Identifier: americanartamer01mont (find matches)
Title: American art and American art collections; essays on artistic subjects
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Montgomery, Walter
Subjects: Art Artists Art
Publisher: Boston, E.W. Walker & co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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as, and, if we believe in him, do not gather at any rate any intimation of histragic position as the foolhardy rival of a god, and type of reckless presumption for all futuregenerations. This treatment, by the way,* of classic myths is quite characteristic of the artist.He cares little for the accepted form of the story, but, simply taking it as a starting-point, asa stimulant for his fancy, he transforms it and works it out, regardless of precedent. We havemet with a similar instance before in the Head of the Young Medusa, and a still better example (C ... The Model of the Marsyas.Reduced Fac-Simile of a Drawing by E. Vedder 1 Those who saw this painting only in the artists temporary studio in New York did not see it under the most favorable con-ditions. It gained astonishingly in the better light of Messrs. Williams and Everetts gallery, where it was shown in Boston, andsurprised those who had seen it before by the brilliancy of its light in the middle ground and distance —Editor.
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b! W P A J (3 P> S >^ 0 CO M 13 pq £ < pq eq S D Fh o Z < P4 E3 ffi <l Eh 2 o tf ft AMERICAN ART 171 is furnished by the Phorcydes. These three daughters of Phorcys and Ceto personified thehorrors of the sea, and, according to the ancient myth, were born old and ugly, with but oneeye and one tooth for interchangeable use between them. In this form Goethe has introducedthem in the Classical Walpurgis Night, in the second part of Faust, — so ugly that evenMephistopheles, whom they claim to resemble, is shocked at his own ugliness. But Mephis-topheles flatters them, and wonders why sculptors should not prefer to chisel their shapesinstead of Juno, Pallas, Venus, and such like. Has Vedder taken a hint from Mephistopheles?In his rendering, the three old hags — the direct embodiments of fear, horror, and terror, astheir names indicate — have become stately maidens, whose gestures and faces are expressiveof the agony of mind that the foreboding of disaster brings with i

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