25 o AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE 



success of this pediment it is to be expected that colour will ultimately play a largei 

 part than at present in American sculptural decoration. 



Women have been extending their scope in the field of American art. They pre- 

 ponderate, as hitherto, amongst the miniaturists, and they are making progress in other 

 spheres. Good sculpture on a large scale has been produced by Janet Scudder, whose 

 fountains have won high appreciation, and by Mary Evelyn B. Longman, whose 

 bronze doors for the Naval Academy at Annapolis marked her as an artist of distinc- 

 tion. The impression left by these doors has since been confirmed by others, also in 

 bronze and on an heroic scale, which she designed and modelled for Wellesley College. 

 There has been a revival of interest in the United States in small sculptures, portrait 

 busts and reliefs of children, studies of animals, paper weights, bowls, and the like, 

 and in the group of artists occupied with these things Abastenia Eberle is conspicuous. 

 She has disclosed an uncommonly attractive talent in picturesque figurines of familiar 

 types. The juniors who have of late won attention in painting are Ellen Emmet (Mrs. 

 Rand), and M. Jean McLane (Mrs. Johansen). Both have proved themselves very 

 adroit and decorative in the making of portraits. 



Through death American art has latterly suffered some of the heaviest losses in its 

 history. The list includes John LaFarge (d. 1910), landscape and figure painter, mural 

 decorator, master of the art of stained glass, traveller, lecturer and author; Winslow 

 Homer (d. 1910), perhaps the raciest of all painters of American life and famous for 

 his marines, done on the New England coast; J. Q. A. Ward (d. 1910), who modelled 

 the " Indian Hunter " and one of the noblest of the statues of George Washington, 

 and produced many other important statues of great Americans; Edwin A. Abbey 

 (d. 1911), long renowned as an illustrator in black-and-white and later richly fruitful 

 in historical paintings and mural decorations; Frederick P. Vinton (d. 1911), a strong 

 painter of portraits, and Frank D. Millet (lost in the " Titanic," 1912) who had been 

 a war correspondent, painted subjects from old English life,'and at the close of his career 

 was active as a mural decorator, taking his themes from American history. 



(ROYAL CORTISSOZ.) 



AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE 



The public and monumental architecture of the United States increasingly tends 

 to become a mere reflection of the official architecture of France. This tendency has 

 been produced by the increasing number of Americans who have made their professional 

 studies at the Parisian School of Fine Arts. Returning home to practise, these gradu- 

 ates have, by their ability, zeal, and close and efficient organisation, practically ex- 

 truded all competition, so far as public architecture is concerned. It would at present 

 be hopeless for any architect, in a competition for an important public building, to 

 submit a design in any other than the authorised version of the antique, or of the Italian 

 Revival of the antique. The prevailing tendency has lately been powerfully reinforced 

 in the arrangement of the most costly and important project of public architecture 

 now in course of execution in the United States. This is the construction of three 

 new buildings for the executive departments of the Federal government in Wash- 

 ington, at a total cost of some $10,000,000. The " style" of these buildings may plausi- 

 bly be held to be fixed by the style of the existing department buildings, designed be- 

 tween 1835 and 1840, of which two, respectively of the Doric and the Ionic orders, 

 were examples of the Greek Revival at that time prevalent, while the third, in which 

 the Corinthian order was employed, was an example of the Italian Renaissance. 

 At any rate, the condition was imposed upon the competitors that their designs should 

 be " classic." The designs chosen for execution show no architectural features which 

 may not be found in the official buildings of two generations earlier, although the later 

 buildings are much superior in magnitude and costliness. 



Public and quasi-public buildings, elsewhere than in the capital, show the same 

 subjection to French academic influences, whether in the compilation of the details of 

 antique architecture or in the modern Parisian variations upon them. Of the former, 



