Evening Star Newspaper, June 9, 1929, Page 106

- 18 e Y outhful Loudoun County Artist Wins High Honor Orne of His Etchings Is Placed in the Library of Congress— Government Service Again Is a Stepping Stone Jor Talent—Local Subjects Pictured in Black and White. BY JOSEPHINE TIGHE, N the year 1855 a youth of 21 resigned a dollar-and-a-half-a-day clerkship in the Coast and Geodetic Survey because the office routine did not appeal to him. It is true that he wasted much of his own and the Government’s valuable time, recorlis showing that he worked but six and a half days in January and five and three- quarters days in February of that year. Perhaps, without realizing it, he had re- ceived in the 12 months of his connection with the survey a vast deal of technical instruction while engaged in drawing and etching topo- graphical plans and maps. Sometimes, to re- lieve the monotony of platted surfaces, he filled in empty spaces on the copper plates with little sketches, which Capt. Benham, his chief, ‘ordered him immediately to erase. He erased them—and resigned. Emerging from the cold, gray Government ‘cocoon, he spread bright and brilliant wings in the direction of Paris—Ilater to sign the mag- nificent offerings of his pen and brush with the now world-famous, jaunty butterfly that rates the initials of “J. M. W.” For this clerk, who separated himself from the service, was James McNeill Whistler. Now, in 1929, another Government clerk is about to pass from Government pay rolls, to follow the calling and career of the master etcher, Whistler. This clerk s but 23 years ‘of age and, believe it or not, already has to +is credit an etching in the permanent exhibi- tion at the Library of Congress—the youngest Wrtist ever exhibiting there. His name is Hirst Milhollen, and he was born &t Philomont, a little village in Loudoun County, Va., some 20 miles above Leesburg. He is a product of that eounty's graded and high schools, and on eoming to Washington in the Fall of 1925 he entered not only George Wash- ington University as a student, but the Library of Congress as a clerk, His affiliation with eollege and library was a rather marked surprise to himself, because his only purpose in the Capital City was to sign up with a man in the plastering business, who promised to take him to Florida, where he could earn §12 a day. His mother, however, appealed %0 & Washington newspaper man whom she knew slightly, with the result that young Milhollen remained here to work and study. By a stroke of great good luck, Winfield Scott Larner, well known journalist, summer- ing in Loudoun, had seen Hirst portray and caricature his schoolmates and teachers on the blackboard at commencement exercises at Round Hill High School. He remembered the boy's unusual talent, and at the library young Milhollen was assigned to the prints division. Here he has received and benefited as much as ever did Whistler in the topographical end of the Geodetic . In addition to art opportunities in the prints division, he has studied under Felix Mahony and Lucien Powell; and so far and so swiftly has he advanced that on June 29 he sails on the Leviathan for Europe, where, at Paris, he will enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, first travele ing over England, Italy and Switzerland, drawe ing and etching as he goes. The young man has been fortunate enough to come under the notice of Gabricile de Vaux Clements of Baltimore, famous etcher and mural decorator of churches. Miss Clements, who now is 72 years of age, at this time main- STAR, WASHINGTO N, D. €, JUNE 9 1929—PART 7. R N T HARRISS EWrnG. Hirst Milhollen. (Copyright, 1929, by Harris & Ewing.) tains a studio in Washington and has becn glad to criticize, aid with wise suggestion and en- courage the clerk-artist. THE etching which won him proud recogni- . tion and place at the Library of Congress is titled “Wash Day” and shows “wet wash” flapping from a line between old tenement house windows in Southwest Washington. It are set with masterly strokes and the “biting” intelligently accomplished. Hirst Milhollen is a shy, tall, earnest, young instrument of torture. The pupils found art contribution so highly amusing that burst into peals of laughter—and Hirst got another licking. From that time on higher culture possessed him. During the year he studied at George Wash- fngton University he drew the cartoons for the Ghost, the college paper, as well as contribut- Whistler, while a student at West Point, was asked in chemistry class to define the word “gilicon.” He blithely stated that silicon was ® gas. Later he remarked, “Had silicon been & gas, I would have been a major general.” Mr. Milhollen was not called upon at George Washington University to clarify the Einstein theory, but, like Poe and Whistler, he had “something else to do in life” and passed up theories for etching tools. How well he suc- ceeded in just two and & half years is evi- denced by “Wash Day,” an etching made before he was 23, which will remain for endless years in the permanent collection at the Library of Congress, displayed not far from etchings by Whistler and Pennell. How swiftly he learned is told in dollars and cents, as well as in art, by one object in the modest “collection” he has been gathering. When he entered the Library, the word “litho- graph” probably meant to him some gaudy poster bill of circus or show. Now he so well kmows lithography that in a Pennsylvania ave- nue antique shop he recently instantly recog- nized a lithograph by Rembrandt Peale. The shop's proprietor, who should have known bet- ter, and did not, sold Mr. Milhollen the rare art object for the tidy sum of $2. A local gallery has valued it as worth about $2,500. Rembrandt Peale, one of the first American artists to use and later perfect the art of engraving from stone, painted from life a portrait of George Washington, afterward en- goaving the portrait on stome. It is thought that not more than 20 lithographs were “struck off,” when, unfortunately, the stone accidently ‘was dropped and broken, The Library of Congress considered itself fortunate in owning one of these priceless pic- tures. When young Milhollen displayed his two-dollar purchase of this same lithograph, David Roberts, head of the prints division, and his assistant, Miss Helen Wright, were speech- less. And well they might be. ‘HE artisi’s collection boasts a much-prized . Whistler. It is one of the Prench set and shows an old woman pottering about her ‘To add to this prized nucleus, Hirst Milhollen says he will go hungry in Paris, even as did “Mon. Butterfly,” who confided to & friend that veyed by the friend. has studied the pictures and methods tler and Pennell and lovingly handled rs and fellow clerks at the Library of Con- are in accord in the belief that he will into another—well, never mind who— but they point impressively to an etching by & 23-year-old boy in the permanent exhibition at the Congressional 3 Whistler-wise, Milhollen has “composed” a tiny “mill,” with arms concealing his initials. “Butterfly.” He selected the “mill” because of the first syllable of his name, but declares he will never use the symbol until he has acquired fame after long years of hard work. The “fortune” part of it does not seem to interest him. Art is long, and time is fleeting—but then there’s the small etching by Nation’s Glove Production. ENOUGH gloves to keep mearly 500,000,000 hands warm were produced in this country during 1927, the census figures for that year, gathered by the Department of Commerce, in- dicate. The total production of the glovers of the country exceeded 20,000,000 dozen pairs at an aggregate value of $72,496,765. An increase of nearly 20 per cent in the number of wage earners over the 1925 total is also indicated, with 19,402 employes engaged, exclusive of those drawing salaries.