Gallery 78.

Hassam.

Childe Hassam’s art at first is very disconcerting, particularly under a strong midday light.  One has at first the feeling that a religious adherence to a certain impressionistic technique is of more importance to him than anything else.  Entering his gallery from the Chase collection, one is almost overcome with the contrast of light and dark presented by these two masters.  The contrast of the classic academic atmosphere of Chase’s room shows Hassam pronouncedly as the most radical impressionist we have.  His interest is light, and always more light, vibration at any cost; which contrasted with Chase’s art, or for that matter anybody’s else, Duveneck’s, or, for instance, even Whistler’s, becomes almost irritating in its lack of simple surfaces.  He does not eliminate in the sense of the older men, who care more for a unity of expression than for an approximation to the actual outdoors.  There is sunlight in his work, without a doubt, but it is not always spread over agreeable subjects.  The wooden quality of his figures and the frugal aspects of his fruit, to us Californians are particularly painful.  Of all his oils in this gallery the two on either side of the “Aphrodite” on the east wall are by far the best.  In them he succeeds in carrying his point agreeably and convincingly.  They are both lovely in colour, and they give you the feeling of having been well studied.  The two groups of watercolours and gouaches on the side walls are, with the exception of a wash blue sea, very discreet in quality of paint and most intimate in feeling, and to my mind do Hassam more credit than the many other canvases, which seem to be painted for expounding a technical principle rather than to reveal his innermost feelings.

Gallery 77.

Gari Melchers.

Melchers’ style is much more sympathetic than Hassam’s without being less personal.  Of modern painters I confess to a particularly great fondness for Melchers’ art.  While standing firmly on classic tradition, it is modern in every sense.  One can say everything of good and find little fault with any of these most conscientiously painted canvases which make up his contribution to the exhibition.  Beginning with his “Fencing Master”, one of his older works, he shows in a great number of similar subjects his loyalty to Egmond aan den Hoef, a little Dutch village where he has worked for years.  The quality of pattern and colour in his work is very pronounced, and this, combined with a fine psychology, makes his work always interesting.  He is no radical; the best as he sees it in any school he has made subservient to his purpose without any loss of individuality.  His pictures yield much pleasure to public as well as to artist, even in sentimental stories like the “Sailor and His Sweetheart”, or the “Skaters”.  His finest note he strikes undoubtedly in the many sympathetic glorifications of motherhood in his fine modern Madonnas.  These works will be the sure