The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 4, 1896, Page 16

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1896. The Dutch Ra_i nters A Little Fat Queen and Her Big Jubilee Mesdag's Gallery and the Dangers of Wheeling in Holland THE HAGUE, Hovuraxp, Sept. 16.—On the map of Europe Holland occupies such a little space, just a little corner that might be clipped from an outlying section of California and never be missed. From Rotterdam in the south to Amsterdam in the north an express train shoots over the level country in one hour and fifteen minutes. From the windows you may catch a glimpse of Delft, with its wind- mills and canals and waving green trees, perpetuated in blue and white ware in the great factonies near the station. Another expanse of deep green fields, cat by tiny rivers of water, and the train goes thunder- inginto The Hague,’S Gravenhage, to be more correct and a great deal more Dutch. Pecople tumble out of the carriages, there is a great deal of slamming and banging of doors, shouting and calling in the sten- torian and guttural Dutch tongue, and away goes the train through the imposing streets of the mipiature capital, past the trees of the little Queen’s park, out again into the interminable flat fields, with the cones of flax in s vanishing perspective, and at the end a shimmering gray-green | cloud, low on the horizon, that may mean smoke, but in reality is the sea, beating on the long white beaches of Scheven- ingen, Suddenly the country begins to blaze. From dim and gray and wet green it turns to vivia scarlet, golden yellow, purple, violet and creamy white. Haar- lem and the tulip-beds are in the distance. The tulips are as impossibly bright as the flowers in a carpet; they look unreal. But when the train stops for breath and more passengers little boys and girls with light northern eyes and tow hair under black and whit2 caps besiege each com- pertment and for the merest nothing at all, “Meguffrouw’ or *Myn- heer,” they will part with bunches of the most tangible, thick, soft lowers, fastened together securely with a wisp of hay, and & disregard to color that may put fas- tidious teeth on edge. At last the train is off again end in an incredibly short time you are zigzagging your way through the comvlicated narrow streets of Amsterdam. In less than one hour and a half you bave crossed the prin- cipal part of Holland. The brave little country is justly proud of itself, of its he- roic history, of its past and present pros- perity, of its great men and its great pictures, of its past hardships and batties and struggles with human enemies and the more deadly dangers of the storm | and the sea, And abovs all it is proud of its little plump and pretty fair-haired Queen. On the 31st of August all Holland celebrated ths royal birthday, the fifteenth or sixteenth at the most. In the villages the schooimasters led their flocks in bright orange sashes, with orange cock- ades in their boys' caps and orange mari- golds in wreaths around every little girl’s sunburned face. Down each street they pattered, making the noise of a whole troop of cavalry, and wherever there was an inn or an important farmhouse the whole cavalcade stopped, and standing as straight as tbeir little bow legs and their enormous kiumpen will permit, there poured forth their infant souls in patriotic songs with a lung power that was enviable, especially at a distance. Then they burst into shrill cheers and shouted : “Lang leve de Konigin!” This eaded the ceremony so far as the singing is concerned, but the reward must be immediately forthcoming or an awful gloom settles upon each face. The reward is in the shape of very small, round cakes, 8s hard as bullets; in fact, they would indisputably have saved the day at Bunker Hill if they had been used as ammunition. The cakes never fail, however, ultimately to restore the general cheerfulness, and thev march on with radiant faces and full mouths, giving muffled cheers for every- body. The Queen herselt can hardly be happler than these very small subjects. They are important factorsin the gen- eral economy, for they number legion in a limited population, and the Dutch father and mother, perhaps in view of the chas- tening experiences of their hardworked future lives, do not believe in efficacious discipline at an early age. The bicycle is the object of their particular attention. They call it ‘a feets’’—the abbreviation of velocivede—and woe betide the woman who rides alone through a peaceful and apparently solitary viilage, along a sunny road between two rows of stately trees, with a convenient “sloot” to fall into on either side of the road. The children spring up from the ground apparently, first two, then four, then twenty, they