Exhibit's End

For a month, Zuloaga, famed Spanish artist (Time, Dec. 29), has been in Manhattan; for a month, 52 of his paintings have been on exhibition in the Reinhardt Galleries, Fifth Avenue, while he, slipping up and down the same thoroughfare, has lifted his eyebrows at the city's towering cubes, pulled his mustache at its effervescent hostesses, been courteous to ladies who adored Art and worshipped macaroons, graciously eaten his dinner in houses where the butlers were gentlemen, in houses where the guests were lackeys, in houses where the company was so perfect as to appal epigram. In Manhattan are other artists, less dined. These read, in the Metropolitan press, of Zuloaga's feedings, of his exhibition. They read that 40,000 people had visited the exhibition, that $100,000 worth of pictures had been sold on the opening day,* that the Governor-elect of Massachusetts had insisted on Mr. Zuloaga's selling him a little picture for $35,000, that the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh had bought another for $15,000.

To the Reinhardt Galleries went these artists, beheld what hung upon the walls, announced that they pitied the future Governor, that the Pitts- burgh society had their sympathy. They stood before the canvases, spread their legs into sententious V's, curled their lips. Others gazed, rapt, at the same canvases, like people brought before the face of holiness. A few, however, neither knelt nor mocked. "What," asked these, "are the virtues that have made Zuloaga famous ? Wliat are the faults that have made him popular?" Coldly, they considered.

They saw in his pictures the work of one who, having inherited by birth a robust spirit, acquired by industry a technic, has seen no reason to believe that restraint is a healthier quality than courage, that tone is a better word than color, or that sublety is a synonym for strength. "A picture," said the cold ones, "should be judged according to the terms of its own formula. Though his canvases, vehemently composed, daringly colored, win praise from people who might damn a better picture because it was subtle, restrained, they are not the less good art. A capable man, they said is this Zuloaga, who may well preside in dignity at the banquets of modern artists, but will doubtless twiddle with his napkin if ever, hereafter, he finds himself sitting next De Goya./-

(Many were the portraits of famed people which the considerers surveyed before they passed their judgment:

El Duque de Alba, in the Royal uniform of Spain, leans on his sword in a palace garden. Upon the countenance of this titled guardsman is an expression at once arrogant, amused and sly, the result of a lifetime spent in listening to what blood will tell. A small dachshund straddles at his feet; the sooty face of this quaint and useless animal reflects, curiously enough, his identical expression.

La Duquesa de Alba, imperially slim, the incarnation of privilege erect against change, looks out of a cloudy canvas. A black mantilla frames her small face; beads hang from her wrist; she holds a fan.

La Marchesa Casati, a Venetian lady of great circumstance and eccentricity, is swathed, like a saint's effigy, in redundant robes and feathers. Ringed with smears of darkness, her eyes peer from her flesh as from a carnival mask, wild and unsteady, their speculation contracted in two furious needle-points. In the background clacks a windmill, mad as the Marchesa.

The Dwarf Gregorio, with hand on staff, lifts his resolute snout to the mountains. Behind him sleeps a hilltown.

Miss Margaret Kahn (daughter of Otto H. Kahn, famed U. S. banker) postures in a red scalloped frock and black shawl upon a wild Spanish terrain.

Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, as demure as a teacup, smiles between the bandages of a haughty mantilla.

Juan Belmonte, famed toreador, is three times painted-once in gold, once in black once in silver.

Better Calendars

A winter brook trickling like varnish through cotton'-wool snow under studio trees. ... A young blonde in a blue calico bath-towel smiling greasily down at the legend "Golden Hours Return No More." ... A single rose, a piece of sturgeon, a boiled potato grouped tastefully on a square of linoleum to show how still life can be when it is dead. . . . Such, in the past, have been "art calendars." Receiving one through the public mail, young housewives have made haste to send it down to Maggie, the cook. Now all this may be changed. Last week, Brown and Bigelow, St. Paul publishers of art calendars, announced a "Brown and Bigelow National Art Competition" for the purpose of raising the standard of their wares. Four prizes are offered-$2,500 for the best picture, subject unrestricted, $1,500 for the best story-telling picture, two prizes of $1,000 each, for the best head of a young woman and the best mother and child subject. The judges are to be Gari Melchers, Joseph Pennell, Robert Macbeth, William E. Rudge, James E. Belden. Entries are received at the Anderson Galleries, Manhattan.

*Some sales made before the exhibition opened at all were doubtless included in this estimate.

/-Zuloaga has been called "the modern De Goya"; also "the modern Velasquez/' "the modern El Greco," "the modern Valdes Leal."