The Painter of "Diana of the Tides" {pages 95-103}

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Author of "The American Stage of To-day," etc.

Given nearly three hundred square feet of blank wall space, and
it takes something of an artist to fill it up with interesting
paint. Probably you would not pick a miniature painter for the
task. Yet, curiously, John Elliott, creator of "Diana of the
Tides," the great mural painting which adorns the large gallery
to the right of the entrance of the new National Museum at
Washington, also paints on ivory. He works, likewise, in silver
point, that delicate and difficult medium; he draws pastel
illustrations for children's fairy tales; he works in portraiture
with red chalk or oils. And, when the need comes, he has shown
that he can turn stevedore, carpenter, and architect, to slave
with the relief party at Messina, finally to help design and
build, in four months, an entire village for the stricken
sufferers, including a hotel, a hospital, three schoolhouses, and
a church. The too frequent scorn of the "practical man of
affairs" for the artist and dreamer, the world's sneaking
tolerance for the temperament which creates in forms of ideal
beauty rather than in bridges or factories or banks, finds in the
life and work of such a man as John Elliott such complete, if
unconscious, refutation, that his story should have its place in
the history of the day.

John Elliott was born on Good Friday, 1859, one of a famous
Scottish border family. His residence is now in Boston,