Wisconsin School for the Deaf - Tattler Yearbook (Delavan, WI)

Page 26 text:

Ever since the Sanctuary wiu opened there has been an attendance of not Icmi than a thou ■and vial tor a day. On Sunday nnd on holiday there are from ix to ten thousand. The newspaper leave it such publicity that tourists have come from all over the country to see the place. Mr. Bok want the American people to aee what • o o o he has prepared for them. The purpose of the Tower la to create symbol of pure beauty, which we need o much in this country. It la n place in which to rest and ponder upon what we are doing and where we are going. 0 Q 0 • AMERICAN ARTISTS By Leo W. R«iniklt It has been tut id that in various part of the world the word, American ism,M has come to symbolise lust for materialism, nnd all finer emotions ure lacking. It in true that art tins been developed slowly in America, but a Arm foundation for ita development has been established. In the li»t of American Artists, to whom credit is due for thi , are the namoa of George In ness. John l-n Fargo. James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Gilbert Stuart. Neither time nor space will permit me to tell much about each one. They, with others, have aroused an interest In art which shows that materialism has not crushed out the idealism of America. George Inness it known ax a pathfinder in American art. for by natural impulse he waa led to follow the great artists of other countries. His father, a retired New York grocer, planned that he enter business and even opened a small ■tore for him in Newark. New Jersey; but the ran had made up his mind to study art. For a r;hort time he was apprenticed to an engraver and later studied painting under a pupil of Delnrnchr. Beyond this he was self taught. Through the influence of Thomas Colo, a landscape painter and founder of an art school in the east, Innes began studying special forms of nature. When he returned from his first trip to Europe in the interest of art. he was forty years of age. The Barbixon painters had greatly impressed him. This was the beginning of his career as a landscape painter. Inncsa showed superiority in American art because of hl» close study of nature's forms. In fact he was the father of the naturalistic movement in American landscape. He was religiously inclined, imaginative, questioning nnd rather argumentative. These qualities he applied to his art. While Innes has been culled, an impetuous nnd passionate painter, most of his pictures have nn atmosphere of repose. Corot’s work made a lasting impression on him. Among his most famous paintings are Winter Morning, Montclair, The Wood Gatherers. The Clouded Sun, and “Summer Silence, a large copy of which hangs on the wall in the assembly room of the Delavnn High School. As soon as he wax financially able, he established himself in a country home in New Jersey, where he was xurroundod by inspiring views of nature. Here he rose to great heights as a pioneer American artist. John Iji Fargo, who is noted for his mural decorations, was born in New York in 1835. He was n student of art long before he took it up as a profession. His father’s house in Washington Square was well stocked with books and picture . Many highly cultured people frequented the home. He recoived his training in Paris. After his return to America, hr worked in a lawyer’s office In New York not having yet decided to take up art as a livelihood. His first work was the mural decorations for Trinity Church in Boston. This was such a success that he directed his attention to the art of mural decorations and window designing. In 188? he executed one of his finest things, the large altar piece in the Church of the Ascension, In New York. The kinds of subject which I-a Fargo undertook were numerous and varied including portrait . landscapes and religious subject . Among his best paintings are The Arrival of the Magi.” decorations in the Brick Church in New York nnd those in the Boston Public Library. Almost every school boy nnd girl has learned to love and enjoy the picture, “The Portrait of My Mother, painted by James McNeill Whistler. All dreiwed in black she sit in profile with with her feet upon a foot-stool and her hands laid peacefully on her lap; the delicate lace of her cap silhouetted against the gray wall. The expression on her fact is that of one whose thought are drifting back to the days of long ugo. Only u man of unusual sweetne could have produced such a masterpiece. Lowell. Massachusetts, is the birthplace of this renowned American artist nnd 1834 the year in which he was born. He was educated in West Point, but studied art in France nnd England. His etching have been universally praised. Quoting from an

Page 25 text:

