eyes riveted upon the object of his desolation, his poor, dead monkey lying at his feet as he has fallen from the cage, with his little gray jacket and pink tunic on, ready to start out on his weary round to amuse the eager children or the curious of the busy thoroughfare.

Seated near the closed door of the humble room is the organ grinder's daughter. Her tambourine is resting idly at her side, her hands cover her face, and one can almost hear the sobs of the heartbroken girl, who now knows nothing else in her small world but grief for the lost pet.

Ursus and Homo and Gwinplain over again. The story of Hugo is brought vividly to mind. But this event in the lives of the promiscuous semimendicant toilers brings us nearer to our own conventionalities. He that owns a pet can appreciate the scene, but how much more keenly these poor creatures feel their double loss! No wonder that the comedian, Francis Wilson, when he saw it, was impressed with its sad and touching pathos. Several days after having visited Graves he returned and remarked: "Mr. Graves, ever since I saw that picture it has haunted me. Whatever your price, I want it." And so the work has become the property of an appreciative artist who knows the world, its joys and sorrows. — Boston Post.

Note: This from the internet, says, "American artist Abbott Fuller Graves - oil on canvas - painted in l894, The Organ Grinder, valued at over $100,000 was stolen July 11, 1997 from Sebastolpol California. A reward is offered."

And a Deep Silence Followed

1895

"Well, sir," said the vivacious lady to the artist who was painting her portrait, "you haven't finished already, have you? Or has the hour expired?"
"Neither, madam," replied the artist. "I am waiting for an opportunity of seeing how your chin looks in repose." — Chicago Tribune.


Adirondack

Adirondack was a nickname applied by the Iroquois Indians to their enemies, the Algonquins. The name means "people who eat tree bark." The territory now known as the Adirondacks was called by the Indians Coughsarage, "the Dismal Wilderness."

Novel Experiment In Art

1901

Tony Robert Fleury Paints Portraits In Three Colors.

Tony Robert Fleury is making some curious experiments in three color portraits, and the results have astonished the Paris art world. They are interesting not only from their originality and harmonious combinations, but for the variety obtained through limited resources. M. Fleury said to the New York Journal correspondent:

"The idea of attempting portraits painted in the three mother colors only was suggested to me by the lines of Pliny remarking on the fact that red, blue and yellow, which are the base of all hues in the prism, are also the fundamental colors of nature.

"It occurred to me to see how far this could be carried in portraiture, since no form of art requires a greater scale of tones to render life. I have now executed five portraits in this way, and in no two are the combinations alike. For these experiments I was compelled to confine myself to half size figures. In a large canvas so treated predetermined method would have been necessary, and method is impossible in art."

Gounod's Opinions

1901

Music is the most beautiful art, but it is the most detestable profession. But is not that right? That which belongs most to heaven should fare worst on earth.

The public moves much faster than the individual, and therefore the individual must place himself before his age if he desires not to be behind it. Wagner has some idea of this sort. It is a necessity which every true artist must realize. Great men may be said to be for every age save their own. Small men are for their own and none other. — "Reminiscences," in Macmillan's.

The Boy Who Learned the Way

1901

He was very young — about 13 — this boy who spent most of his time in the studios watching the artists draw and paint and wishing he could do the same.

"What kind of pencils do you use?" he said one day, and they gave him one of the kind. That night he tried to make a figure he had seen one of the artists draw. It seemed so easy. But he could not do the same kind of work.

"Perhaps I haven't the right kind of paper," he reasoned. "I will get a piece tomorrow." Even the right kind of paper did not help him any.

"I need a studio and an easel," was his next conclusion. "I have the desire; surely all I need now are the necessary surroundings."

A few years of impatient waiting passed before he secured the "necessary surroundings," and when he had them all and still found it impossible to draw the truth dawned upon him.

"I know what is wrong," he cried, throwing down his pencil. "I know nothing of the principles of art. I must learn them first."

He was still young when his name as a great painter was known on two continents. He had learned the "principle." A bit of brown paper and a burned match would then enable him to draw as easily as all the art essentials. — Ann Partlan in Success.

