Fry

Doctor Samuel Johnson, that eminent pragmatist, never took off his shoes and danced on a wire. Had he done so, he well knew, he would have given any alert dog the opportunity of pontifying of him, as he once did of a dancing canine. "The wonder is not that he should do it badly, but that he should do it at all." Fearful of becoming the butt of such quadrupedantry, the wise Dr. Johnson abjured wires, seldom removed his shoes.* Not so cautious was Roger Fry, proclaimed by many educated people to be the best Art critic in the world. He painted pictures and last week exhibited them in the Joseph Brummer Galleries, Manhattan.

Mr. Fry came to fame as the spokesman of cubism. His language wears silk. He has written innumerable essays upon such subjects as The Artist's Vision, Art and Socialism, Ancient American Art, Art and Life, Vision and Design. Young painters, students in England, France, the U.S., have hailed him as their prophet.

Mr. Fry has defined Art as "that which formulates that without which there is no Art." Afire to see how the critic would demonstrate his principles in the clear paint, painters, students, flocked last week to his exhibit.

There, they beheld anthologies in oils, signed by Fry. A tree from Watteau, a sash from Cezanne, a tilted corner from Guy Pene Du Bois--second-hand oddments tumbled from the artistic property-trunk that is Mr. Fry's memory. Brave among them was a portrait of Lytton Strachey. His beard was dank, red, hedged, jowl and cheek; clammy were his hands; unkissed, unblessed, looked this great author. Students, painters, gazed upon him, went away muttering about the Fire, the Frying Pan.

*Dr. Johnson, however, was known to have removed ladies' shoes. At a dinner table he would absently stoop down and twitch off the slipper of his dinner-partner, says Thomas Babington Macaulay.