National Academy

Fifteen galleries filled With pictures by the important U. S. artists of the last 100 years were opened to the public last week by the National Academy of Design, Man- hattan. From Samuel F. B. Morse's portrait of the aged Marquis de Lafayette to George W. Bellows' famed "Club Night," the trim parade moves on. No circus procession, this, but the orderly march of a club of oddfellows in plain clothes. Here and there moves a strong or vivid figure/- Sargent Bellows or Pennell/- but the exhibit gave critics an opportunity to point out once more that the art of an enterprising commercial century is, by convention, dull. Of the celebrated pictures and sculpture they could find nothing new to say, and after examining the many other interesting specimens they could only express an inevitable doubt that such opera as "A Frosty Morning, Montclair," "The Hurrying River" by Robert H. Nisbet, "Afterglow" by Henry B. Snell, "The Last Moments of John Brown" by Thomas Hovenden will be considered "masterpieces" at the end of another, even though an equally enterprising century.