Mrs. Barr in Garden

New Ipswich Historical Society

Mrs. Barr in Garden, Note the tree growing through the roof of the deck.

On this day - May 3, 1898

3 MAY 1898

I left Paris for Crécy in the afternoon.  The rain fell in torrents and I could not ride out to Crécy on my wheel.  I could not even ride from Esbly owing to the mud.  I missed one train and connections with omnibus.  While at the "Menagerie" on Rue Delambre I saw Adolphe who is still living there.  His room is loaded with more stuff than ever.  He has recently made a number of frames, much better ones than the one which came back from the Salon last year in pieces.  This year he sent several pictures with his own home-made frames and as they came back whole and solid it proves that he has advanced considerably in his art and skill.  Perhaps next year a work may be accepted.  Adolphe has made great numbers of studies, his work from the figure in the Beaux Arts school has much merit as he is strong in drawing.  The chief fault with most all his work, indoors and that from nature, it is flat and monotonous - without real life or color, no differences that show decided observation of effect or impression.  They are all highly finished in the smooth and waxy manner so common among pupils of Gerome.  There is such a wanting in vigor that his landscapes are tiresome.  As Adolphe is older than most of the students and has had more experience he should be beyond the amateurish efforts of the newcomers.  He is decidedly ahead but still way behind during the kind of work that he should be doing.  His copies at the Louvre seem to be very good, better than any I have seen by the Americans.  He works rapidly and very closely.  He recently sold several copies to strangers passing through the Louvre, among them being a copy of Millet's "Gleaners" which is a very difficult work to copy well.  Adolphe still spends half of his time in manufacturing materials for his own use.

WAR NEWS.  The steamer Paris arrived safely in New York.  It was feared that she might meet with a Spanish Cruiser.  There has been a great naval battle off Manilla [sic].  The Spanish reports are the only ones received and they admit that they have met with defeat.  Several Spanish vessels are reported to have been destroyed and others sunk to escape falling into our hands.  Everything indicates that Commodore Dewey made a daring attack and risked all.  Our ships were superior and no account of much damage to them is reported.  The dispatch merely says that severe damage was afflicted upon them.  As there was another battle soon after it proves that our ships were still in fighting trim.

Bad weather prevents much from being done out of doors.  Mr. Dearth declares this to be the most uninteresting spring he has seen for years.  With me it has been just the opposite as I never accomplished so much in a few weeks, or have I ever  been in the country long enough at this season to be able to study the rapid change of color from the winter into the delicate verdure of spring.  With my eyes opened to so many new things in nature I have turned out a large number of studies, many of them experiments but all serious.  I have never been with anyone who is so intimately acquainted with nature as Mr. Dearth and my attention has been drawn to things which I have never considered before.  The departure from my methods and selections of last year is very great.  Mr. Swett has been here several days.  He is a friend of Dearth and a painter.  His work is not very good, in fact very poor, for a man who has been studying for years and who has spent several years in Europe in his earlier student days.  Swett is an amusing fellow as he cannot speak or understand French very well and finds hard work to express himself as he is very particular about everything in general and especially in the matter of food.  As for the Dearths, they are not at all satisfied with the living at Poulain's and rate it as the worst they have ever had in France.  They find it hard to understand how the place could have been so well recommended by everyone that they knew had been here.  They are both fond of delicacies and great variety and the food question is made of the greatest importance.  It is the topic of discussion each day at meal times.  Mr. Dearth is a very nervous man and is disturbed very easily.  So is his wife.  When Mr. Dearth paints he is generally used up for a day or so as it seems to exhaust his vitality, and he is very cautious of overdoing things.  Everything he does is with great concentration of energy and power.  Such work has great value and is more or less exhausting.  Students who daily make mere sketches and studies without much though, do not realize how much force and knowledge that a man like Dearth, who is alive to a hundred new impressions and ideas in a few minutes of work from nature, how it requires vigor and strength to carry it out successfully.  No wonder, after the lessons I have had here, that I saw hundreds of superficial works in the Salons.  Men who were not artists because they failed to appreciate what was in their material for pictures.  Knowledge of composition, drawing, and local color is within the reach of most painters, but the knowledge of harmony, subtlety, delicacy, refinement, and beauty is a matter of no small culture.  A faithful representation of facts means but little.  A depth of feeling penetrates the most ordinary, and mere suggestions of beauty can be developed and enhance something which would be commonplace.  Serious study of nature does not merely involve an appreciation of the forms of trees and masses, or a taste for the picturesque, it goes beyond the effects of local color to the vast influences of the atmosphere upon every object.  In many matters this is felt more than seen.  Nature should suggest and be translated rather than be copied literally.  Witness Millet in his early works when he painted plowed ground so truthfully in color that it had the effect of being real earth stuck on.  Later he painted the same effects under the light of sky that suggested more reality and actual nature with more charm and more truth to the impression of the eye.  Deception is a vulgar art.

James Roger diary entry

3rd May 1912

Fair with cool east to northwest wind. David finished Mr. Lord's garden and Mr. Taylor's and went in afternoon for grain. Preparatory service in Church today when Robert and Lena Walker were proposed as members of the Church and to be admitted on Sunday. Communion day—not many present (12). I washed out incubators and scrubbed brooders. Maggie swept the vestry. Got letter from May with children’s show in school group.