Compare the following record with the amounts of space accorded British second-rate painters: William Chase, sixteen lines; Vedder, a third of a column; de Forest Brush, fifteen lines; T. W. Dewing, twelve lines; A. H. Wyant, ten lines; A. P. Ryder, eight lines; Tryon, fifteen lines; John W. Alexander, sixteen lines; Gari Melchers, eighteen lines; Childe Hassam, fifteen lines; Blashfield, ten lines; J. Francis Murphy, fifteen lines; Blakelock, eight lines. Among these names are painters of a high and important order—painters who stand in the foremost rank of American art, and who unquestionably are greater than a score of English painters who receive very special critical biographies, some of which extend over columns. And yet—apparently for no other discernible reason than that they are Americans—they are given the briefest mention with no specific criticism. Only the barest biographical details are set down.
But if many of the American painters who have made our art history are dismissed peremptorily in biographies which, I assure you, are not “interesting,” and which obviously are far from adequate or even fair when compared with the consideration given lesser English painters, what answer have the editors of the _Britannica_ to offer their American customers when many of our noteworthy and important artists are omitted altogether? On what grounds is a biography of J. Alden Weir omitted entirely? For what reason does the name of Robert Henri not appear? Henri is one of the very important figures in modern American painting.
Furthermore, inspection reveals the fact that among those American “painters of note” who, so far as biographical mention in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is concerned, do not exist, are Mary Cassatt, George Bellows, Twachtman, C. W. Hawthorne, Glackens, Jerome Meyers, George Luks, Sergeant Kendall, Paul Dougherty, Allen Talcott, Thomas Doughty, Richard Miller and Charles L. Elliott.
I could add more American painters to the list of those who are omitted and who are of equal importance with certain British painters who are included; but enough have been mentioned to prove the gross inadequacy of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ as an educational record of American art.