Art: Popular Prizeman

If the ordinary U. S. citizen were given a blank check and told to go out and buy, according to his own taste, a new painting by a U. S. artist, he would probably pass up the works of Benton, Curry, Wood, Kroll and Speicher, invest in a seascape by Frederick Judd Waugh. Later he would be considerably surprised to learn that the Bentons, the Currys, the Woods, the Krolls and the Speichers all looked disdainfully down their artistic noses at Oldster Waugh (pronounced Waw). Last week for the second successive year Artist Waugh won the $200 prize for the most popular painting at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. This award went to his Ante Meridian not on the say-so of any highbrow judges but by a majority vote of the 116,000 plain people who had visited the Carnegie show since October.

Frederick Waugh won the 1934 Popular Prize at Pittsburgh with another marine picture called Tropic Sea (TIME, Dec. 17). Still another Waugh seascape entitled Post Meridian took the $500 Palmer Prize for marine painting at last spring’s National Academy. In Chicago last month bewildered Mrs. Frank Logan, wife of the Art Institute’s honorary president, picked a fourth Waugh seascape as the sort of picture she really liked, in contrast to the sarcastic canvas that had been awarded her $500 prize (TIME, Nov. 18). Artist Waugh, spry at 74, produces about 75 canvases a year. The Grand Central Art Galleries, his Manhattan agents, never keep a Waugh canvas long in stock, wish they had more painters like him. Surf, sky and rocks are his only subjects. These he knows so well that he no longer bothers to leave his Provincetown, Mass, studio to look at them. However, all Waugh seascapes are not alike. Ante Meridian shows a wave breaking against a cliff in the right foreground. Post Meridian had waves breaking on rocks in the centre foreground. Tropic Seas had the rocks in the distance. In Morning Tide, Mrs. Logan’s favorite in Chicago the rocks are on the left. Mr. Waugh took his award with becoming modesty last week. Other artists who have won the same prize at the Carnegie show have not always appreciated the honor. Malcolm Parcell, popular prizeman in 1924 & 1925, refused to let his canvas go on tour, hid it in his studio. Leopold Seyffert repainted his 1926 prizewinner. The late Gari Melchers sent his 1927 check to the Manhattan Society for Indigent Artists.