Palmer of that city has offered two prizes of 500 dollars each for
the best landscape or marine and the best figure picture. There
is no limitation as to age, but competitors must be citizens of the
United States, and pictures must have been painted within three
years.
The Charcoal Club of Baltimore will open an Exhibition of
Water-Colours on the Sih of April. Most of the prominent men
will be represented.
Frank Millet will send a large oil-painting to the Royal
Academy this year. The subject is ' Antony Van Corlear, the
Trumpeter,' and is from Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's
History of New York. Old Antony, fat, jolly, and good-natured,
is seated at a table, surrounded by seven pretty girls. The picture
is full of detail, carefully painted, and has already been sold, it is
said, for 5000 dollars.
In connection with the coming Centennial Celebration of
Washington's Inaugural at New York, there will be held an
Exhibition of Portraits of the Old Colonial Families that have
been loaned from all quarters. There are many Gilbert Stewarts
in the collection, and by other men of his day there will be found
much that is interesting. With this collection, old laces, brocades,
and relics of the last century will be shown. Mr. Coflin, the able
art editor of the Evening Post, has entire charge of the affair, and
a good arrangement may be looked for.
An interesting collection of purely American pictures is now on
view at the new residence of Vice-President Morton in Washington.
The show is for the benefit of a Washington Charity, and the
Vice-President generously offered his house prior to his moving
therein. There are some two hundred canvases, and a considerable
amount of money has been raised by admissions.
The American exhibit at the Paris International Exhibition will
be a fairly representative one. The pictures from this side have
already gone over, while the Paris colony will contribute largely,
notable among the latter will be Alexander Harrison, Gari
Melchers, T. A. Bridgeman, Eugene Vail, Sprague Pearce,
Ridgway Knight, and Walter Gay.
The auction sales this year in New York have been greater than
ever, and many well-know-n pictures have gone under the hammer.
But few American pictures have been offered. The Fonlainebleau
school have been so' numerous as to raise serious questions as tu
the ability of such men as Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, and Rousseau
to turn out all the work credited to them. Undoubtedly many
were imitations, — some, too, very bad ; but the craze is on, the
market must be supplied, and unscrupulous dealers are always to
be found who are willing to lend a hand to such practices. In
many cases the newspapers have denounced the fraud, but the
public seem eager, and will not be deterred. In the Stebbins sale
there was offered recently an original drawing by Rosa Bonheur.
After the sale, on examination, it was found to be a photograph
touched up. The auctioneers made instant reparation, having sold
it in good faith for 750 dollars, but when experienced men are so
taken in, how is the public to be sure ?
NOTES.
The Art Congress. — The preliminary arrangements for the Art Congress to be held in Edinburgh in the autumn of this year are now being made. A scheme has been set afoot to promote an exhibition of pictures, to be held in Edinburgh during the sitting of the Congress. This Exhibition is intended to be similar in character to that of Les Jeunes Artistes which is held in Antwerp, and will consist of works by the chief among the younger English and Scottish artists. The proposal has been received with the greatest warmth by many of the most prominent of these, and there is every prospect that the exhibition will be representative of modern art in a specially significant manner. The Concert of the Kyrle Choir at Glasgow, under the leader- ship of Mr. C. Hall Woolnoth, was a conspicuous success. Mr. Woolnoth's very remarkable composition, ' The Skeleton in Armour,' which formed the second part of the concert, is so important an addition to Scottish music that we shall publish an extended notice of it in an early issue. 'Burns in Edinburgh, 1787.' Mr. C. Martin Hardie's histori- cal picture is presently being exhibited in Mr. Davidson's Gallery, Glasgow. The Society of Lady Artists of Glasgow held an interesting and attractive exhibition of their works in their rooms there in the first week of April.
'THE SULKY BOY,' by J. B. Greuze.
Corporation Galleries, Glasgow.
AMONG the pictures which attracted the larger share of popular attention in the Galleries of the Louvre, the 'Cruclie Cassee,' by Jean Baptiste Greuze, occupies a foremost place. There, also, may be seen his ' Accordee de Village " and the 'Maltidiction Paternelle'; and these three pictures may be taken as types of his work. As a painter of budding womanhood, his dainty delicacy, grace, and gentle naivete could scarcely be excelled. While it was as a painter of most alluring heads of young females that he attained his highest reputation, his melodramatic representations of bourgeois life were also exceedingly popular, and the greater proportion of his earlier works were translated to the )3ublic by engraving. Greuze, however, lived in troublous times, and he himself was of an intractable, combative disposition. He was born in 1725, went at an early age to Paris, and he lived through the terrible Revolution period to see the Napoleonic Empire to appearance firmly founded, dying in 1805. During his time the classical revival headed by David took its rise, and the art which was native and natural to Greuze, as well as to many others, came to be despised and neglected. He attempted to work in the classical manner, like others, but in that field he found his strength gone from him. The head of a boy here reproduced from the M'Lellan Collection in the Glasgow Galleries is a fairly good and typical example of the master's work.