signal the little fiends ata distance, and attach themselves to the unfortunate rider with howls and yells that pierce the ear and the quaking heart. There is nothing to do buttorun the gauntlet, 1o fly at full speed in order to escape their outstretched feet, and sticks, and grasping hands, as you would escape a hungry pack of wolves. The roads are generally good and the villages themselves are like :he pictures Neuhuys (pronounced Novhouse), Artz and Israels love to paint. The doors are generally open and the strong light and shadow bring into prominencs the busy figures of the women working at the flax, knitting or serubbing their hard flcors, Israels has represented every phase of Datch life on sea and land, in shadow and | sunlight, in winter and summer. The other modern Dutch masters have con- fined themselves to special branches. | | Adolf Artz, one of the mostdistinguished of the pupils of Israels, studies the sep- arate figures in an out-of-door light; his shepherdesses and goatherds, women gathering potatoes, little squat, sturdy children playing, animate generally an autumnal landscape; wide and mel- ancholy plains, with grayish blue grass and silver gray skies. When he represents sunlight it is the pale light that may at any moment van- ish bebind the clouds; a windmill turns on the horizon and faint mists obscure the distance. Jongkind, who died a few years ago and whose pictures have now gained a value he never coveted for them, painted the freshness and tbe glitter of his beloved Dutch landscape, to which he was for many years a stranger. He was a distant relative of Corot, brother to Diaz, and to Daubigny the closest friend. He painted moonlight with a delicacy that he learned from Corot; in his energetic day- light studies he learned from Diaz the value of thickly modeled light almost like low relief, and from Daubigny he ap- preciated the sharp value of a few keen accents, in the modeling of clouds, or water, or houses, or the little figures that are one, two, three little splashes of paint, and which make his studies vibrate with buman interest. He painted in Paris, around the Pont Neuf, in the old streets; on the Norman seacoast. On this he traveled to Belgium and portrayed the swarming streets of little towns. Itisa curipus fact that in 1852 he ruceived_a medal in Paris and that until the exposi- tion of 1889 no further work of his was ac- cepted by the salon juries. It was after this most remarkable ex- hibition that Jongkind was recognized as a strong link between the school of Fontaineblean and modern art. While he did not scruple to use the methods and effects of the men for whom his admira- tion amounted to reverence, he made his own work so distinctly personal that it may be recognized at once in any exhibi- tion for its own strong and characteristic charm, The two brothers William and Jacob Maris and Mauve are the poets of Hol- land. They make of the landscape the country of a dream; so delicate, so ten- der, se iuminous and simple. The har- monies of very early morning, the in- definite beauties of the twilight attract them, and they render them with rare success. In Mesdag we have two personalities, the great marine painter and the enthusi- astic collector. Mesdag paints thesea as few men in or out of Holland have painted it. The windy sky, torn into shreds of cloud and mist, the sea disturbed and shaken as with the shudder of an ap- proaching storm, he represents by means of a color that is nearly always silver and rose and gray. Rarely does he introduce the heavy, dark sails and somber houses of the fishing villages, as a less observant eye would portray them, by the force of strong contrasts. He bathes his canvas in light, and to stand before a very good ONE OF MESDAG S MARINE EFFECTS. Mesdag, for no master is evenly excellent, is to glance out of a gold-framed window and to receive a quick impression of the sea as it Jooks at sea, tossed and threat- ening or smooth as oil, with thick and quivering reflections from the clouds or the passing boats, or the great flaming ball of the sun that is his one temptation to introduce a flash of vivid color. No one who visits The Hague should miss seeing Mesdag’s private gallery, which occupies two whoie floors of his magnificent honse. Mrs. Mesdag is also a painter, and their home is the center for all the intelligent and cosmopolitan cir- cles in the city. - The gallery is composed largely of the works of the echool of 1830, to whom the Holianders owe so much—Jean Francois Milletin & hundred drawings, Corot and Daubigny, Diaz and Rousseau—till & sense of almost overwielming enjoyment and envy takes possession of the bewildered visitor who is not hurried, who may come as often as he pleases, who may sit for an hour absorbed before a masterpiece with- out the sensation that he is being hunted out by an impatient guide or a politely bored and expectant footman. The Ital- ian school, the modern Enghsh and the most striking modern Dutchmen are all represented. 