Stories from Everybody's Magazine by Various
page 133 of 492 (27%)
page 133 of 492 (27%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
rock, and set quietly about making twenty-four small pastel
drawings to illustrate a fairy story! From building houses for the wretched homeless sufferers, he turned to the play tales of childhood. He laid down the T square and the hammer for a piece of pastel crayon. But he had triumphantly refuted the scorn of the "practical man" for the artist. He had shown the stuff that dreams are really made of. Incidentally, he had won for himself a decoration from the King of Italy, and the medal of the American Red Cross Association. "Diana of the Tides," which now covers the end wall of the right-hand gallery of the new National Museum at Washington, is akin to the Boston Library ceiling in its employment of horses symbolically, its light, luminous color, and its subtle play of illumination. This charm of illumination is unfortunately lost in reproduction. Mr. Elliott has made symbolic use of Diana, the Moon Goddess. in a way obvious enough, but hitherto, oddly, untried by artists. It is a way singularly appropriate in a museum of scientific character--a combination of ancient myth and modern science. As the Moon Goddess, Diana controls the four tides, which, in the shape of horses, draw her erect and jubilant figure on a great seashell. They are without guiding reins and harness, to suggest the unseen channels of her sway. If the reader will note an advancing wave, he will see that, just before the crest curls over, the foam is tossed back. Then the wave bows and breaks. So the nearest horse raises his head slightly, the next higher, the third tosses his head back, and the last has bowed his neck. In their motion and grouped attitudes. as they gallop up on the beach, is the rhythm of an oncoming wave. Farther than that Mr. Elliott wisely did not go. "Let them |
|