The regular visitor to the Paris salons might know almost
all that has been done in France in the way of mural painting. The
public of our American exhibitions knows only vaguely and by hearsay
what our mural painters have done and are doing. It is true that such
work is infinitely better seen in place, but it is a pity it cannot be
seen, even imperfectly, by the people who attend our exhibitions--people
who can rarely have the necessary knowledge to read such collections of
sketches, studies, and photographs as are shown at the exhibitions of
the Architectural League, where, alone, our mural painters can show
anything. If it were seen it would surely alter the estimation in which
American figure-painting is held. Such work as was done by the late John
La Farge, such work as is being done by Blashfield and Mowbray and
Simmons and a dozen others, if not, in the most limited sense of the
word, pictorial, is even further removed from the mere sketch or
study--the mere bit of good painting--than is the finest easel picture.
But it is not only in mural decoration that serious figure-painting is
being done in this country. I do not see how any one can deny the name
of pictures to the genre paintings of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Paxton unless
he is prepared to deny pictorial quality to the whole Dutch school of
the seventeenth century; and the example of these men is influencing a
number of others toward the production of thoroughly thought-out and
executed genre pictures.
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