Among the most interesting December exhibitions was one devotes to the work of Charles Demuth. Demuth is a colorist. His past work has been of a delicacy which had been pushed to the limit. His water-colors had the quality of the prose of Henry James, some of whose stories he illustrated. They were not American in the sense that Lincoln and Whitman were American. Beautiful as they were they were distinctly morbid. I presume that there is in Demuth a side which is morbid. He would hardly be of our epoch if there were not. There is also a sane, impersonal element in his character and that is the element most evident in his water-colors embodying forms of American architecture. The harmonies of tone are not less beautiful than in his earlier work. They are more resonant, more virile. The spirit of his recent work is more objective than that of his water-colors which I had previously seen.
The portrait of John Drew by Albert Delmont Smith is very characteristic of his art. It is distinctly Sargentesque in manner, but much of his work shows a striving for a fuller vision of his subject than Sargent usually attempted. Sargent either succeeded with a portrait, and, when he succeeded, got the character of his sitter amazingly well or he failed utterly. His failures were apparently not recognized as failures. Mr. Smith is not so ready to give in to failure. Possibly his critical faculty is stronger than that of Sargent and he keeps at a portrait until he achieves a certain measure of success. That is to his credit and it looks as if he would improve in his work as time goes on. On the other hand there is not in his art that searching for the inner truth which characterizes the work of the greatest modern masters. Sargent and Zorn, we now know, have not said the last word in art.
