Art: Faces

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(See front cover)

It is a truism that hands are as expressive as faces and it is true that they are a more certain means of identification. Nonetheless, because it is easy to see, a face is the more convenient link between a person and his name. So convenient indeed that it is regarded as the index, not to a person's name alone, but even to his character; faces, in fact, are almost always mistaken for persons. Hence when a proud man wishes to leave something of his pride, after death, above the humble dust; when a famed man wishes to allow his admirers to satisfy their appetites for adulation; when a rich man wishes to indicate the extent of his domain and the individualities of its proprietor; such a person requires a portrait painter to come into his attendance and to reproduce, upon canvas, a face, in light and shade.

The function of the portrait painter, as distinct from that of the painter, can be thus explained. It is his business not only to produce a work of art but to produce a likeness that satisfies the sitter or the sitter's advisors. Few portrait painters can achieve the two things simultaneously and those who can quickly become popular; their popularity grows larger like a snowball.

Whom, for example, would a very wealthy and impudent plutocrat of Milwaukee ask to paint his features, should he want this done? He would ask Sir William Orpen, Sir John Lavery, Augustus E. John, or Ignacio Zuloaga: these, with a few others of less consequence, from a small group whose prices, higher than those of other portrait painters, average about $10,000.* Had the plutocrat desired last week to have his portrait painted, he would, if alert, have sent a cable to Augustus John for Painter John, after a frantic scurrying departure, was on his way to the U. S. while the rest were far away. Had he received such a request Painter John would doubtless have torn it into many pieces.

Ever since he left the Slade School, in London, many years ago, Painter John has been careless of the feelings of the people whom he paints or the people who talk about paintings. When he painted Lloyd George, a fellow native of Wales, the statesman sadly sputtered: "That is the picture of a Welshman at his worst!"

When he exhibited first at the English Art Club, at about the same time as Sir William Orpen, critics snarled at him for selecting "ugly subjects." Disregarding the absurd grounds for their quarrel, the critics were probably wrong. Painter John was not disturbed at their objections. He became a teacher of art at the Liverpool University School of Art from which he soon disappeared to live among gypsies while painting pictures of them.

After the War, Augustus John was an artist of great personal as well as esthetic eclat. He was elected to the Royal Academy whereupon he increased his reputation for daring independence by sending a picture to the Academy Exhibition which he followed up with this remark: "I never asked them to admit me. I never sent them a picture until after they elected me."