5 Sensations come thick and fast in this big palatial studio-house, with thick rugs, polished floors, carved and heavy old furniture and the jewels set like mosaics in the walls, Vax Dycx Browx. FRAGMENTS OF THE FRIEZE THAT HAS JUST BEEN FINISHED BY ART = HUR MATHEWS IN THE HOME OF HORACE HILL. Fs Free fis the Air Gity Life Gontains Wisdom for the Dullest Bill Boards, Art Signs . and Street Orators Are Liessons for Al Have you ever considered the educa- tional chances of life in this City? Not those inclosed by the four walls of a schoolhouse—those I deem less than may be found in the country, where individ- ualism has not quite disappeared—but those found in outside life, and which ‘may be enjoyed alike by gamin and prince. I say may be enjoyed, purposely, instead of are enjoyed alike, because, given the same opportunities and two people, one will make a better use of them than will the other. Very likely the gamin will see more than the prince. ‘We all have seen men with little schol- arly education who show more practical knowledge of life than an erudite profes- sor. One of these may break every rule of syntax while telling of some new machine or process, but he will convey his mean- Ing straight to the understanding. There are men who néver had to do bard labor in their lives who can tell how everything is made, from a cream cheese to a moni- tor, and ail because they have taken the education which is all about us. Let us suppose a boy can read; most boys can; if they were not allowed the two years at school which ought to ac- complish that, they would learn like Sam ‘Welier"s father and Maggie from the signs. Those same signs and advertisements are very good primers, terse and trenchant, and about the things we all use and see. The illustrations are not always the most chaste, neither are those in the books open to the scholar; there never has been found a way to pass through life without coming into contact with the sin and the sadness of life. Right here the difference in dispositions will show itself. While some will gaze entranced on dancing girls who forgot to dress and devour certain pink papers, others will look long at the pictured ani- mals on the circus poster, and still others will spell out the news on the bulletin. boards. Without a cent one can keep abreast with the times by means of these boards and the philanthropically spread- out paper below; and without price he may sitin a comfortable room and read the most expensive magazines of the day— an education in themselves. Pictures are everywhere, good and bad, and one may learn, as one must anyway by an inward sense which pictures are worth more than a glance. A wonderful art gallery is free one day in each month to whoever will chimb the hill, and art stores all over the City hang out their choicest wares to feast the eyes of the passing crowd. The windows of a greatstore are a lesson to many who have had average opportuni- ties, Thedelicately clad ladies and dainty chilaren therein snow bow the other fiftieth of the world lives,and though the figuresare palpable shams the street boy learns early that the real creatures are often no less a sham, and minus the cloties wounld be as common. The windows show, too, how tbe interior of a mansion looks and what beautiful useless things go to makea room. They show the things needful, the things beautiful and the things neither one nor the other, but fashionable—the books be- ing read and the people being talked about. It would seem that a student of windows might be dropped into marble halls without showing awe or awkward- ness. There are speakers for every subject; there are many lessons to learn and others to unlearn listening to public speakers and corner orators. It seems to me that the very lampposts have been educated during this campaign. In more serious vein there are learned lecturers whose lore is free. No one clean, however poor, would be turned away from a university extension lecture or from the Academy of Sciences. And taks this last as an edu- cator—how long might one study there, growing more and more fascinated all the time? I wender how many of the people who travel 1n them know all about the work- ing of an electric-car, or even a cable? Yet these things are open and free as the air around us. The great wheels and en- gines turn and pant before our cyesif we would but look, and there is always some one wiiling to explain. Men who run en- gines and work with electricity and do all _those