The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 10, 1901, Page 18

CThe Passing of Picturesque Chinas=' town as Vieweo by the Mrtists. > @ Y TBIT % -y . SRAV S NANRN TR AN, &g Yo A if¢ eswsanan TR VO «H¥ FIOWER EELLER.—BY THEO WORES atown, the n about, the That of an eye ycu eve, of course you ess was never better, street The country is prosper- is money enough afloat to i lacquers and porce- the righteous , you ‘irm within those e rapid increase, you Where once a few pioneer Chinese ow there are thriving families fill the tene- be the eye artistic! Then too well that there is no midst a little, crowded e of Oriental colors that rmon shaky walls and rotting structures that beg to be trans- ferred to The artists have been robbed of treasure, they say, and the robbery was committed by a Board. Many n women who are famil- nook and corper and all the of Chinatown stroll through cts these days and glance as they note a change the absence of some addition of some modern They are the people who look for lights lor effects, types of hu- are the artists to whom Chinatown has brought much of happiness 2nd no little measuT®of fame. Itisthrough their achievements that the place is des- tined to live for years and years after the city will have razed the present quarter. It is from their viewpoint the deatl) war- rant of Chinatown was signed when some men, collectively known as a Board, be- gan to buy whitewash, and it is their Chi- natown that is slipping into the waste that past days make. Who would choose to paint a flooring of macadam? Who could see anything pic- turesque in a-wall which stares one out countenance with its unblinking white= an artist, surely. It used to b at not a day passed but the conges alleyways, the obscure courts and even the traveled main streets vere dotted with easels. Even though it rained there was always some typical, slant-eyed creature ready to pose. Art students by the score found it inspiring to be working beside painters whose work reading the fame of China- Now on the sunniest days one may loiter about through the streets, in the #hops, anywhere, and find no sign of & pencil or brush. Pretty Chinese children play about the doorways. Curlous figures silently shuffie in and out the passage- weys, but the artists who knew them #have departed, apparently for all time. Why? Because everything that used to be charming 1o them is rapidly being spoiled. The very atmosphere, they complain, which formerly was to them redolent of Orientalism, quaintness — “old - world ’ they calied it—has been replaced T NGB 2 )\‘\“‘1)3»\\ 2 N\ ‘/. FROM AN ARTIST'S STAND- POINT CHMNATOWN IS EACH YEAR ‘BECOMING MORE IMPOSSIBLE. . T is very true that from an artist’s H standpoint Chinatown is each year becoming more and more impossi- ble. There used to be a certain de- light in working there, right in the heart of San Francisco, and yet as far removed from the bustle and gar- rishness cf the modern city as though one had sailed over seas. Most of that charm is lost, for with every attempt to Americanize the place, with the idea of producing order and tompelling cleanliness, the old Orien- tal atmosphere is dissipated. I have always felt that had China- town flourished in or near any of ths great art centers of the world it would have been made famous for all tima by brush and penecil. ° I nevergo there now—thereis noh- ing to attract one. Much that was cnce so picturesque has either been covered over with whitewash or is pe- ing repaired and put in order for & coat of whitewash to-morrow.. _ T. WORES. e g WHITEWASH AND ELECTRICITY ARE MAKING PICTURESQUS POSSIBILITIES BUT A MEMORY. T HERE is no doubt that the China- T town of artists will soon be but a memory. What would you have? The walls are being whitewashed, tke passageways ere being lighted with electricity, everything that used to have charm is bsing transformed in color and picturesque possibilities. I should not care to paint there again. What color there is is gaudy, cutre, regarded from the standpoint of present-day art. It was not so a years ago. Then there was at- mosphere—there was faint,almest im- perceptible smoke from the fireplaces giving tone. Of course it was never a pleasan® vlace to work because of the dirt and the way the Chinese had of scram- bling over one’s shoulders. But an artist would rather have it so than 3 it is. Now that it is being made c:oan there will soon be nothing to paint. It is a pity. I bslieve that every artist who has worked there ragrets that Chinatown cannot be permitted to grow old with the passing years and to change only as age would dic- tate. AMEDEE JOULLIN. N Y A XA N T e R e o SecceteaveVIVRVCARTA LN ® VA e by a decided flavor of twentieth century progressiveness. Chinatown; as every one knows, Is be- ing put in a sanitary condition; at least there are strivings for that result; there- fore Art must betake herself to other haunts. For how could any one with artistic cravings satisfy ‘them in a room where every object stiinds fully revealed in the radiance of an incandescent lamp. Time s when that same room was filled with