Palm Sprays

The Cleveland Museum of Art had last week just opened its exhibit of 156 foreign paintings chosen from the recent International display of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute (TIME, Oct. 11 et seq.). Among them was a certain "Portrait of My Mother," not by Whistler, but by a friend of Whistler, Ambrose McEvoy, R. A., 48, noted British painter of women. On the day the Cleveland exhibit opened, Painter McEvoy died, in London. A palm spray was placed beneath the portrait of his mother.

In the same exhibit was another painting of a mother, "The Foster Mother," by Frederic Cayley-Robinson, R. A., 64, noted British paint- er of water colors, ambitious murals, Biblical illustrations for the famed Medici Society (prints). The day after Painter McEvoy's death, Painter Robinson died, in London. A palm spray was placed beneath the portrait of his foster mother.

Ambrose McEvoy's reputation was almost as high in the U. S. as in England. In 1920, his exhibition at Sir Joseph Duveen's Manhattan galleries led to many commissions here, at $5,000 each, for his idealized representations of fashionable ladies. (He had painted Consuelo, onetime Duchess of Marlborough.) He was compared with Gainsborough. His "Portrait of my Mother" looks less like Gains- borough's lacy work, however, than Whistler's calm familiar model by the same name. Only, Madam McEvoy seems not so old as Madam Whistler. In fact one feels she would take a very active hand in life, once she stopped sitting for her son.

Frederic Cayley-Robinson was chiefly distinguished in water colors; his "Foster Mother" shows in oil the earlier field. It is very flat, very delicate and not a portrait, but a silent, taking study of a homely cottage interior. The peasant foster mother sews by a window, a ten-year-old girl sitting on the floor beside her. Before a fireplace are two tiny lambs. Sheep traverse a snowy field beyond the window. One hears the hush.