Part 25 (1/2)

HUDSON, GRACE. Gold medal at Hopkins Inst.i.tute, San Francisco; silver medal at Preliminary World's Fair Exhibition of Pacific States; and medals and honorable mention at several California State exhibitions.

Born in Potter Valley, California. Studied at Hopkins Art Inst.i.tute, San Francisco, under Virgil Williams and Oscar Kunath.

Paints genre subjects, some of which are ”Captain John,” in National Museum; ”Laughing Child,” in C. P. Huntington Collection; ”Who Comes?” in private hands in Denver, etc.

Mrs. Hudson's pictures of Indians, the Pomas especially, are very interesting, although when one sees the living article one wonders how a picture of him, conscientiously painted and truthful in detail, can be so little repulsive--or, in fact, not repulsive at all. At all events, Mrs.

Hudson has no worthy rival in painting California Indians. If we do not sympathize with her choice of subjects, we are compelled to acknowledge that her pictures are full of interest and emphasize the power of this artist in keeping them above a wearisome commonplace.

Her Indian children are attractive, we must admit, and her ”Poma Bride,”

seated in the midst of the baskets that are her dower, is a picture which curiously attracts and holds the attention. Her compositions are simple, and it can only be a rare skill in their treatment that gives them the value that is generally accorded them by critics, who, while approving them, are all the time conscious of surprise at themselves for doing so, and of an unanswered Why? which persists in presenting itself to their thought when seeing or thinking of these pictures.

HULBERT, MRS. KATHERINE ALLMOND. Born in Sacramento Valley, California. Pupil of the San Francisco School of Design under Virgil Williams; National Academy of Design, New York, under Charles Noel Flagg; Artist Artisan Inst.i.tute, New York, under John Ward Stimson.

This artist paints in water-colors and her works are much admired. Among the most important are ”The Stream, South Egremont,” which is in a private gallery in Denver; ”In the Woods” belongs to Mr. Whiting, of Great Barrington; and ”Sunlight and Shadow” to Mr. Benedict, Albany, New York.

Mrs. Hulbert is also favorably known as an ill.u.s.trator and decorative designer.

HUNTER, MARY Y. Four silver medals at Royal Academy Schools Exhibitions; diploma for silver medal, Woman's International Exhibition, Earl's Court, London. Member of Society of Painters in Tempera. Born in New Zealand. Studied at Royal Academy Schools.

The following list of the t.i.tles of Mrs. Hunter's works will give an idea of the subjects she affects: ”Dante and Beatrice,” ”Joy to the Laborer,”

”An Italian Garden,” ”Where shall Wisdom be Found?” and the ”Roadmenders,” in Academy Exhibition, 1903.

The only work of Mrs. Hunter's that I have seen is the ”Dante and Beatrice,” Academy, 1900, and the impression I received leads me to think an article in the _Studio,_ June, 1903, a just estimate of her work. It is by A. L. Baldry, who writes: ”In the band of young artists who are at the present time building up sound reputations which promise to be permanent, places of much prominence must be a.s.signed to Mr. J. Young Hunter and his wife. Though neither of them has been before the public for any considerable period, they have already, by a succession of notable works, earned the right to an amount of attention which, as a rule, can be claimed only by workers who have a large fund of experience to draw upon. But though they have been more than ordinarily successful in establis.h.i.+ng themselves among the few contemporary painters whose performances are worth watching, they have not sprung suddenly into notice by some special achievement or by doing work so sensational that it would not fail to set people talking. There has been no spasmodic brilliancy in their progress, none of that strange alternation of masterly accomplishment and hesitating effort which is apt at times to mark the earlier stages of the life of an artist who may or may not attain greatness in his later years. They have gone forward steadily year by year, amplifying their methods and widening the range of their convictions; and there has been no moment since they made their first appeal to the public at which they can be said to have shown any diminution in the earnestness of their artistic intentions.

”The school to which they belong is one which has latterly gathered to itself a very large number of adherents among the younger painters--a school that, for want of a better name, can be called that of the new Pre-Raphaelites. It has grown up, apparently, as an expression of the reaction which has recently set in against the realistic beliefs taught so a.s.siduously a quarter of a century ago. At the end of the seventies there was a prevailing idea that the only mission of the artist was to record with absolute fidelity the facts of nature.... To-day the fallacy of that creed is properly recognized, and the artists on whom we have to depend in the immediate future for memorable works have subst.i.tuted for it something much more reasonable.... There runs through this new school a vein of romantic fantasy which all thinking people can appreciate, because it leads to the production of pictures which appeal, not only to the eye by their attractiveness of aspect, but also to the mind by their charm of sentiment.... It is because Mr. Young Hunter and his wife have carried out consistently the best principles of this school that they have, in a career of some half-dozen years, established themselves as painters of noteworthy prominence. Their romanticism has always been free from exaggeration and from that morbidity of subject and treatment which is occasionally a defect in the work of young artists. They have kept their art wholesome and sincere, and they have cultivated judiciously those tendencies in it which justify most completely the development of the new Pre-Raphaelitism. They are, indeed, standing examples of the value of this movement, which seems destined to make upon history a mark almost as definite as that left by the original Brotherhood in the middle of the nineteenth century. By their help, and that of the group to which they belong, a new artistic fas.h.i.+on is being established, a fas.h.i.+on of a novel sort, for its hold upon the public is a result not of some irrational popular craze, but of the fascinating arguments which are put into visible shape by the painters themselves.”

HYATT, HARRIET RANDOLPH--MRS. ALFRED L. MAYER. Silver medal at Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, 1895. Member of National Art Club, New York. Born at Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts. Studied at Cowles Art School and with Ross Turner; later under H. H. Kitson and Ernest L. Major.

Among this artist's pictures are ”Shouting above the Tide,” ”Primitive Fis.h.i.+ng,” ”The Choir Invisible,” etc.

The plaster group called the ”Boy with Great Dane” was the work of this artist and her sister, Anna Vaughan Hyatt, and is at the Bureau of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in New York.

HYATT, ANNA VAUGHAN. Member of the Copley Society, Boston. Born in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. Studied nature at Bostock's Animal Arena, Norumbega Park, and at Sportsman's Exhibition. Criticism from H. H.

Kitson.

The princ.i.p.al works of this artist are the ”Boy with Great Dane,” already mentioned, made in conjunction with her sister; a ”Bison,” in a private collection in Boston; and ”Playing with Fire.”

In November, 1902, Miss Hyatt held an exhibition of her works, in plaster and bronze, at the Boston Art Club. There were many small studies taken from life.