Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/26

34 any other painter. His best work was his Mount Hood, which is really a very striking picture. It measures seventy-eight by fifty-two inches, was originally sold to an Oregonian, but has been lately bought by parties in this city, and is valued at $2,000. This artist went to New York early in 1866, whence he has lately sailed for Europe. Another Mount Hood from his hand, is offered in Boston for $5,000. These commercial statements are of interest only because they form some criterion for judging the professional status of an artist, and relate to a success which is purely an outgrowth of California studies.

Mr. Bush, who is mentioned above, was a pupil of Cropsey, in New York, many years ago, but did not paint here except as an amateur and occasionally, until about two years ago. He has within that time sketched a great deal among our mountain scenery, and showed considerable capacity for treating distances. His most successful pictures have been a series of richly colored tropical views. Quite recently he has visited the Isthmus of Panama, and has brought back numerous pleasing sketches. More definiteness and care in drawing will add to the value of his work. Mr. Burgess, who was also one of the exhibitors in 1857–8, worked in water colors, and chiefly in portraiture; but it was not until his return from a studious visit to the east, within a twelvemonth past, that he attracted special attention. He now does work which, for nice manipulation and delicate evenness of color, is justly admired by connoisseurs. His female heads are particularly good.

With the year 1862 began a period of more activity and promise for Art on the Pacific, which we shall notice hereafter.

HE apparent tendency of modern civilization is to repress and prevent the growth of individual extremes and produce only the mere average man. The city is the great promoter and centre of this civilization, as the castle and its surroundings was of that of the feudal ages. In the fourteenth century the town ranked below the manor, and the burghers counted it an honor and a security to enjoy the favor and protection of the lord of the soil.

Now all this is reversed. The country is subordinate to the town. The latter is the ever widening arena in which our material and sensuous people seek and find the best market for their abilities and the readiest gratification of their tastes and ambition.

But the rage for civic life as yet only exists in a modified form in some parts of the Republic. There are still some favored portions of this very progressive country, where the plow and the reaping hook maintain their ancient ascendancy in the popular use and estimation.

Among the fir-clad hills and broad rich valleys of Oregon, the bucolic instinct still lingers. Of the 100,000 people who constitute the permanent population of Oregon, fully four-fifths of them dwell not in town or village, but upon farms. Yet the commercial metropolis of Oregon——is the second town in importance on the Pacific coast. Next to San Francisco, the capital and commerce of the Pacific slope will centre in this solid and reliable Oregon town.

Geographically speaking, Portland is situated in north latitude, forty-five degrees, thirty minutes, and west longitude,