The American Woman's Curiosity

1910

"The American woman's intellectual characteristic is curiosity. One feels she would like to have ten pairs of eyes so as to see everything, ten pairs of ears so as to hear everything. . . .

"When I sit down at table beside an American woman of Paris, she immediately asks me: "Have you seen such and such a play? Have you been to such and such an art exhibition? What do you think of this novel or of that philosophical or historical book recently published?' . . . And I am forced to admit that I have not seen the latest play, that for more than ten years I have not set my foot inside the annual 'salons,' that I read slowly and carefully, and am therefore forced to read but few books. And I know my American neighbor feels great disdain for my inculture. . . .

"Still I have infinite sympathy for her charming and universal intellectual curiosity; only long experience has taught me that man's head cannot contain too many ideas at once." — Marcel Prevost in Harper's Bazar.


Teach Them to Know Home City

The Buffalo board of education is considering a proposition to introduce in the public schools a textbook on Buffalo which will give pupils some knowledge of the industries and institutions of the city in which they live.

Dancing Craze Has Grip on New York

1910

NEW YORK. — It has become a sort of madness in New York, the desire to see dancing. Some 15 years ago a Spanish dancer like Carmencita might create something of a seven-days' wonder, besides having her name written down as an artist in the books which posterity is supposed to read. But nowadays dancing of all sorts is fairly worshiped.

Isadora Duncan brought the Greek dance, which later was kept alive by Maud Allen and other imitators of Miss Duncan. Ruth St. Denis introduced the Hindoo dance; Mistinguett and Max Dearly at the Moulin Rouge in Paris created the Apache dance, which has since been given in every possible form in America, ending with Polaire's vivid performance, and the Salome dance was a craze of itself for a summer.

For three seasons no vaudeville bill has been deemed complete unless some dancer appeared in the list of performers. More than generally that dancer's name, like that of Abou Ben Adam, has led all the rest. The masked dancers at the rival vaudeville theaters, are the latest examples of the music hall craze for dancing sensations. We had "story" dances, toe dances, clog dances, cake walks, cancans, everything, it seemed, that the mind of man has been able to invent or resuscitate.

It remained, however, for some enterprising manager to take advantage of the idea and give the public an entire evening of contrasted and almost unbroken dancing.

From the beginning to the end it is almost one unbroken dance. Between the dances and between the acts the audience has a chance to rest its eyes and prepare for a new round.

Now a glimpse at the popular supper places or the tea rooms at the big hotels would give a stranger from Oshkosh the idea that the hobble skirt was quite as much of a craze in its way just now as, well, let us say, the dance.

No play, therefore, which attempted to call itself apotheosis of the dance could be considered complete without an attempt to show how a woman would look dancing in a hobble skirt. The hobble skirt dance, to say the least, is amusing.

Joys of a Collector

1907

Picking Up a Valuable Painting at an Auction Sale

Collecting will always have its romances. I know of one that occurred at the sale at Christie's of the effects of the late Sir Henry Irving. Some one I knew had been to see the collection before the sale. He came across a portrait with which he was familiar because he had seen it thirty years before.

On consulting his catalogue he discovered that the portrait was described as being that of a man unknown, and, further, the artist was also unknown. Now, he knew that the portrait was that of a famous actor by a famous English painter. He longed to buy it, but decided that it would go at too high a price. He went to the auction with very little hope. The Whistler and the Sargent were sold, and then it was the turn of this picture. Nobody recognized it. Finally he had to start the bidding himself, and this he did. Only one man bid against him, but he soon stopped, discouraged, and then the picture was knocked down to the man who had never expected to get it.

He hurried to the desk to pay the small amount and to carry off his prize. "Do you happen to know anything about that portrait?" the auctioneer asked him as a porter took it down to a cab. "I know it very well," said the new owner, conscious that it was now safely his property. "It is a portrait of Buckstone, the actor, by Daniel Maclise. There is an engraving of it in the Maclise portrait gallery." — Mrs. John Lane in Pearson's Magazine.

