Arts: In Washington

The ninth biennial exhibition of contemporary American paintings, current at the Corcoran Galleries, Washington, D. C., until Jan. 20, shows 383 pictures by 286 artists. A large daily attendance of national capital distinction shows critical appreciation of a display whose moderately conservative character is indicated by the names of the Clark prize winners, respectively: George Bellows, Charles W. Hawthorne, Maurice B. Prendergast, John Noble.

The conservatism of this Washington Salon, however, is by no means as rigid as that of the National Academy exhibition just ended in Manhattan. Offsetting and in certain points eclipsing the canvases crowned with official awards, one finds an occasional vital and moving contribution by some out-and-out radical—as for example Rockwell Kent’s radiant reverie of the Sun-lit Valley, or the emotionalized landscape transcriptions of Haley Lever and Allan Tucker. The large and growing group of independent-spirited painters who still remain “of” though not always “with” the National Academy includes such significant names as Childe Hassam, Gari Melchers, Robert

Henri, Charles H. Davis, Leon Kroll, Robert Spencer, John Folinsbee, Frederick Frieseke, Richard Miller, Jerome Myers, Bryson Burroughs, Henry Mc-Carter, Hugh Breckenridge, Hobart Nichols, Ernest Lawson, R. S. Meryman, Edward C. Volkert.

Noted among the who’s-who in portraiture: Hopkinson’s Secretary Hughes, Childe Hassam’s Governor Alfred E. Smith, of New York, Edmund C. Tarbell’s Mary at the Harpsichord, Lillian Westcott Hale’s child portrait study of Brothers, Frank Benson’s Girl in Blue Jacket, and Marion Boyd Allen’s presentment of Anna Vaughn Hyatt.