PUBLIC FAVORITES (Nos. 41 & 42)

There is a theory that art spins out of itself, century by century, in a sort of chain reaction. According to this notion, it is the world of art and not the great wide world that inspires artists. French Author-Critic Andre Malraux, a European cultivated to the breaking point, put that idea across in The Voices of Silence (TIME, Feb. 15). Yet painters who prefer the fields to the museums, and who try to describe nature rather than to repeat or surpass another man's picture, do not fit this theory. The U.S. has been rich in such artists, as it has been poor in art traditions. Even now, with objective painting on the wane every where, America has its Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield.

The two greatest realists America has produced were men of the late 19th century: Philadelphia's Thomas Eakins and New England's Winslow Homer. The Eakins and Homer opposite are public favorites respectively at the Fort Worth Art Center and the Butler Art Institute (in Youngstown, Ohio). These are not subtle or even vastly skilled pictures, and they hardly relate to European traditions. Eakins' gawky and youths are a far cry figure from the bland, beautiful athletes of classical sculpture and Renaissance figure painting. Homer's schoolboys--like real ones--are more energetic than graceful.

Neither Eakins nor Homer cared a rap for the quality thought indispensable in Europe: art which conceals art. They achieved something rarer: honesty which may transcend art. The heart of summer, the gleam of flesh against green foliage, are conveyed in Eakins' Swimming Hole. And a man looking at Snap the Whip can remember what it felt like to get out of school and run barefoot on the grass.

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