EDWARD BOK'S SINGING TOWER Arlene PurueWer Edward Bok. an American Journalist and writer, wa born in Holland. He came to the United Stater with hi- parent when he was nix years old. HI parent were poor and he hud to work hard to make a living. He attended the public school but wan largely self-educated. For thirty year he wa editor of the Ladle ' Home Journal and also wrote a few books. Two of them are: The Americani m of Edward Bok, and A Dutch Boy Fifty Year Later.” Both Mr. and Mr . Bok have done much to promote a love of art among the people. Several year ago Mr. Bok conceived the idea of entab-ll hing a sanctuary with a alnging tower somewhere in America. He finally selected Florida as the place to build it. The Singing Tower and Sonctuary i nt Mountain Lake. Florida. It i two hundred and five feet high and U built of pink Georgia marble and tan-colored coquina stone. It rise upward from a granite base fifty one feet in width. The structure become octagonal toward the top and a little more than thirty feet in width. The story that the Sanctuary and Tower were memorial to hu parent and grandparent t not true. Mr. Bok him»elf ay» he never thought of them when he conceived the idea of creating the tower. The tower ha a carillon of 61 bell . A carillon ha from thirty to seventy bell giving the complete chromatic scale with a comp of from three to five octaves. It is often confused with a chime . A chime ha but u few bell in the diatonic scale with the usual compass of only an octave. A chime can be played by the moat amateur musician; the carillon, rightly played, require a b«U-master of musical education and years of experience with bell . Mr. Anton Brec of Antwerp plays the bell in Mr. Bok' tower. Mr. Bok first wont over the field of heels and found that a carillon of the sixe and weight he wanted could not be made in America, »o he cast hu eye toward England and there he found the firm capable of casting what he desired. It took fifteen month to make them, and when they were finished he asked three musician to go to England to test their tone and quality. They did so with the result that they pronounced them the most perfectly tuned bell they had ever heard. These bell arc the gift of Edward Bok to the American people. The bell weigh from seventoon pound to twelve ton each. The tower iUelf weigh fifty-five hundred ton and so ia capable of maintain- ing no great a weight of bell . Getting the bell from Jacksonville, where they were landed from the ship, was a problem. No trucks could hold such a weight and the wooden bridges along the road from Jnckiionville to Mountain Lake could not bear the burden, o the railroad leading to Mountain laike built new fiat freight car , each with a double flooring, and a special train wa» made up. In this way the enormous and valuable bells arrived safely at Lake Wales, the nearest railroad station. There electric crane hointed them to especially strong trucks. The constructors worked so hard that within four week each bell hung in its permanent place. When the work was finished, each workman struck a bell which produced a nerve-racking sound. The carvings on the marble bond encircling the tower are eagles, herons, flamingoes, and pelicans. They are the work of twenty-aix carvers. The carving was designed by Lee Laurie, a New York sculptor. The entrance to the tower is a masterpiece by Samuel Ycllin, a famous ironworker. There are wto gate and a railing leading across the moat to the tower door and there are stair and railings in the private room. Every bit of the ironwork in them is fully of beauty. When the work of irrigation and planting was begun, the spot was just a bare hill. Frederick Law Olmstead. a New England landscape architect, dug trenches and laid water pipes in every part of the Sanctuary. He transplanted thousands of shrubs and trees to it- The result »o far ha been very uccessful for everything was well taken care of and plenty of water wo given each plant. You can now. after six year , see the Sanctuary in its rich verdure that Northerner have estimated required o growth of fifteen years. It is said to b the most beautiful spot in America. The place contain forty-eight acres. The Sanctuary and the Tower are protected from the noise cau«ed by automobiles and it la Intended that no industrial plants or factories will ever mar its quiet and repose. Milton Medary. a Philadelphia architect, made sketches for ix months, before he wa satisfied, then he built what the visitor see today. The bird have found the Sanctuary a place of safety. They were not long in finding it and they come back each year. There are fifty bird baths in the Sanctuary’ and those are used each morning by the bird . It ho been announced that a beacon will ome day bo placed on the tower to protect flier .

