In Boston

A man either sees what he believes or believes what he sees. Let a painter regard a barn. If he sees a red rectangular building, useful for the housing of animals and grain, with a farm wagon in front of it, a maple tree behind it, he is in the latter class--an academician. If, on the other hand, he sees a toppling multicolored cube atilt against an oblong vegetable, with a grisly wheeled mechanism in the foreground, he sees what few believe. Such a one may be a member of the artist colony of Woodstock, Mass., whose pictures were last week on exhibit at the Boston Art Club. These artists are the Whigs of modern painting, an aesthetic Jacobin Club. Followers of the innovations of Derain and Picasso, their art is to intensify reality by warping it, to convince by deception. Notably successful among them are Judson Smith, landscape painter, Warren Wheelock, Earnest Fiene. The latter, with two canvases, Spring and Autumn, represents the most effective use of the Derainged perspective, making visible the spirit of these seasons in a bonfire of color as sober reproduction could never do. The work of these Woodstock artists was referred to by an English critic as "rather picayune than Picasso"--a witticism belied by such able technicians as A. A. Blanch, Herman More, H. L. McFee, Harry Gottlieb.

In a totally opposed tradition was the exhibition of the Guild of Boston Artists which also opened last week. This group has always sought to preserve the manner of the old Boston School, rigorous, conservative, fastidious. Pictures of ships, girls, countrysides, they presented in their exhibition --tall Boston clipper-ships, New England girls, New England landscapes etched in pearly monotones. Mr. Tarbell is represented by the type of quiet interior which won him notice at other of the Guild's exhibits; Mr. Paxton likewise with an interior, suave, adept --a girl holding a cup, surfaces of flesh, porcelain, fabric, exquisitely touched. More spirited are the dancing sprites of Arthur Spear after the mode of Robert Chanler, the pencil drawings of Charles Woodbury.