Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/loanexhibitionpaiOOdavi u Art is ever on the quest — A quest and a divine adventure" LOAN EXHIBITION of 'Paintings , Watercolors^ 'Drawings Etchings (S Sculpture BY ARTHUR B. DAVIES Macbeth Qalleries 450 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 1918 Typography and presswork by The Merrymount Press, Boston Photogravures by A. W. Elson Isf Company, Belmont, Mass tts IN TRJISE OF UNICORNS 4 ' The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown : The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town." . . . IN the golden book of wit and wisdom/' Through the Looking-Glass," the Unicorn rather disdain- fully remarks that he had believed children to be fabulous monsters. Alice smilingly retorts: " Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous mon- sters, too? I never saw one alive before!" "Well, now that we have seen each other/' said the Uni- corn, "if you '11 believe in me, 1 11 believe in you. Is that a bargain?" "Yes, if you like," said Alice. No such ambiguous bargains are needed to demonstrate the existence of Unicorns. That is, not for imagina- tive people. A mythical monster, a heraldic animal, he figures in the dictionary as the Monoceros, hab- itat, India; and he is the biblical Urus, sporting one horn, a goat beard, and a lion's tail. He may be all these things for practical persons; no man is a gen- ius to his wife. But maugre that he is something more for dreamers of dreams; though not the HippogrifF, with its liberating wings, volplaning through the Fourth Dimension of Space ; nor yet is he tender Un- dine, spirit of fountains, of whom the Unicorn asked: C 6 ] "By the waters of what valley has jealous mankind hidden the source of your secrets ? " ( Cousin german to the Centaur of Maurice de Guerin, he can speak in like cadence. ) Alice with her " dreaming eyes of wonder" was, after the manner of little girls, somewhat pragmatic. She believed in Unicorns only when she saw one. Yet we must believe without such proof. Has not the Book of Job put this question: " Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow?" As if a harnessed Unicorn would be credible. We prefer placing the charming monster, with the prancing tiny hoofs of ivory ( surely Chopin set him to musical notation in his capricious second Etude in F ; Chopin who, if man were soulless, would have endowed him with one), in the same category as the Chimera of " The Temptation of St. Antony," which thus taunted the Sphinx: "I am light and joyous! I offer to the eyes of men dazzling perspectives with Paradise in the clouds above. ... I seek for new perfumes, for vaster flowers, for pleasures never felt before. . . ." With Unicorns we feel the nostalgia of the infi- nite, the sorcery of dolls, the salt of sex, the vertigo of them that skirt the edge of perilous ravines, or C 7 ] straddle the rim of finer issues. He dwells in equivo- cal twilights; and he can stare the sun out of coun- tenance. The enchanting Unicorn boasts no favoured zone. He runs around the globe. He is of all ages and climes. He knows that fantastic land of Gautier, which contains all the divine lost landscapes ever painted, and whose inhabitants are the lovely figures created by art in granite, marble, or wood, on walls, canvas, or crystal. Betimes he flashes by the nymph in the brake, and dazzled, she sighs with desire. Mal- larme set him to cryptic harmonies, and placed him in a dim rich forest ( though he called him a faun ; a faun in retorsion). Like the apocryphal Sadhuzag in Flaubert's cosmical dramaof dreams, which bore sev- enty-four hollow antlers from which issued music of ineffable sweetness, our Unicorn sings ravishing mel- odies for those who possess the inner ear of mystics and poets. When angered he echoes the Seven Thun- ders of the Apocalypse, and we hear of desperate ru- mours of fire, flood, and disaster. And he haunts those ivory gates of sleep whence come ineffable dreams to mortals. He has always fought with the Lion for the crown, and he is always defeated, but invariably claims the C 8 3 victory. The crown is Art, and the Lion, being a real- ist born, is only attracted by its glitter, not the sym- bol. The Unicorn, an idealist, divines the inner mean- ing of this precious fillet of gold. Art is the modern philosopher's stone, and the most brilliant jewel in this much-contested crown. Eternal is the conflict of the Real and the Ideal ; Aristotle and Plato ; Alice and the Unicorn ; the practical and the poetic ; butterflies and geese ; and rare roast-beef versus the impossible blue rose. And neither the Lion nor the Unicorn has yet fought the battle decisive. Perhaps the day may come when, weariness invading their very bones, they may realise that they are as different sides of the same coveted shield; matter and spirit, the multitude and the individual. Then unlock the ivory tower, abolish the tyrannies of superannuated superstitions, and give the people vision, without which they perish. The divine rights of humanity, no longer of kingly cab- bages. The dusk of the future is washed with the silver of hope. The Lion and the Unicorn in single yoke. Strength and Beauty should represent the fusion of the Ideal and the Real. There should be no anarchy, no socialism, no Brotherhood or Sisterhood of man- C 9 3 kind, just the millennium of sense and sentiment. What title shall we give that far-away time, that longed-for Utopia? With Alice and the Faun we for- get names, so let us follow her method when in doubt, and exclaim : " Here then ! Here then ! " Morose and disillusioned souls may cry aloud: "Ah! to see be- hind us no longer, on the Lake of Eternity, the implacable Wake of Time ! " nevertheless, we must believe in the reality of our Unicorn. He is Pan. He is Puck. He is Shelley. He is Ariel. He is Whim. He is Irony. And he can boast with Emerson : u I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." From " Unicorns," by James Huneker, with the kind permission of the Au- thor and Charles Scribner's Sons. CATALOgUS First Qallery 1 Winds of Corinth 2 Violin Girl 3 Madonna 4 At her Toilet 5 The Throne 6 Evening Star 7 Persian Panel 8 Flocks of Spring 9 Little Mattie 10 Energia 11 A Lake in the Sierras 12 Clothed in Dominion 13 Yielding Mists 14 The Glade 15 Hill to Hill 16 Before Sunrise 17 Frankincense 18 Mountains loved of Spring 19 Homage to the Ocean 20 Sleep 21 Children Dancing 22 Twilight Pastoral 23 After Rain 24 Rustle of Autumn 25 Ionia 26 Chanter's Mound [ 13 ] Second Qallery 27 Spring Ecstasy 28 Wing on the Sea 29 ' 'Do Reverence — for I will breathe on thee with a fa- vorable breeze, in love, or on the bright- visaged sea" 30 Adventure 31 The Great Mother 32 Mountaineers 33 Flume of Destiny 34 Out of the Dew 35 Alchemy 36 The Dawning (Decoration) 37 Dweller on the Threshold 38 Achaea, Greece 39 The Wine-Press 40 Unicorns 41 Decoration 42 Line of Mountains 43 Solitude 44 The Dancers (Sketch for Decoration) 45 Freshness of the Wounded C 14 ] Large (jallery [downstairs) Oils 1 Indian Fantasy 2 Study 3 Study 4 Sketches Watercolors 1 The Glide 2 Processional 3 Study Drawings C 15 ^ Small Qallery [downstairs) Etchings 1 Leda 2 Mirror 3 Summer 4 Nude seated Figure 5 Figure Group (women) 6 Reclining Figure 7 Portrait J. 8 Portrait [small) 9 Portrait 10 Head of Girl 1 1 Group of Five Men 12 Group of Men (one seated) 13 Group of Boys 14 Group of Ten Men 15 Ishlamish Group 16 Man and Woman 17 Struggle 18 Bathing Woman and Servant 19 Three Women {oval) 20 Three Women (circular) 21 Three Women in Landscape C 16 ] 22 Two Women in Landscape 23 Woman Running 24 Two Women Standing Sculpture ILL US TRA TI01S(S Violin (jirl