November 10, 1934
At the Brooklyn Museum in the November Exhibition of Etchings from the Museum Collection, color prints by eight artists occupy an important place. Those represented are Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Pop Hart, Jerome Myers, E. J. Detwold, Augusta Rathbone, Fernand Verhaegen, Maurice Taquoy, and Charles Frederick Wilson Mielatz. Verhaegen’s "La Ronde des Gilles" is a gay and spirited performance suggesting Cezanne in color and composition. Pop Hart's Picnic Party and Orizaba both date from 1925. In them his sense of charicature was tempered by a sensitive handling of color.
The exhibition includes several prints acquired during the current year. Among these Martin Lewis, Howard Cook, Kenneth Hayes Miller, James Allen, Arthur William Heintzelman, Mons Breidvik, Troy Kinney, Edmund Blampied and Gerald Lewis Brockhurst are represented. Most of the prints shown have been acquired by purchase but there are important bequests from Dr. Axel Hellrung and Emil Fuchs, and gifts from E. C. Blum, A. Augustus Healy, Adolph Lewisohn, F.L. Babbott, Minna Citron, B. S. Eli, Dr. and Mrs. Slocom Davenport, Dan O’Brien, Mrs. Laurant Oppenheim, and S. P. Avery. There are also loans from the United States Government of work from the Public Works of Art Project.
The exhibition is fairly comprehensive of the many tendencies in etching, from the most conservative to several of the modern trends. The British tradition is represented at its best by Buirhead Bone, D. Y. Cameron, James McBey, and Seymour Hayden. Possibly to this list should be added certain others whose work is allied to the British tradition in quality and feeling for light, among others Brockhurst, Krause, Lewis and Christensen.
Meryon is not represented, but the Meryon tradition appears in the prints of John Taylor Arms, Giddens, Chamberlain and others. The head of a tiger by E. J. Detwold is almost the only print in which Japanese influence is strongly felt. There are excellent portraits by Heintzelman and Osborn, men in action (a favorite subject with the Federal artists) by James Allen, Troy Kinney, and A. Briscoe. Hutty and Costigan show the influence of the French school of landscapists but have an individual quality of freshness, air and light. Zorn, who is represented by one print, is felt also in the work of Briscoe, and Nisbit. There are five Whistler's, and further illustration of the Whistler schoo1 in the work of Pennell, Brangwyn , Mielatz, Evergood, Rushbury and Wilkinson. Brangwyn's Street Performers is an especially effective design in swirling masses of light and shadow. Matisse Hart, Verhaegen, Miller, Cady, and in a very different way Brockhurst and Cook illustrate the divergence from tradition along various lines in con-temporary prints.
The exhibition of methods and processes in the Library Gallery continues and affords an interesting technical commentary on the group of etchings in the Print Gallery.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 1934, 049. View Original
