Wapack Lodge

Marion Davis Photo Album

Frank Robbins and Marion Davis, creators of the Wapack Trail.

On this day - February 6, 1898

William Jurian Kaula diary

6 FEB 1898

Our dinner was a huge success (as all our dinners always have been).  I am glad that they do not come often because they are expensive luxuries.  We did our best to make Pitzonni [sic] happy and succeeded.  In fact several others reached the "happy" state and required assistance on the way home.  As Logan threatened to pay for all the surplus champagne we had to allow him the priveledge [sic].  We had too much as it was and enough for fifteen rather than for five men.  The party consisted of Logan, Cartwright, Glover, Pitzonni [sic] and myself.  The dinner lasted from seven o'clock until twelve.  This meant vast quantities of food and drink.  The waiters were astonished at the enormous thirst of these Americans.  I think myself that it is all nonsense to dispose of so many bottles of wine.  It is getting too much of a good thing.  Still this is only my view of it as I do not touch wine - not from principle but because I do not like it.  Therefore, I am to be pitied for what I lose.  After the dinner we took a stroll for the air and exercise.  This always means that the Boul Mich is the best place to go after every celebration.  However, the Café d.Harcourt had no attractions even though it was crammed full of people after midnight.  We then went toward the river in search of a café or brasserie in the region near Pont Neuf.  This is as far as two of the men could go.  The curved seats on the Pont came in good use for the two victims of overloaded stomachs.  One went home via a cab with Glover and we three walked back home.

I had the pleasure of a "private view" of Mr. Kronberg's Salon picture in his studio this morning.  It is a picture of Loie Fuller performing her fire dance on the stage.  Krongberg knows Loie Fuller and she has been to his studio a great many times.  I doubt if she posed much for this work.  He brought Loie and her mother around to Creuset's restaurant a few days ago.  It is not the kind of a place that anyone with money would go to dine but I presume that they wanted to see the place and the students.  The place, too, is full of laborer and common working men in their overhalls [sic] and cordoroys [sic] every noon.  Well the picture!  It is very bad - bad in drawing, composition, color, and painting.  It is a large work and is totally wanting in character.  It is hard to understand how Kronberg with all his years of study cannot produce a better piece of work than this.  He is almost without taste and unable to make a composition.  Kronberg's success has always been in producing something that was before him.  Let him try to produce an arrangement for a picture and he fails completely.  He has the poorest conceivable imignation [sic], and not even the ordinary ability to imitate the works of the men he admires so much in the kind of art (?) that he thinks is beautiful.  The ballet girl and skirt dancer are often good subjects for effects of color and movement and unless he can get something of this nature his attempts will resemble the post effects and cheap bar room pictures.  And Kronberg is not wanting in energy or for want of advice as he has beseiged [sic] almost every American painter in Paris and induced many of them to come to his studio to see the picture.  Even Henri Martin, Constant, and Laurena have paid him a visit.  There is something in his persistence that must make these men generous and kind enough to take the time to go to his studio.  Kronberg leaves no stone unturned to know these men and deserves much praise for his industry.  However, his art is of a deplorable kind and I cannot see much of a future for him in this vein.  The popular art of the day is a dangerous track to follow.  I can ______ full of it, and a year has been spent in working in a direction which has no great value except for experience that alone will count in whatever I attempt in the future.  The fads and fashions will have their day and the best thing that a student can do is to go back and study the spirit of the old masters, who were on the whole more serious and consequently painted better than the artists of today.  Even Constant's portrait of his son in the Luxumburg, which is the best example of a portrait in the gallery, cannot compare with a VanDyke in the Louvre.  The theory of high pitch and color is not modern.  There are frescoes by the old Italians that are as high in key as any of the modern men who claim that light and realism of color is a modern achievement.  Landscape painting alone is the only branch that is superior nowadays.  Yet there are so few fine landscape painters - even far less than good figure painters.  There are a great many who produce a good landscape now and then but very few who go above the average.  The landscapes in the Luxumburg are many but precious few are remarkable in quality.  Harpignes, Cazin, Tharlow, and Besuard lead ahead of the rest.  Of course the others are well worth study - like Bresson, Dupré, Tanzi, Inignon (?), and Simounet, who paint certain things in nature with much skill.  As I naturally prefer landscape to figure painting I have studied the works of these men in particular.  The Impressionists' room at the Luxumburg is a sort of a curiosity shop where all the freaks and fads are collected in a group.  These men stand for the hopeful, vital, youthful, and vigorous in the art of today!

Sample of Louis Kronberg work - Kronberg Work

Benjamin Constant's Portrait of Emmanuel, Son of the Artist

On this day - February 6, 1909

James Roger diary entry

6^th (Thursday)

Frost but milder wind N.E. David did not go to woods, but fixed up place for cows in forenoon and went to Greenville in afternoon with quilt for Hamish.  He brought Mr. Shaw the vet who filed the horse’s teeth and went over sidewalks afterwards.  I fixed Hall for Grange tonight and after lighting up found I was a week too early.