Chapter 14 - Page 2

homes. Americans have peculiar fancies in art. One is called Impressionist Art. As near as I can understand it, painters claim that while you are looking at an object you do not really see it all, you merely gain an impression; so they paint only the impression. In a museum of art I was shown several rooms full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason, but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example, Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a noble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are artistic but who are not.

Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see semipagoda-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a Japanese room, a Moorish room, and an Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an "American room," that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion and assimilation. The average middle-class American knows absolutely nothing about art; the lower classes so little that their homes are hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat in a great flood.

The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up a small number compared to the inartistic whole. I believe America recognizes this, and with her stupendous energy is doing everything to educate the masses in art. They are building splendid museums; rich men give away millions. There