CONGRATULATION ON THE POSSESSION OF MRS. PALMER’S
PORTRAIT.
By MRS. CANDACE WHEELER.
Mrs. President and Ladies of the National Board: I am glad to have had someone speak of this new possession of women. Who knows just how rare a possession it is? We all know when a picture pleases us, and a few know why, but it is very few who know whether it is intrinsically good, and why it is so. Miss Hallowell does, and, consequently, she is a dread or a joy to painters. She is like one of those men who are employed by great importers, and whom they call “ tea tasters,” and to whom they pay fabulous salaries. Of course, everybody drinks tea, and everybody knows when they like it; but only one in ten thousand or so can tell, when they hold a drop of tea on their tongue, exactly how much it is worth a pound. The tea taster by some subtle divination connected with that one drop can tell just where the tea was grown, from what stock, and from what soil. He can almost tell the color of the man who tended it, and, certainly, he can tell what proportion of rain fell and sun shone and airs blew around it as it grew, and what all these conditions make it worth. That is exactly what Miss Hallowell can do for pictures. She is an “ art taster.” She can tell what the artist knows by what he paints—what he holds back as well as what he puts into it; and it is often what the artist holds back—what he knows of character and people by intuition, that makes his work valuable. Sir Joshua Reynolds said that a man could not put more into his picture than he had in his head, and that is true, but if he knows more than he has put into the picture, certainly it is all the better for it. Now, when Miss Hallowell looks at a picture, she sees exactly how much the artist knows, and that is why some artists are afraid of her, for we do not all like to have our brains gauged. What she has said about this portrait is as true as truth—as true as knowledge. The success of a picture, the fact that it is, or is not, a great work does not depend alone upon the method of the painting or even the capacity of the painter. It depends upon the fact of whether or not it makes us feel, of whether it can strike a spark from the electric girdle which encircles the body of collective humanity, the subtle, unnamed element which makes feeling rise to the eyes and the throat and suddenly suffuses us with warmth and tenderness. If a picture can do this it is great, even if it flies in the face of all precedent painting. We all know there are emotions which compel response, certain thoughts and moods in their expression upon the faces of friends or even of strangers can call up exactly the same thought, the same mood in us. And here comes in the miracle of the painter—that he can sometimes paint that thought, and make it so alive that it can compel the answering thought in us. We respond to the picture which is the work of man as we respond to the emotion which is a part of nature.
I think we all know how we feel when we sit in front of Mrs. Palmer as an audience, and she, standing on the platform, prefaces any uttered word with a smile. It is really a thought which rises to her face and greets the audience, and every face in the house responds. I have watched this wordless thought make its greeting and receive its instantaneous response many times, but I never expected to see it painted, and painted in such a manner that it will go on making its still friendliness touch the heart of everyone who sees it, long after we, her first audience, have grown familiar with the language of Paradise.
This picture which is here unveiled is not simply a portrait of a woman to whom
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