A Blind Girl's Interests at the Art Institute

Chicago, 1895

Mysterious Old Woman and Sightless Girl Doing the Art Institute

They tell a story over at the Art Institute on the lake front about an old woman who goes there on free days leading a blind girl, says the Chicago Tribune. The old woman totters in her steps and her face is wrinkled. Her attire is not shabby, but it is severely plain and doesn't belong to this generation. The girl has a face as white as marble and her blind eyes are unusually full. Her mouth is expressive and a singularly sad smile nestles about it.

Somebody who asked the old woman one day tells that the twain live on Mohawk street and that the girl has been blind since she was 4 years old. She is now 12. The girl always, since she was old enough to know, evinced a passion for art. At one time she undertook drawing, but had to quit it. They say she plays naturally and sweetly. But her strong like is art in sculpture. The old woman leads the child among the statuary and reproductions of the various rooms, mentioning, of course, anything new. The girl has learned the location of the principal works, and after they have been in one room for awhile the girl will say to the woman: "Let's go into the room where ——-," mentioning what it is she wants to "see," as she expresses it. One of her favorites is the group of Amphion and Zethus chaining Dirce to the bull. Someone told her the story one day, and seemed to fascinate her, and she asked several curious questions about it.

But after they have wandered about the rooms most of the day the girl nearly always says to the woman: "Let's go and see the child that is listening to the sea." The work is in one of the corridors, and has been noticed with interest by thousands. The child said one day when she was told that the figure was listening to the murmur of the sea, and that it appeared to please her, "Then she must be blind." Several people have asked the woman her name, but she evades the inquiry, and when the child is questioned she nestles to the woman and makes no reply. It is believed that they are mother and child.

Physician Declares Colors Have Influence on Nerves

1920

A New York physician who gives more credit to nature than he takes for himself in the cures he has wrought is a great believer in the effect of colors on the human race. Nature is the best teacher in these things, he says. You will find in your surroundings in the country no black and very little red. Blue and yellow are combined in the restful, reviving green. There is no doubt, the doctor contends, that the wearing of black has an evil effect on both health and spirits. It is the color of Saturn, the planet of gloom, misfortune, fatality and other evil things. If one wishes to be happy and brilliant, blue is the color to wear. The doctor says that the spirit of evil hates blue intensely and flies at the sight of it. Blue also calms the nerves and therefore it is a good color for room decorations.


Great Musicians of India Care Not for Worldly Things

To the Hindu, music, like sculpture and painting, is a sacred art. Music originated from Siva, one of the Hindu Trinity, and Saraswati is the goddess of music and of learning in general. As people look upon music as something sacred, so it has become a highly specialized art. Amateur musicians are not much encouraged. The public seem to say, "Do it well or don't do it at all; don't play false with music; it is too sacred for light treatment." The great musicians of India are generally ascetics. They care not for name, fame, or wealth. They live a life of comparative poverty. The Hindu is of the opinion that a voluptuous or a luxury loving person cannot be a great musician.

Musicians of the Street — Picturesque New York Figures

1887

MUSICIANS OF THE STREET.

The Picturesque Figures Who Make Melody on the Sidewalk.

[Special Correspondence.]

NEW YORK, Nov. 15. — Street musicians in New York are not limited to the hand organ. Every portable instrument under the sun stops at times and tunes up under your windows. Yesterday two men, one with a bagpipe, the other with a pibroch, went through my street making music weird, wild and pathetically sweet. Here and there a nickel was thrown to them from the upper stories, and here and there fell a tear. The concert was musical. They had not the hackneyed, manners of hardened street musicians. Solicitation was new to them. But they woke the echoes with old Scottish airs that moved hearts and moistened eyes.

If one might judge of them and their history, one might say that they were Scotchmen, stranded in New York without money and took this simple plan of earning a little. Sometimes a man stops on a corner after nightfall and sings a song, not in the cracked and dreadful voice of the blind professional street singer, but in sweet and melodious notes. One by one the passing people halt to hear him, and a few remember to pay for the pleasure he has given. He is perhaps of higher station, and temporarily in distress, Possibly he does it for a lark, for the pleasure of giving pleasure to those whose pleasures are few.

