print May 1974

Fooling the Eye

WILLIAM M. DAVIS IS NOT one of the major heroes in the history of American painting. The only comprehensive show ever devoted to his work lasted three days, October 16–18, 1971, in the rooms of the Historical Society of Greater Port Jefferson, Long Island, and the catalogue (Melville A. Kitchin, Port Jefferson’s Foremost Painter, W. M. Davis, 1829–1920) for it has just appeared, in the spring of 1974, thereby establishing something of a record for time lag between exhibition and publication. He was a follower of George Henry Durrie and of William Sidney Mount, but at one point he broke through

print October 1965

Harnett, Peto, Haberle

“AS OUR TASTE EXPANDS, THE PAST GROWS WITH IT, somehow always ahead.” So said James Thrall Soby in a piece he published when he was art critic of the Saturday Review. The present exhibitions signalizes some phase of that growth. It is the first exhibition ever held to concentrate on the three giants of American still life painting at the end of the 19th century: William Michael Harnett, John Frederick Peto, and John Haberle.

Twenty years ago only the name and work of Harnett were known. Ten years ago that neat, simple picture was most confusedly shattered, as the result of research by the writer

print June 1962

Mark Tobey

THE WEST COAST LOOKS OVER over the Pacific and beyond to the Orient—and so a West Coast magazine of art begins by honoring Mark Tobey.

Study Tobey’s painting. At first glance it seems to suggest a group of haloed Gothic figures from the facade of a French cathedral, but then you look closer and begin to wonder. Those figures on their pulsating red ground—are they really Gothic or do they involve the memory of Byzantine icons, mosaics, and churchly frescoes? And still a third possibility presents itself, for one has seen Bodhisattvas assembled like that in more than one painted Tibetan heaven.

Alfred Frankenstein