Life, art, and letters of George Inness . icture for twenty-five or fifty francs, with a foreign name on it, and sellit at a large profit. But the dealers are handling your pictures, Pop. Yes, I know the dealers are taking up my pictures,but simply because the public wants them. No,George, its all wrong, the whole system. There isno art in this country; we have no amateur. If aman is going in for collecting, why does he not makeenough of a study of it to be able to buy what he likes?In all my acquaintances of art buyers I do not knowthree who would dare buy a picture before he saw thename of t
Life, art, and letters of George Inness . icture for twenty-five or fifty francs, with a foreign name on it, and sellit at a large profit. But the dealers are handling your pictures, Pop. Yes, I know the dealers are taking up my pictures,but simply because the public wants them. No,George, its all wrong, the whole system. There isno art in this country; we have no amateur. If aman is going in for collecting, why does he not makeenough of a study of it to be able to buy what he likes?In all my acquaintances of art buyers I do not knowthree who would dare buy a picture before he saw thename of the painter in the corner. Many a picture Ihave sold for fifty dollars. I wonder if it will beworth more after my death. If it is, I am quite sureit will not be a better work of art just because I amdead. It is interesting to note here that many of these pic-tures for which he received so small a sum are nowbringing in the Fifth Avenue shops ten, fifteen, andtwenty thousand dollars each. Oh, well, he continued, forget it. Maybe I have 126. NEW YORK II said too much. The dealer has his place, and perhapswe poor devils would starve to death without him; but when I see a dealer shed tears over a canvas that heexpects to make live hundred per cent, on, I—well,let \s get back to the picture. Nothing warmed him up to a pitch of inspirationquite so much as to expound his theories. His eyeswere beginning to flash; he was becoming tense, andas lie turned, with a swift, intense movement towardthe easel, I knew that that exquisite tonal picture wasdoomed. He seized his palette, squeezed out a greatquantity of ivory black, and pounced on the canvaswith the alertness of a lion. He dashed at the tree inthe corner with a glaze of black, which he carriedthrough the foreground. There you see, George, the value of the gray colorunderneath glazing. The transparency of it comesout in tone. The shadows are full of color. Not pig-ment ; all light and air. Wipe out a little more of wras any
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