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Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists XX . I have passed the summers since my last return from Europe very happily. The cottage and the studio at North Conway have been a source of pleasure and delight to me. The trees that I planted many years ago have grown to be stately and give the unpretending cottage a look of picturesqueness which it could not otherwise possess. The few acres of land running up back of the house enable us to get good views of the mountains, while nothing has been done to take away from the rough nature of the place. Forest trees have been allowed to grow untrimmed, thus furnishing studies for the painter close at hand. The garden too is a constant source of pleasure and profit. It gives one the opportunity of working in the air and sunshine, an interesting and delightful employment. I have not much skill as a gardener, but I have always succeeded in having plenty of fresh vegetables, all we can use, and some for our neighbors. Nothing can be pleasanter than to see your pet hills of corn, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes coming along daily towards fruition. It is so pleasant to see their slowly unfolding buds and blossoms. Especially is this true of the various flowers we cultivate. Though when the wee slender little germs first peep from the ground it is somewhat hard to believe that in a few weeks they will be strong towering plants, covered with multitudes of beautiful blossoms, filling the air with fragrance, while myriads of insects, bees, butterflies and humming-birds enjoy their sweets, and apparently their beauty as well as we. What a joy the summer gives! Perhaps, because it is so fleeting we appreciate its beauty more. Mrs. Champney is very fond of flowers, and her fondness gives her skill to make them flourish, so that we have masses of gold and purple and white swaying in the wind. These swinging masses of rich, brilliant colors are very attractive to me, and I can not resist the impulse to plant my easel in some corner, and try what paints and brushes can do in my hands to put down the fleeting, evanescent colors flashing before me in the sunlight. Having these flowers before me in later years has been a great fascination to me, and has led me to devote a good deal of time to the study of flower painting, and with some little success, as anyone with ability to draw and arrange a picture with contrasts of light, shade and color might have if backed up with enthusiasm and ardor to accomplish what nature has given one to do. It is a difficult problem to solve the lessons that nature lives us in flowers, with their great variety of glowing tints and delicate forms. I would not care to seethe forms delineated with the exactness of the Dutch flower painters where cold details overpower the general effect of brilliant color and softness, and mar the breadth of the composition, and where the skill in imitating a drop of dew is one of the chief things to admire. Neither would I go to the other extreme, and in trying to give breadth lose the strong individual characteristics of each flower, or slur over the forms to make the work more decorative. The trouble is to find the juste millieu between slouchiness and too much exactness of form,-to make a suggestive picture rather than a positively realistic one. Jeanin, the French flower painter, is to me the best of modern artists in flowers. He knows them perfectly, draws them truly, and understands the massing of colors, and the delicate gradations from light to dark, and individualizes each flower so that there is no mistaking it, but not in a finicky, obtrusive way. That is more than can be said of Robie's work. His flowers have all the exquisite details possible, but the breadth of Jeanin is far more effective. North Conway is one of the most charming places in the world to me. I have seen valleys both in this country and in Europe, but I do not recall one where more beauty is centred than there. The valley is broad, the mountains are high, but not too high or near to shut out the sunlight. The meadows or intervales are bright and fresh, broken with fields of grain and corn, giving an air of fruitfulness and abundance. -Elms and maples are scattered here and there in picturesque groups, breaking the monotony of broad spaces. The Saco winds through all these pleasant scenes, adding the charm of its silvery ripples to the picture. The Saco valley is beautiful from Upper Bartlett as far as through the meadows of Fryeburg, but nowhere in its course is there so much to admire as from just above Intervale down through North Conway. If one was a poet no more charming scenes could be found to inspire a pastoral. Echo Lake beyond the river is a gem, set in exquisite surroundings, reflecting the Ledges like a mirror, and when the day is calm, the cliffs repeat the voice or horn many times with added softness and melody. These ledges are very grand and noble objects too. Their height is overpowering as one stands at their base looking upward. The immense boulders thrown about in confusion, covered with lichens and mosses, attest to the upheaval and havoc that must have taken place at different periods. Moat Mountain behind these grand cliffs is a marked feature in the general view. One learns to love its outlines and changing light and shade as the scene moves on or when it is partly shadowed by the clouds, or, again, when the clouds pass over it in heavy floating masses, leaving some point visible, and others lost in charming mystery. It is a constant source of study and pleasure. In truth Moat Mountain is perhaps quite as interesting as Mount Washington and its lofty brothers which are seen at a greater distance. Kearsarge, too, is a noble peak, more isolated than any of the near mountains, and possessing many elements of grandeur. It is especially a fine peak to look from, and really the view from it is more satisfactory than from Mount Washington. The other mountains are not too far away. The Presidential Range can be studied better from its summit than anywhere else, and one can see over into the valley of the Androscoggin, and take in the suggestive far-off lines of the mountains in the state of Maine, as well as the broad-stretches of intervale, forest, lake and mountain looking north. I write with pleasure and pride of the scenery of North Conway and Intervale. I have known it so long, and so intimately that every corner and every stretch of view is dear to me, and I am proud to consider myself almost a native, and part owner of the whole. A large slice of my life has been passed there, and I shall always do battle in its praise. Artists' Brook has from the first been to me one of Conway's greatest charms. From the first day I sketched along its laughing, bubbling waters with Kensett and Casilear down to the present time I have never ceased to be loyal to this my first love. Many, many days and hours have I passed, painting and singing an accompaniment to its silvery music, and I know almost every nook and transparent pool in its three-mile course from its birth in the depths at Black Mountain to where it loses itself in the Saco. Many a day I have shouldered my trap, with a lunch in my pocket, and followed its course for a couple of miles, and settled down to work in some secluded, solitary point, with no voice but the brook to cheer me or urge me on to the struggle of solving Nature's mysteries of light and shade and color. These have been most happy days, for the striving to do a difficult thing is most pleasurable, even though the work is not successful. The mind is kept on the alert, and at the highest point of its activity, and is in a condition to do its best. One day, many summers ago, there alighted at my cottage door in North Conway, from the Centre Harbor stage-coach, a young man of bright intelligent face, who told me that his name was James M. Lewis and that he had come from Providence to study the scenery of the Saco valley in the vicinity of my home. I took him to my studio and showed him some of the points of view I had painted. He seemed pleased and next day started out to find something for himself, but returned saying he could find nothing to paint. He wished I would allow him to paint near me. I agreed. He selected a subject by my side. He made a muddy mess of it. I gave him a few hints and the next day he made a charming little sketch of it. I was amazed and thought he had been shamming. But no, his eyes had only been opened to see as if by magic what was beautiful about him. Then we sketched all the summer and he produced many charming dainty bits. Other summers he came to work and was con-stantly improving. I found he had great imag-inative faculties and delicate, deft execution. He went to Boston, took a studio and painted landscape and still life with rare skill and ease. His pictures were highly esteemed but unfortunately death shortly ended his brilliant career. My studio has been the resort of many highly cultivated people from all parts of our country and even from foreign lands, and I have enjoyed much and learned much from the interchange of ideas with refined and intelligent minds. But I can relate a little incident of quite another kind. A party had been bustling around the studio making loud remarks about the paintings. At last they caught sight of me in my adjoining workroom and cried out: " Now let's go and see him perform!" This I thought a good joke and allowed them to come in. |
