The Human Touch

mer’s night, full of atmosphere, realistic without being hard, understanding without being sentimental.

The occasion for this little note is the exhibition of drawings, in color and in black and white, which you may now see in the upstairs gallery of the Macbeth Galleries. Many of them show children at play; some of them are developments of notations of the theatre. Gallery visitors may recall the delightful Vaudeville which was shown at the Whitney a year or so ago. Incidentally, Mr. Myers is one of the few Academicians to whose work the advance guard is not averse. He is not interested so much in theories as in painting competently what he sees before him on the streets and in parks, where even older people, not to mention children, are relaxed and have put aside for the time being their work-day cares. The drawing entitled Central Park Lake, now at the Macbeth, exhales the typical Jerome Myers feeling. If you care to see that and the other drawings, I suggest you do not delay your visit too long, for, fortunately—for the artist—collectors have been snapping up these examples of Mr. Myers’ brush and pencil.

In a little talk Mr. Myers explained why he preferred to take his scenes from the streets of the lower city, the East Side, rather than from Park Avenue. They are more at ease on the East Side, they don’t fret about their economic and social status. In all the years I worked downtown, he said, I never heard a single word of complaint; the people were adjusted in some sort of way to their problems. But in a day on Park Avenue, where people are superficially prosperous, I heard more complaining than in a year among the really poor. These few sentences—which I have not put within quotes because I am writing from memory—give us somewhat of a clue to Jerome Myers’ art. It is an art not tormented and at peace with itself. It is not pretentious. Mr. Myers would rather do the doorway of a little house on the East Side, a house that may be wrecked tomorrow, than a tremendous skyscraper emerging out of a deep cavern foundation. He said, with rather a touch of whimsicality, “I like to do the vanishing things.” I think I may say that he does them beautifully. I don’t believe his pictures will ever give you a blow between the eyes, but few will fail to give delight.