wonderful, mysterious things are glad to tell about it to people who care to hear. Even though laboring under the unsurmountable disadvantage of being a woman, and thereby being incapable of understanding anything with more than two wheels, I never hesitate to ask about things, and never fail to find out, if it is something I ought to know. The signs of “No Admittance” are weak as water when stormed by an- interested lad’s eye, and crusiy, oil-spotted old fellows will tell all the eager questioner asks. Itisonly a question of whether he really wants to know. The whole world of commerce lies before him in freightcars ana ships. Can any boy here tell all about the rigging and loading of ships, how many kinds of boats there are, anda the powers which move them? Itis noone’s fault 1f the boy can- not; the school is free. Geography ought to'grow most fascinating after a morning on the water front. Where do all the wonderful winged ships go? How long are they away? What do they carry to other lands, and what do they bring back ? How meny men does it take to sail a ship? ‘Where does all that coal come from, and what is coal? The boy may as well camp had time to gossip, to walk aimlesaly about, to read utter trash, to moan over the want of opportunities while we awalked past greater ones. It isthe boy who ob- serves who learns, and the boy is father to the man. 1t is utter folly to take a boy who all h}s life has been learning lessons with bis eyes and put him at work piling blocks to develop the multiplication tables. He can digest stronger meat than that, and unless he gets it will waste his time and blame the teacher—justly, too—who ‘‘never learned bim nothing.” After this recess we may return to school and pass on to che class in morals and manners. There are many moral lessons in our City, most of them taunght back- ward. The great City Hall is full of moral lessons from basement to dome. A police court teaches more kinds of lessons than it is supposed to deal in. Besides the lessons of the results of wrongdoing and the policy of keeping in the straight and narrow way, it gives illustrated lessons in carelessness, machine justice and the criminal effect of involuntary poverty. Any one needing moral instruction may attend the Monday morning class in putting petty offenders through the mill. If it doesn’t make him resolve to be good and send him away with new and sad ideas bhe is past learning. Lessons of mercy are there too, when a Judyge gives a boy another chance, but it is mercy sadly deflected from its natural course when it sends him back to his native mud and puts him in the same temptations. ‘Phere is a lesson for the hasty one in the AR RN e N\ R THE BUSY QORTHERD---BT ARTZ. there a while if he intends to learn the whole lesson. 7 ‘What are those things difiging to‘the bottoms of ships? And this brings pic- tures and stories—{rom the free libraries— of all the creatures creeping and crawling in the ocean’s bed. Then there are fish, great and small, each to be learned by sight and by name, with value for food or for other things, and more books to pe read. All this, if the boy will. 1f he would rather, there are new and choice swear words to learn, things to steal and drunken men to tease. He may sit at ease and learn wonderful lessons in engineering and building, may see how a great structure plants itself and grows up to the clonds, may learn how streets are made and paved and watch their wear and tear. No common animals need be strange; birds and beasts from the world over are in our parks, and flowers and trees. Each year there are exhibitions of products and manufactures—better, if studied, than a term of school. There is a price, but no boy who cares need stay away for money's sake. There are too many kind men and women ready to share-a ticket with the little brother who really cares to go. Then there is a permanent exhibit of the products of our own Btate—geography, botany and general information sealed up in bottles. Do the men and women who have grown up in this City, with all its schools before them, really know their lessons? No time, perhaps. We have all of us spectacle of a murderer who committed his crime in the heat of passion, to his lasting regret and disgrace, And among the rest is a lesson of self-respect and manners to be learned—conversely—from lawyers., In the higher courts I fear all the les- sons must be read backward, bat they are there in the spectacle of unpunished mur- derers and twisted laws and unblushing adventuresses, in purchased eloquence and endless quibbling. Lessons in public economy, too, are written on the soles of boots displayed through office-windows, and smile from the helmets of lolling officers. Oh, yes; there is food for thought in the