Sometimes a very old man, dignified and patriarchal, plays upon a large clarionet, making such music as the souls of musicians love. It is evident that in this humble guise a master breathes upon the instrument. That he has descended from some height of talent, and perhaps fame, is evident. His garments, too, have come down. When he trembles during the pauses in his music his hearers feel their throats thicken and somehow their hands find their way to their pockets. The throng about him increases all the time. His selections are not the much harped upon airs from the popular operas; they are the classic airs of the past. And when he was applauded the pale, old face flushed up with pleasure, and he acknowledged the compliment with the grace of an artist.

Histories, forsooth, have the street musicians. They have lived romances and supped on tragedies. Poverty walks on one side of them and art on the other. The way has been long and up hill all the way, with here and there a light, a halt and a bit of joy. They suggest blind Homer. They do more. They keep our hearts tender. — G. G.

Arabian Nights - The Art of Maxfield Parrish

1909

Comment on Books of the Day:

The Art of Maxfield Parrish.

Some time ago — in fact, it was while Robert Louis Stevenson's letters were appearing in serial form — Scribner's Magazine produced in the course of a year four cover designs of exceptional character. They were so different in conception, composition and in color from the work of any other illustrator that they seemed to some of us Stevenson-worshippers worthy of being bound in the book with the letters of R. L. S.. They were the work of Maxfield Parrish, who now, at the beginning of his fortieth year, finds himself ranked in public estimation along with Howard Pyle, at whose feet he sat as a disciple.

The delicate strength and quaint humor of Mr. Parrish's work is again in evidence in twelve drawings, a cover design and fly leaf and the title page decorations for the new collection of tales from the "Arabian Nights Entertainments" which the Scribners have published, with Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith as editors.

An imaginative, humorous and gifted painter could have no better subject for his art. The Arabian Nights bewildering, unparalleled in their exaggeration, which have delighted childhood in China, India, Arabia, Persia and perhaps the islands of the moon since the year 1450 or before, and which so charmed the young men of the Royal College of Paris in 1704 that they gathered in the middle of the night under the windows of M. Gallaud, whose translation of some of these tales had just appeared, crying with one accord, "O thou, who knowest these so beautiful stories, and who tellest them so well, tell us one now!" have precisely the antique richness and wonder that is suited for the art of Maxfield Parrish.

The story of Ali Baba suggests heaps of gold, caves encrusted with gems, and a gleam of sunlight resting upon an Oriental figure who sits desperately trying to remember the magic words which will release him. Mr. Parrish has done the thing to perfection in flat tones of gloomy olive green. The story of "The City of Brass" contains the passage "And when they had ascended that mountain they saw a city than which eyes had not beheld any greater." Mr. Parrish has shown it; three horsemen from the desert upon a rocky promontory, before them a pellucid body of water, beyond that mountains dim in the shadow, farther away great peaks bathed in the warm orange sunlight, and back and above all, towering into the still blue, the great battlemented eminence of an incredible city all yellow and pale green, with clouds upon its crest. It is a splendid answer to the instinctive human desire for a wonder that fills the eye.

There are those who say that Mr. Parrish's work is deficient in the qualities of true art. That has been said, as Mr. Kipling has reminded us, ever since old Adam scratched with his stick in the mold, and the rude figures that he drew himself were joy to his mighty heart till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it art?" From what canons other artists have condemned Mr. Parrish's work I know not, but certainly he has achieved effects of light, shade, perspective, color, and mystery that make his work superbly suitable in such a connection as this.

In her introduction Kate Douglas Wiggin quotes Andrew Lang, who has left out of his vision of the Arabian Nights "all the pieces that are suitable only for Arabs and old gentlemen." So has she, but she has removed no genie or magician, however terrible, and diminished the size of no roe's egg, and omitted no single allusion to the great and only Haroun Al Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad. — P. M. P.

—The Post-Standard, Syracuse, NY, Nov. 6, 1909, p. 4.

Address on Tennyson, His Conception of Art and Life

Winnipeg, 1915

ADDRESS ON TENNYSON BY PROF. CRAWFORD

Wives of officers stationed in Winnipeg on military duty are to be admitted to the courtesy of the Western Art association through the gracious action taken by the members at a meeting held yesterday afternoon in the drawing room on the mezzanine floor of the Fort Garry, an action prompted by the consideration that the officers' wives, most of them away from their homes on a not too gladsome errand and missing their usual activities, should be made to feel as much at home as possible. In future they are to receive notices of meetings exactly as regular members.

