Portraits a la Mode

From Paris came a report that Fashion has once again laid hold on Art. The account is that all fashionable women must have portraits of themselves, lifesize, hanging in their drawing rooms. It was recalled that Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt recently brought a portrait of this type to the U. S.

Not only must the portrait be lifesize, it must be done in a style conformable to the decoration of the woman's drawing room. If the drawing room is Louis XV period, so must be the picture. Since many drawing rooms are modern, with Oriental motifs, many pictures are done in ultra-modernist style, all attention given to pose and expression, costumes indicated by a few strokes with oriental backgrounds. Fernand Goin, Jean Gabriel Domergue, Van Dongen are reported to be doing many portraits of this kind. "They have their sittings booked for months ahead, like fashionable dentists."

Faddish folly, perhaps, but not to be deplored. Art has prospered by being the slave of Fashion. Much great work had never been painted had not the good ladies of the Renaissance believed it fashionable to see their portraits as saints and virgins frescoed upon their walls, or had not the ladies of a later period sighed to see themselves as muses, graces, nymphs.