Page 27 text:

article on American artists, “Me has proved him-•elf the greatest mauler of the needle since Rembrandt. Rembrandt's work ia rather a triumph of knowledge; while Whistler's is a triumph of power. His painting show talent and originality. Whistler called hi» paintings Nocturnes and symphonies. He never in his art deviated from the sweet and wholesome. The White Girl which was painted by Whistler, when he was twenty-nine year old. Is now owned in America. Had America appreciated the portrait of his mother it, too, would have been in his native country instead of in the Luxembourg. Among his best paintings are Old Hallcrsea Bridge, Sea and Rain, u portrait of Carlyle and Little Wild Rose, besides the portrait of his mother. “A favored child of the Muses,” says one writer of John Singer Sargent, who very early in life reached the topmost rung of the ladder in his profession. Most artists have to labor long and overcome many obstacles to reach such maturity.His father was a Massachusetts gentleman who had retired from the practice of medicine. John Singer Sargent was born in Florence and there spent his youth. He was surrounded in his home by refinement, was given a good classical and modern education, and got his start as an artist In Florence, where nil around him was dignity and beauty, in its galleries and in its streets. At the age of eighteen he went to Paris to become the pupil of Carolus Duran. He begun at once to absorb his master. At the age of twenty-three he painted n portrait of him, which showed that he had made Duran’s mastery hi own. HU first visit to the United State- was when he was twenty year of age. Paris or London has uiways been bis home. Later he visited Madrid and came di-lectly under Velasquez. Finally through the ln-f.uence of his teacher when a boy in Florence, t nd through the influence of Carolus Duran and Vrlonqucx he fashioned u style very much hit own, attaining great success. In everything he ttudied, he could see a picture. Among his very-fine portrait paintings are Joseph Jefferson, Ellen Terry as Lady Mncheth, Secretary Hoy tvnd Theodore Roosevelt. William Thorne, a resident of Delavan. also a recognized American portrait painter, is an intimate friend of Sargent and in his studio hangs a portrait of himself, which is the work of John Linger Sargent. Many of Sargent’s pictures are exhibited in the Boston Public Library. He ranks as the foremost portrait painter of his day. Most American children are familiar with Athenasum Portrait of George Washington yet probably very few know the name of the artist, Gilbert Stuart. Shortly befor his birth, which was in 1766 hU father, a native of Scotland, moved to N’arraganset, Rhode Island. He ia ordinarily spoken of as the first of American masters of painting. HU mother taught him in English, while the Rev. Mr. Bissert instructed him in Latin. He seemed to have been quick at learning but did not care to study, being of a mischievous nature and addicted to drawing. One day when Dr. William Hunter was paying a professional visit to the family, he noticed the boy’s sketches. Later the kind physician presented Stuart with a box of paints and brushes. In after years he looked back to thU day with thanksgiving. At the age of thirteen he painted portraits of Mr. and Mrs. John Bannister. A Scotch painter, Cosmo Alexander, became much interested in Stuart. After teaching him for a time, he took him to Scotland. Owing to hU death Stuart was obliged to return to the United State . Hi portraits show his admiration of the robuct physical qualities and the strong mental and moral character. In 1765 he again set out for England. After suffering much privation, he mustered up enough courage to make a call upon his country man, Benjamin West. The young man’s demeanour pleased West, so he invited him to bring his work for inspection. He admitted him as a pupil and for eight years he was in West’s studio. Fame came immediately. While in England, he painted the portraits of Benjamin West. LouU XVI, the Prince of Wales, and several other notable characters. Great eagerness to paint George Washington brought him back to the United States in 17 J2. Two years later he went to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session. He established a studio in that city. He painted three portraits of Washington from life. The first was destroyed by the artist because it was unsatisfactory. The second now hangs in London. The third, against Washington's own desire, was done to please hU wife and was left intentionally unfinished. It was purchased from Stuart’s widow and presented to the Boston Athenaeum. It now hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He said that he worked to express sentiment, grace and character and in Washington he found all three. He is not n painter of great pictures but of some he holds a dignified position and is in the line of great portraits. In the history of American Art great American Artists. As 1 have mentioned before, there is not space enough for me to tell but little about these artists whose works have shown that art in America ha been established and it may not be long before American art will be universally recognised.