Arts and Letters

Our friend and fellow member, Charles Hopkinson, was ninety-three when he died on October 17th of this year. He devoted a long and successful life to his work, to his family, and to his friends. He was a modest man, rarely conscious of the full value of his work. It is pleasant to remember the surprise in his voice when after hanging a collection of his paintings at the Century Association, he stepped back and muttered, "Why, I'm a better painter than I thought I was!" He had reason for elation for he had lined the walls of the Century with superb realizations of many diverse personalities.

Well, now, is portrait-painting a fine art or a bread-and-butter business? It is surely good for the bread and butter, but when combined with the less tangible qualities of the imagination it produces authentic works of art.

Hopkinson, to a high degree, had the primary qualifications of the portrait painter: solidity, resemblance, and projection of personality. With these essentials well in hand, he had another power which placed him at the head of the portrait painters of his generation, a rare felicity in posing his subject and in a choice of backgrounds and accessories, which accented the personalities of his sitters and transformed their portraits into comely and genuine works of art.

To realize Hopkinson's versatility and imagination in these respects compare the easy pose of President Conant with the earthy intensity of Professor Beale, with the chill integrity of Calvin Coolidge sitting stiff against his unadorned background. I will go no further with the description of pictures I cannot show you, but as you go into luncheon this afternoon, glance at Hopkinson's portrait of Professor Chauncey Tinker which so richly expresses Tinker's force and wry charm.

Hopkinson was alive to new ideas in methods of painting, and curiosity kept him on his toes and forestalled any tendency to mental stagnation. In middle life he experimented with landscapes in water color, experimented in the sense that he concerned himself only with abbreviated and basic fact. The water colors he made in New Zealand on visits to one of his married daughters are splendid in color and in strange natural forms. The freedom he found in painting these landscapes stimulated him and he was always eager to show them to Manship, Kroll, Beal, and myself whenever we had tea with him at his summer place in Manchester, high on a bluff, overlooking a magic view of ocean and tiny islands.

Hopkinson was a member of the Academy for twenty-one years, and attended its meetings whenever his engagements permitted. He loved the fellowship of the Academy, and we loved him for the warmth of his generous nature and admired the untiring integrity of his efforts and the splendid pictures that resulted from them.