J. Alden Weir

Abstract

It was only four months ago that Weir “went West,” but within that time the best critical opinion, in his own country at least, has crystalized rapidly and acclaimed him with a remarkable degree of confidence as a man for the ages, as one who now enters upon a splendid destiny of imperishable and ever increasing fame. I do not feel certain that Weir will ever be one of the popular painters who are appraised at or above their real value by the general public. He never carried his heart on his sleeve, never painted pictures which correspond to “household words,” never tried to entertain nor to educate the crowd. And he was utterly incapable of making concessions either for the sake of winning an adverse public or of overcoming the prejudice of influential persons in high places who failed to appreciate him through some academic blindness. He was beloved as a man for his sincere kindliness and his enchanting courtesy, but he was capable of indignation. He was, if anything, more hostile to the intellectual dishonesty of the wise than to public ignorance, however arrogant; and his independence of thought and simple honesty of spirit were so great that he would not “play to the gallery” nor lead any of the noisy meaningless “movements” among painters which distribute “piffling” propaganda of one sort or another and succeed in achieving the easy notoriety which often passes for fame. Contemptuous both of sentimentality and of sensationalism, and tending in his own manner of painting to an expression marked by subtlety and even austerity, he was, in spite of all this, the most human and lovable of men, and the very essence of his art—what makes it great, what will make it immortal—is its warm and glowing humanity. Weir believed that art is not worth all the time and talk men spend upon it if it does not quicken to more intense energy our inner consciousness, and if it does not stimulate to a larger and lovelier life our dormant faculties for living. If the value of art is measured according to its expressional power, then the art of Weir is a very great art even if it is not entirely easy of access. It is the pure gold deep in the earth, which we must dig to find, not the cheap gilding on the gaudy surface of commercial ornaments.