The president, Mrs. Alan C. Ewart, announced that Lady Cameron will formally open the General Exchange, Carlton street, Saturday, Jan. 16, at 4 o'clock. She explained that the exchange and lunch room adjacent were doing business all the time and working up to quite a flourishing condition, but this would be the official opening. To help with expenses for a month or so a series of small matinee bridges were planned, the first to be held at Mrs. Ewart's residence, Ruskin and Park Row, Thursday, January 21, at 3 o'clock.

The address of the afternoon was given by Prof. A. W. Crawford on the subject, "Tennyson's Conception of Art and Life." He showed the great poet as the champion of the social value of art, and the proclaimer of the social responsibility of the artist, as the recluse in actual life, but not in thought or spirit.

In support of this interpretation, Dr. Crawford let Tennyson speak for himself through two groups of his poems, the first dealing with the poet's art, and the second with the arts of form, namely painting, sculpture and architecture.

Several of these gems the speaker read with a sympathy and power that made them an intense pleasure to hear, even without his illuminative side comments. In them he showed Tennyson's message to be that the pursuit of art for art's sake meant spiritual stagnation, but art was the hand maiden of life, the endeavor to present life in its most perfect forms and ideals, not to the mere end of perfect art, but to the goal of perfecting human lives. All problems of life and death, good and ill, were problems for the poet or artist because his mission was as a revealer of truth to men.

Tennyson's supreme art poem, the "Palace of Art," showed a soul building a palace of beauty for her own selfish enjoyment, but turned back upon herself, "like the still salt pool, locked in by bars of sand," descending through uncertainty and confusion to utter misery she was redeemed at last only by sharing her palace with her fellows.

—Manitoba Morning Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, January 9, 1915, page 9.

An Artist's Fad, and Wycliffe's Bible

1916

An Artist's Fad

A Parisian artist in lieu of a picture gallery has a collection of great painters' palettes, some 500 in number, among them being Corot's, Isabey's and Theodore Rousseau's. On many of the palettes are sketches by the painters who used them.


Wycliffe's Bible

John Wycliffe completed the translation of the whole Bible for the first time into the language of the English people. He was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire, about 1324.


A Case of Fifty-Fifty

"Half the world doesn't know how the other half lives."
That's the half that minds its own business probably." — Philadelphia Ledger.


Fair Enough

"Yes," we admitted, "it's a fine car. and we'd be glad to own it but we can't afford to buy it, and there's no use wasting your breath trying to persuade us."
"Listen," pleaded the agent, "this car isn't going to cost you a cent. All you've got to do is to take out an accident policy in our favor and the car is yours. We'll even pay the premium on the policy. Can anything be fairer than that?" — St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Comment: I'll admit it, I don't get that last one. It must be a comment on the high cost of car insurance, that they'll give you a free car just to take your money on a policy. It's sort of like with instant cameras a few years ago; they were very cheap but the film's what got you.

Cabaret Girls Tell of Songs and Dances: Sensual, Improper

Chicago, 1913

CABARET GIRLS TELL OF SONGS AND DANCES

They Admit That Songs Are Improper and That Dances Are Sensual

Chicago, April 12. — Agents of the Illinois vice commission late last night and early today brought consternation to the fashionable guests of the two down-town restaurants — Rector's and the States — against whose reputations there rested, no question except the nature of their cabaret entertainments.

While the cabaret was in full blast investigators entered the down-town restaurants and a wine room in the tenderloin at midnight and brought performers, managers and guests to a hotel for interrogation. The inquiry lasted until 2 o'clock this morning.

From some of them the senators drew reluctant admissions that a few of the songs and dances "might be" suggestive and "perhaps had been a bad effect on the diners."

"In My Harem."

A girl singer, crying as she testified asserted she never would sing "In My Harem," a song Lieutenant Governor O'Hara was particularly inquisitive about.

