Arts and Letters

There was once, now a long time ago, living in Chicago, a little girl named Myrtle, who when grown well into her teens became a person, changed her name to Jean and assured us she would become an artist. That was not strange, for she was then an avid reader of poetry. l knew her then. The spirit of that direction was thereafter always with her; thorough, indefatigable, searching, and decisive. She went to art school at the Art Institute of Chicago, and from the first, her alert and imaginative mind gave special character to all she did. In composition she was always first. She came under the tutelage of Frank Duveneck, than which nothing could have been better. From him she learned the wholesome simple presentation of form and the virtues of material to give painting quality and substance. She responded in reason and feeling, and Duveneck was fulsome in her praise, indeed as if she were really his favored pupil. She came to New York about 1900. Her work was soon accepted by all the important exhibitions and with significant honors. William Chase, at an artists' dinner, said, "Some of the work of Jean MacLane will later be as much admired as are the works of the best English painters of like subjects." Incidentally he was among the first to buy one of her paintings. And so it was that Myrtle became a person, the person became Jean MacLane and Jean MacLane became a painter as she had wished and willed and was ever and always thereafter—"a workman who needeth not to be ashamed."