Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1885 — Florida Plctures. [ARTICLE]

Florida Plctures.

Why,,oh! why should our painter friend tear off to distant Granada, or far-away Morocco, intent on espousing there his artistic chimera? Why throw himself away, when within five days’ easy journey of his New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago studio there languishes the most gorgeous of arides, that grand impassioned Southern nature? There she is waiting and waiting for him, ready to lavish on him all her transcendent beauty. AU along that river there was unfolded to us, scene after scene, panoramic dreams of poetry. Here were quiet prairies, golden with the swaying marsh grasses; tufts of palmetto, dome-like balancing on their graceful stems; afar off sombre masses of pine, and between the scaly trunks mysterious vistas. Here were bights all emerald green, fringed with aquatic plants; flickers of light reflected on the water; gleams of snowwhite birds flitting through the blue heavens. Trailing vines t there were looping and festooning the trees. Then at sunrise or sunset there came lurid glows with burnishings of these pictures, with effects that neither Spatrish nor African lands ever equaled. This was nature in all her wildness, originality, and exuberance. It quickened the dullest artistic sense. If there was a delirium of color, one wanted to catch the madness of it. Were the possibilities of figure-paint-ing wanting ? Why should this man, or that other man, frequent the Breton coast or the Norman shore and give us ' forever and ever heavily clouted French fisherman ? What a picture that was we came across at Caximbas! There was a little white two-masted boat, with flapping sail, fastened te the shore, and on the bank her cargo—a huge -pile of sugar-cane. Standing near, was the most gallant figure*of a man the eye of an artist ever lit upon. Built like a jaunty Apollo, his legs were bare from the knee downward. On his head was cocked a Phrygian cap of brightest scarlet. This set off an admirable face, and he had a square curly bi ack beard with rolling mustache. His shirt was just of that tender blue only brought about by frequent washings. But commend me to his breeches, which were of the faintest brimstone-color. Oh, how those breeches, with their yellow shade pleased us! Where could they have come from? Were they Biscayan? We inquired particularly about those breeches, and found out that they were the cast off trousers of some Spanish soldier who had served in Cuba. Now you might haye hunted through every canal in Venice and never found a model so thoroughly picturesque, so replete with manly grace. Paint that man exactly as he was, idealize him not a bit, and you had a superb figure for your picture. And yet he was no Spaniard. He was an English sailer, who had unwittingly assorted himself to his tropical surroundings. As to the accessories, these were just as they should have been: a sparkling stream; a little weather-beaten house; back of that a jungle of sugar-cane; to the right a clearing, gre&’n with flapping leaves of the banana, topped with luxuriant purple blossoms, lime and lemon trees arounQ, and in the foreground a smouldering fire, with a faint ascending spire of smoke, a few glowing embers, a trivet, and an iron pot or so. Go, ye painters in search of such subjects, say to Cayo Costa, and put on canvass that gang of Spanish fishermen, working nt their nets, grouped about-their palmetto thatched ranch. Jot me down those costumes; catch the swing, thegait, the allure, the poser of these men; work in just as it is, the tropical verdure; combine the cactus with the waeathing morning-glcriej and the big wooden tables, where the mullet roes, like ingots of gold, shine in the sun; make me a heap of conch shells here, with all their tender pinkness; then follow the glimpse of the sand beeches, white as snow, a cardinal bird hopping in these strange trees, with pelicans swooping on the quiet seas beyond, and then tell me if there lie not material for a dozen pictures. Paint me just one canvas, and label it, if you please, on the next catalogue “Fishermen of the Catalonian Coast,” or “The JEgean Sea,” with an idea of not shocking the Phiiistia; then, maybe, after a while, when they crowd around your picture, you will venture to say, “This is not Spanish, Moorish, Greek, but it is a little unassuming bit from Florida.” But there is a reservation. Alas, that I should have to write it! Paint me sparingly the women of this country, unless you are in your tenderest, most pathetic mood. It may be because of the bad food, the trying climate, the hard work, but the women w*e saw in Southern Florida, though not exactly bereft of grace, seemed tp us to be fagged out, colorless, and fleshless.— Barnet Phillips, in Harper’s Magazine.