Babyish Bays

Cleaning windows is poor training for painting landscapes, even river scenes. Scrubbing floors, poking up stairs which smell of last night's supper, dusting closets, beating carpetscause he had talent. A black man with talent might find a patron, but only because he was black. Palmer Hayden, Negro, found no patron. He washed windows for a living, painted scenes that he rememberednished pictures and two sketches, they depicted the Holy Land he is held, pretending to be an artist? The critics may have been right. Mr. Cornwall's work has a facility that keeps it from being important. He gets huge prices for his commercial work. His career is significant because it is a career typical of this country, and of the demands of business upon art. "I was commissioned to go to Palestine and paint the life there to show what it is really like," said Mr. Cornwell to a reporter. Why, one might wonder, did not the commissioner of Mr. Cornwell send a photographer instead? Perhaps because no photograph could achieve that spirit, verve and easy romance that Mr. Cornwell puts into his illustrations. Unsuccessful artists sneer at him because he makes money, and has a studio in the Chelsea Arts Club, London. They forget that every man defines success in his own terms. Dean Cornwell, still young, once defined it as getting enough to eat.

He was living in Chicago then. He had come from Louisville, Ky., with no money and very little idea of what he would be able to do. He got a job tracing in pen-and-ink on silver-prints of photographs. Then he thought up jokes, illustrated them, sold them to a news syndicate for one dollar a piece. He got some orders for sport cartoons in Chicago papers and worked his way onto the staff of the Chicago American, and later of the Tribune. He illustrated the Sunday "feature" pages, made borders, designed "layouts." In his spare time he studied. In 1915 Editor Ray Long of the Red Book gave him a manuscript to illustrate. He went to Manhattan, entered the Art Students' League. His fame grew. His prices went up. He drew advertisements, married, rented a studio on West 57th St. with two skylights. For relaxation he played the victrola and practiced on the cornet. In 1923 he gave a series of lectures at the League on magazine illustrating. He has drawn pictures for The Desert Healer by E. M. Hull, Find the Woman by Arthur Somers Roche, The Torrent by Blasco Iba