H. P. Art and Artists. Boston Evening Transcript, Monday, October 8, 1921.

Gallery of Association Presents Pleasing Appearance
and Contains an Interesting Gathering of Aquarelles and Prints at Fall Exhibition

At Concord

Water colors, etchings and lithographs make up the fall exhibition at the Concord Art Association and a quite refreshing showing it is, featuring prominent artists in the lighter roles as print makers or users of the water medium. There are a few local contributors but the large part hail from New York or other centres, while in instances the archives of the past have been rifled to bring forth notable exhibits.

Considerable skill is necessary, [ ?] and displaying a large number of, as exhibitions go, comparatively small works. This good taste has been displayed by Miss Elizabeth Roberts, who has had the enterprise in charge. The lower rooms are given over to the prints, the upper gallery being reserved for the works in color. Since the gallery opened this spring in its new home there have been over forty-five hundred visitors to the several exhibitions which have been installed since that time. Those who have formed the habit of attending will not be disappointed on the present occasion.

As many different styles are evident as there are exhibitors, individual taste and predilection governing the results and in the more successful instances producing, especially among the water color exhibits, the intriguing personal quality which makes a painting as delightful as a well-told story. While some are frankly descriptive, presenting all the important details of given scenes with accuracy, others deliberately play with form and line, in an effort to present their emotional reaction in an entertaining manner.

The most conspicuous of this latter class is Hayley Lever whose quite original talent is accompanied with a romantic tendency. In this he does become literary but follows nature choosing a dock scene with boats crowding each other and filmed with a blue haze through which light filters, making objects appear different from what they really are. This transcendental treatment is even more apparent in After the Rain. A line of mountains, possibly Camden, a bay and a jutting wharf, become indistinct and are well-neigh lost in a flood of light which reminds one of the glamour of Turner’s pictures.

Hassam on the other hand gracefully describes the effect which weather has upon the side of an unpainted house, or sunlight playing over the angle of a New England dwelling. His Boston view with its crowd of buildings lack the definition of nature, nor is statement swept onward to the personal realm.

This personal element enters strongly into the work of Randall Davey and a hillside with a pond at its base is naively dotted with trees which calves in a pasture rest tranquil in a scene conceived with originality. Fred Wagner’s small pastels are pervaded with poetic feeling and make quite handsome pictures. Joseph Pennell is largely represented with water colors, but in them appears a city diminished. It is little old New York instead of New York aggrandized as in his prints . A recent etching, Building Broadway, is very dramatic and powerful.

Three of Charles Hovey Pepper’s strong gauche studies of the North Country hold their place in the centre of the gallery. Margaret Patterson has taormina scenes. Susan Bradley a nicely treated still life picture, Hermann D. Murphy a subtle nocturne. Arthur Goodwin has pastels of Boston and Jane Peterson makes a more striking than substantial Venetian scene. W. G. Krieghoff has some dreaming and rather meaningless crayons. Philip Little a Bermuda view.

A Rodin drawing never fails of interest, neither do Homer nor LaFarge aquarelles even if familiar ones.

There are quite prodigious names among the etchers. Bernard is revealed as a peer among his fellows, and Femme a la Pelerine or Lovers at the Window are prints which are so happy in their variety of soft grays and rich blacks and so possessed of pleasing sentiment that some of his fellows appear stupid by comparison. John Wright likewise has interesting work to offer. Elizabeth Roberts has a careful study of a gnarled tree trunk. Louis Orr a Pont Marie that recalls Meryon and Alfred Bentley’s Silent River is memorable. Some of the other exhibitors are J. C. Vondrous, Sears Gallagher, Kerr Eby, Roi Partridge, Dwight Sturgis, Ethel Collver and Malcolm Osborne. H. P.