Collections & Critiques

If a painting were done by a brush alone instead of the individual holding that brush, Winslow Homer's watercolors, now on exhibit in Fogg Museum, would justly deserve to be called great art. In fact, if his paintings were the only ones being shown; if there were no means of making a comparative judgment, it is possible that a person could be fooled into believing that Homer, the old American stand-by, was equal to his popular reputation. There are a few works by other painters in this collection of watercolors, however, and it is upon the shoulders of Marin and Hopper, contemporary artists, that the burden rests of showing those who wish to see, that Winslow Homer is a highly over-rated painter.

Homer gained popularity, and justly so, because of his unusual technical facility, and his paintings prove him to be a fine craftsman. Really good art, however, does not consist in mere excellence of handling a give medium. Homer uses color well, and his paintings are beautiful, but there is no mark of actual and reverberating content in his work. Marin, on the other hand, with his contrapuntal placement of emphatic colors, arrives at an emotional shorthand which leads him to pointed interpretations of scenes and aspects of nature. His "Mt. Chocorua" exemplifies this phase of his painting and also serves to show traces of nineteenth century French art on his work. Marin's art is superior to that of Homer because his technique is used not simply as an end in itself but as a means for expressing a vigorous kind of aesthetic insight.

The paintings by Hopper are matchless in their clean and spacious solidity. "Storage Plant" embodies precision without loss of emotional content. The use of clear color together with his distinctive way of turning a relatively unimportant subject into an impressive, work of art; gives a natural force to Hopper's paintings. His clear, cloudless skies, fresh grass, and firm buildings, make a person momentarily forget that he is inside a museum.

This exhibit, necessarily incomplete, is more than adequate, however. In it we can follow sketchily the general development of watercolor painting in our country, see work by Marin and Hopper, perhaps the two most outstanding contemporary artists in America, and also see that true art involves something more than the skillful manipulation of a brush. The collection serves as a fitting close to an unusually fertile season for the museum which has presented during the past year exhibits of etchings, watercolors, and oils taken from almost every important period in the history of art. it is to be regretted that more students do not take advantage of the many exhibits, permanent and temporary, which are housed in the galleries of Fogg each year. A university museum should be the vagabond's heaven rather than the concentrator's haven.