Recent Purchases from the Hayden FundSource: Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 34 (Aug., 1908), pp. 35-36Published by: Museum of Fine Arts, BostonStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4423398 .

Accessed: 17/05/2014 15:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Museum ofFine Arts Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.42 on Sat, 17 May 2014 15:51:08 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BULLETIN 35

May Pastoral W. L. Metcalf

Recent Purchases from the Hayden Fund

FROM the income of the Charles H. Hayden

Fund, devoted to the purchase of paintings by American artists, the Museum has lately acquired the three pictures by W. L. Metcalf, F. W. Benson, and Joseph DeCamp here reproduced, and now hanging in the Fourth Gallery.

Mr. Metcalfs landscape represents the edge of a lowland looking across to wooded heights. On

the right two trees with thin spring foliage, in the thickets bushes in blossom, and on the left the red

tops of budding maple trees. The stream in the meadow runs full and the hills are beginning to ex-

change the gray of their naked boughs for a warmer tone. The field in the foreground shows the crude

green of early herbage and a veiled sky tempers the sunlight bathing the landscape. This subject- matter is most attractive and the composition of the

picture pleasing. The deft and facile touch with which it is executed gives a markedly individual

Eleanor F. W. Benson

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.42 on Sat, 17 May 2014 15:51:08 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

36 MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BULLETIN

The Guitar Player Joseph DeCamp

refinement of texture, when considered in connec- tion with other modern work.

Mr. Benson's canvas represents a young girl dressed in pink and seated on a piazza rail, her figure silhouetted against a landscape composed of a sunlit field and an expanse of water, with hilly shores, seen across a paling and through trees against a quiet sky. Her face is in shadow and light falls upon her hair and lap, while reflected rays from some near illuminated surface light up her left arm and the lower folds of her dress. The color notes of the canvas are divided effectively and the hand- ling is clean and lively. The subject illustrates the artist's interest in flesh tints and draperies in the open, and translates into terms of New England reality the mural paintings of

" The Graces," in the

Congressional Library at Washington, the landscape becoming that of our own coast, the marble seat and colonnade a farmhouse piazza and picket fence, and the figure realizing instead of idealizing the delicacy and vivacity of American girlhood.

In Mr. DeCamp's canvas a lady in evening dress of tulle, with light purple stripes and spangles, is seated, playing a guitar, upon a mahogany sofa upholstered in green, draperies of red and blue beside her. Light from the left illumines the rich tints of neck and face, grazing one arm, the end of the guitar, and the crossed knees be-

neath, and leaving the front of the instrument and the lower spaces in shadow. Opposed to these

deep and varied masses of color, the background above presents an empty neutral bloom, deepening away from the light and indicated as the wall of a room by a single bit of shade cast by the top of a scroll upright in a corner of the sofa. Definite- ness of structure expressed in strong and glowing color gives the canvas a character apart among contemporary American work. The perspective of the head is delightfully found ; the technique of the hair singularly effective and one of the prin- cipal attractions of the picture.

Note

A NEW EXHIBITION is to be opened in the Print Rooms during the first days of August, se- lected from the landscape work of noted artists from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century. D?rer and Rembrandt will naturally dominate the exhibition, but aside from their memorable prints many attractive creations will be found less familiar and often very delightful to the average visitor. The field is large indeed and should offer matter for interesting study and comparison. A more detailed discussion of the exhibition is to be pub- lished in the next number of the Bulletin. E. H. R.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.42 on Sat, 17 May 2014 15:51:08 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions