Not An Optimist

Professional artists, who sometimes envy the lucky strokes of a gifted amateur, might have found something to envy in Maude Phelps Hutchins' latest exhibition at the Albert Roullier Art Galleries in Chicago. Amid the sherry drinking and socialite fun of the opening, attended by Husband Robert Maynard Hutchins and other prominent models for the works on display, there was one cynosure--a bronze piece called Young Mother. This was a life-sized nude that Mrs. Howard Willett, ex-wife of a Chicago trucking millionaire, commissioned the artist to do of her daughter and grandchild. Designed to occupy an outdoor niche at a country place, the figure is an ingenious arrangement of mother, without infant, balanced with taut buttocks and tender, inclining head against the weight of the invisible child.

Usually hopeful of being able to work up a little conventional froth over spirited Mrs. Hutchins' unconventional work, Chicagoans could do nothing but admire Young Mother. The artist's other offerings--terra cotta heads and oil paintings--were sober, sound and slight. Views of the University of Chicago's Hutchins family--especially of Daughter Franja--were plentiful. The artist portrayed her striking self as long-necked, with large black eyes, long black hair simply bobbed, a long and narrow face. Her husband was rendered with a brooding face against a red background.

Of art and education Maude Hutchins has pointedly said: "I am an artist, not an optimist."

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