The manager of a well known restaurant said the restaurant business had degenerated into a vaudeville show, and he did not know when it would stop. After investigators and members of a "slumming" party said they had heard an improper song in a place in Twenty-first street, the commission voted to recommend to Mayor Harrison that the cafe's license he revoked. The commission will call the attention of the state's attorney to the testimony of the manager, who said nothing indecent went on.

Senator Beall said he saw girls not more than 15 or 16 years imbibing mixed drinks in the cafe, and some at them were more or less intoxicated.

Mrs. Maud Joseph told of the singing and dances at a downtown restaurant. She said in one dance the performer "might just as well have had no skirts at all."

She stated that a girl did an Oriental dance, wearing pink tights and a "sort of a skirt of black chiffon." She thought the dance was suggestive. She said a couple did a fancy dance, a combination between the "Tango" and the "Apache."

"Was it art or suggestion?" asked the lieutenant-governor.

"There was no art in it."

Free For All Dance.

The performers led a free for all dance on a space made by clearing away tables.

The professional who led the dance said they had tried to eliminate anything which might appear sensual in their act, but admitted they might not have been entirely successful.

"Don't you think that where you see art others might see vice?" asked Mr. O'Hara. "I guess it appeals differently, but I do not see anything obscene about it," was a reply.

O. B. Stimpson, manager of another down-town restaurant, asserted the business had drifted into a show, but he was compelled to put up a first class cabaret to get the trade. He was of opinion that some popular songs have gone too far. He said guests did the "bear" dance in the aisles, between the tables, but that they never got "raw." An entertainer in this restaurant said there was nothing out of the way in the song "All Night Long." "It's all in the way you sing it," she stated. "Some people are so weak minded that they will take up anything."

Time to Revoke.

When the vice commissioners reassembled they received a telephone message from Mayor Harrison saying, "This looks like a good day to revoke some licenses."

The mayor referred to unsavory restaurants which survived when the old segregated district on the south side was closed several months ago. He said he had made up his mind to close two places as a result of testimony at the night session of the commission and would investigate others.

Frank Benent, manager of "Dream Land," where the dancers number from 500 to 1,000 a night, testified that no liquor was sold there, and that "dummy" dancers hired by the management mingled with the crowds to prevent suggestive dancing.

"We couldn't make money if we sold liquor or permitted lewd action," said the witness. "If the dance halls of Chicago want to make money they should work in harmony with this commission." Girls at previous sessions have testified that it was at "Dream Land" they made acquaintances who led them on their first steps downward.

—The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, April 13, 1913, page 1B.

Examining Great Paintings, Finding the Artist's Signature

1916

Difficult to Find Sometimes and Not Always Reliable

Many of the works of the old masters are not signed. Experts rarely rely on signatures alone in determining the authenticity of an old work, but trust rather to their knowledge of the painter's technique.

False signatures can be easily detected. Spirits of wine or turpentine will usually remove a name of later date than the painting. In the course of time signatures often become very difficult to find. Painted originally in a shade slightly lighter than the ground, perhaps, they sink in, darken and merge into the ground color or they are almost rubbed away by successive cleanings. Recognizable one day in a specially favorable light, they may not be visible again for weeks.

Experts speak of "will-o'-the-wisp" signatures, and many collectors have encountered accidental strokes and cracks that tantalizingly suggest a signature, though it can never be made definite. On the other hand, there have been remarkable cases of such marks, after careful study, resolving themselves into a famous name. Sometimes the painter's name is most conspicuous — as, for instance, in Raphael's "Sposalizio" at Milan. Proud of having surpassed his master, the youthful genius wrote on a frieze in the very center of the canvas "Raphael Urbinas."

Reynolds hardly ever signed his work. But upon the completion of the portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" he wrote his name large on the gold embroidery of her dress. He was unable, he said, "to resist the temptation of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment."

With reference to unsigned paintings there is told in Germany an amusing story. Achenbach. the German artist, enjoyed a vogue about ten years ago. A certain collector had bought from an art dealer a marine represented as a genuine Achenbach. Afterward it was pronounced to be a copy. The buyer brought an action against the dealer, who turned the tables by declaring that his picture was genuine and the other was a copy.