shadows and with a soft light faliing fit- fully here an@ th: from a wonderfully wrought, incense burning lamp. Then it was that artists were at work. It used to be t chimneys were un- known in the precincts of the soft-step- ping Chinese, andywhen at successive hours during the day one Celestial after another would come to cook his little meal of rice and pork, there was always a pale blue haze from burning wood and charcoal, to soften the color of a flaunt- ing canopy. The curling blue smoke Is carrfed away In flumes now, and gaudy splashes of red and green and yellow flare distractingly on gne's vision. Fresh, clean planks in the Chinese thea- ter replace the rotting and begrimed flooring that-was once a study in itself. .Walls have been covered over with pa- per in convenilonal patterns. There is even a white cnameled iron bedstead in one little den where less than a year ago ten Chinese used to huddle on bad smell- ing but picturesque mats. Smoke-stained rafters that were delight- fully suggestive of age and primitive liv- ing have been painted white. Out on the streets—even down Fish al- ley, but more conspicuously in some of the wider avenues—evidence can be found of the passing. It was a good many years ago that Amedee Joullin painted Fish alley. e found it full of color, of rickety balco- nies and flapping awnings in varying shades. Into oamboo baskets were gath- ered bright-coloreG paper scraps. The baskets have disappeared and a cart daily gathers all such refuse from receptacles less antique and more practical. No wonder that Joullin is one of those to say that Chinatown has had its day. A stroll through the crooked byways is to him like meeting an old friend in whom some sad change has taken place. Joullin of late has been painting Indians, but his Chinatown pictures are among his best. lys when Wores painted in Chi- ‘was Theodore Wores who back' Jn the early eighties “‘discovered” its pos. sibilitles, although Jules Tavernler had ‘worked there before—in desultory fashion, ‘Wores painted the pictures that brought him many shekels from people like Earl Rosebery, Sir Thomas Hesketh and Mrs. Hopkins Searles and introduced Ban Francisco's Chinatown to the art connoisseurs of New York, Boston and London, there was not a vestige of white- ‘wash, not a thought of renovation. .He ‘was looked upon by the people he painted @&s something of an interloper. The story is still told how, in order to get the in- terior of a josshouse, he became a pald- .up subscriber to the soclety. The plece of red paper on which his name is in- scribed in odd hieroglyphics may be seen any day posted on the wall of the Sacra- mento-street josshouse in company with the names of hundreds of Chinese pa. trons. That slip of paper i{s an undis. turbed memorial of the five years Worea spent among the Chinese. Perhaps more .than any other, he has pictured their lives and customs, and a comparison of his paintings with the streets and interiors a seen to-day will quickly reveal in the dits ference of scene and color the mutability of art subjects. The old Palace Hotel and the Royal, which once teemed with color and where in each room could be found material for a characteristic sketch, have the past yéar or so become as commonplace as th most practical Board of Health man could wish. On every street some ornate little bal cony. beloved by wielders of the brush has been removed or painted over. Lea: ing walls have been straightened and locse boards on the older buildings have been nailed down. On the roofs odd ef- fects secured from a vista in which lothespoles and ledges filled with bidom- ously mingled are seldom found now. - There will be still other departures. One man who used to paint there declared the other day that the inhabitants themselves are coming to lack something that at one time made them excellent subjects for studies. Per- haps they, too, are yielding to the pres- sure of civilization, and while learning the use of English and soap they may be losing the distinctiveness that has hith- erto made them so much worth while to artists. Were a man to begin painting there to-morrow he would not, as Jul Pages when he worked on his famous picture, the one that received honorabls mention at the Paris salon of 189 and that‘helped him to win finally the medal, have to have some one constantly by him to keep the inguisitive Celestials from hanging on his shoulders and his easel They probably would giance at him from 2 distance unconcérnedly. Peixotto sketched in Chinatown last year, but he did not attempt color, a sig- nificant fact. It is said that he will have the distinction of being the last of the artists of any note to seek themes in Chi- @atown. Even the students, those who send broadcast calendars and Christmas cards, are looking elsewhere for studies, for, like the paintersin oil and the many who have done exquisite things in water color and pencil, they feel the change that bas gradually been transforming the lo- cality, and they, too, no onger find in- piration there. Chinatown is passing. With every bucket of whitewash the end is hastened. (|