City Hall, Our Uity has one of the best schools of foreign customs and costumes to be found in the world. We have a small China, in all its tawdry splendor and its yaried smells; Italy is here with her red- turbaned, peaceable anarchists and num- berléss etti made of paste. Nearly every nation has a colony. I almost forgot the theology class, You may study all its grades, including the A. P. A. and the convent, Salvatior Army and High Church. Anditis but just to say that, however shabby your coat, the High Church will welcome you as cordially if not so effusively as the army. These are a few things to be learued in a city school. There are others. They are not to be counted. We walk past them like the child treading on mignonette while reaching up to the tall tulips to find the odor. Onive HEYDEN, A Thing of:tigautg ' The Frieze in the Horace Hill Palace An Original Piece of Work by Arthur Mathews' Brush The most original and meritorious piece of art work that has been produced in San Francisco in a long time is the frieze which Arthur Mathews has just. finished for Horace Hill’s new home, on Sacra- mento and Laguna streets. This frieze is very likely the only one of its kind in ex- istence. It is the only frieze of a highly artistic character in any residence in Cali- fornia, and indeed the only piece of inte- rior deco-ation of the kind ever executed by an artist resident of the State. The principal peculiarity of the frieze painted by Mr. Mathews is that it isan endlesg one. That is it is not a series of panels set in certain places, but one long picture, passing all the way around the room and really having no beginning nor ending point. It is three feet deep and has a total length of 108 feet. On two walls it is thirty-two feet long and on the two others it is twenty-two feet long. As the room in which the frieze is placed is Grecian in style Mr. Mathews has fol- lowed that theme in his work. The idea of the frieze is “The Arts of Peace’” and the whole field of that is covered. That portion of the frieze that first strikes the persun entering the room is over the mantle and might be called the peginning, It represents ‘Music and the Dance.” The figures in this are full of grace and action, being skillfully drawn and well composed. KEvery line is easy and harmonious. In this group are build. ings and statuary that represent the aft of sculpture and architecture. < Following the frieze around to the left “Romance’” 1s represented by figures and landscape that tell some of the stories of ancient Greece, “Poesy’’ is also repre- sented in this group. On the wall opposite the fireplace are represented the “Industries.”” This theme is also extended to the wall on the south and covers fishing, shcepherding, sailing the seas, merchandising and tilling the soil. The minor industries, such as spin- ning and other household duties, are also represented. This carries the frieze all around the room, and the observer will, in following it, have come back to the group over the fireplace. In the treatment of the *‘Arts of Peace” Mr. Mathews has followed the modern school of decoration. That is, principally, that he has got his effects by the proper munagement of color, form and values rather than elaborate detail. It is by do- ing this that he has been able to make his work harmonize with the surroundings. In tone the frieze is a warm gray, inclin- ing toward yellow in the lights and to browns in the shadows. Nearly all of the greens are warm in tone, except in small spac-s, where a little, cold and dark, is used with a pleasing effect. The roon. is finished in dark red mahogany and the warm tones seem a part of it and yet are in good contrast. The work of executing this frieze was a long one. It was commenced last March and the designing alone consumed several weeks of hard study. At least twomonths of solid work was consumed in painting, but the canvas had to be retouched from time to time until about the beginning ot last month, when it was placed in posi- tion, ) It was impossible to buy canvas for the frieze, so it had to be made. This Mr, Mathews did bimself, s0 as to be sure that the materials used were of the best quality. The canvas is of the “absorbent’’ kind which gives a dead surface with oil colors and enables the work to be seen from any direction without reflections. The frieze is not mounted on stretchers and set in panels bnt is pasted directly to the wall. In painting this frieze many things had to be considered that are not apparentat a first glance. As there are windows in the room it follows that there is more light in one place than another, and to overcome this the picture had to be painted accord- ingly. The part over the windows had to be painted in a different key.