Achenbach himself was summoned by the court to tell which was which. Amazed at the similarity of the two paintings, the artist gazed at them for a long time, inspected them closely front and back and then frankly admitted that he could not tell which was the original and which the copy.— Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 7.

Juvenile Ideas – Children's Questions and Answers

1916

A little girl once said to me. "Are there people on the moon?" I said I didn't know, but that perhaps there were. " "Well, what do they do," she said, "when there's only a little bit? They must get very crowded. Don't they?" Which was almost as perplexing as the query put to me by another little maiden, who asked, "What do angels do with their wings when they lie down and go to bed?"

Very quaint was the idea of a little girl who was once visiting a house where a small child had died recently. She was asked to draw something. So she drew a grave with some flowers on it. Her mother, on seeing it said, "Janie. you mustn't do that; Mrs. —— wouldn't like it. You see, it reminds her of very sad things." "Oh, well," said the child, "perhaps it was thoughtless of me, but I can easily turn it into a beehive." And she did, with all the bees coming out — Hilda Cowham in Strand Magazine.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Lupeta Perea: Mexican Circus Girl An Ambitious Artist

1915--

Mexican Circus Girl An Ambitious Artist

Among the performers whose exploits will thrill and dumbfound spectators at the Barnum and Bailey circus which exhibits here Monday, August 30th, is Lupeta Perea, a newcomer to the world of American "white tops" from Mexico, fleeing gladly from the revolution and its political unrest. Her mother accompanies her with the remnants of a fortune accumulated in cattle-raising near Monterey and which became the prey of insurrectors.

The girl's wonderful agility asserted itself in early life. She was the marvel of her school-girl friends in hazardous feats in mid-air and amazed older beholders who witnessed her exploits.

Then one day there came, during the fiesta days of December, a grand display in El Toreo, Mexico City's famous bull-ring before President Madero and his dignitaries. Senorita Perea's apparatus was stretched from barrier to barrier, and the ovation she received from her aerial exhibition is still remembered in the capital. Her entrance into professionalism dates from her triumph upon that occasion. It was not long before her fame had spread all through the republic of Mexico.

Her talents are not vested solely in her lithe and nimble body. When she isn't amazing onlookers by her feats aloft in the "big top," she may be generally found ensconced in a corner of the circus "green room" with a pad and pencil, perpetuating the forms and faces of her associate performers. Clowns, equestrians, aerialists, acrobats, chariot drivers and all the other multifarious figures and features of the big show are being put in black and white.

This little beauty of the circus, for she is a beautiful girl, has twelve different costumes which she carries with her despite the protests of the circus property men. Then, too, she has stunning street attire, and Senorita Perea has "off and on" the reputation of being the best dressed girl of the circus.

"Not always will I be a public circus performer," she declared in a recent interview. "My real love is for the pencil and paper and maybe my products will yet attract praise worth while. When this big circus folds itself away for the winter, I'm going back to New York and study art in earnest."

--The Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, August 27, 1915, page 3.

Wife Offers to Pay Alimony to Husband

1920—

Wife Offers to Pay Alimony to Husband

All She Asks Is Divorce and Custody of Children

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., May 20. – Mrs. Ida May Harp, of this city, established a precedent in local divorce courts when she filed suit against Arthur E. Harp, an insurance adjuster, and offered in her complaint to pay him $25 a month alimony.

Mrs. Harp charges that Harp has been cruel to her. They were married in Napa in 1905 and separated recently when, says Mrs. Harp, he told her he was sorry he married her and that he wished himself in the "hot place" instead.

Harp also is jealous, she says, and refused to let her attend church, saying if she did she might flirt with the minister. He also was jealous of tradesmen.

Mrs. Harp asks for a divorce and the custody of their two children.


Women Are Inferior, Avers One of Them

LONDON, England, May 20. – "Women do not excel in any art. I do not personally know of any woman qualified to be an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts. Women have never been good in any art."

That is the opinion of Lady Scott, the sculptress and widow of the explorer, in discussing the fact that it is more than 150 years since a woman became a member of the academy.

Asked why she thought women fail at art, Lady Scott said:

"I don't know. We are an inferior race, I suppose."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.