Na tiny shop tucked away in a corner of an upper floor of a State Street office building a little grayfaced watchmaker sat bent over his table. He glanced up busily as I entered, evidently expecting me to pull out a watch for repair. But I said: "I've come to ask you about your painting, Mr. Brookins."

A soft light came into his face. "Oh, my pictures," he said, rising and smiling gently.

Propped up here and there among old clocks and racks of ticketed watches were rectangles of compoboard bearing oil sketches-trees, fence corners, river meadows.

"When did you begin to paint?" I asked.

"Oh, I always wanted to be an artist. But I could n't; I had to earn a living. After my family was gone and I was left alone, I started to dabble with paint. Then I heard about the club. I sent in an application for membership, and I was elected. They said they were glad to have me."

He picked up a study in soft gray and brown,-two swaying elms dappled with sunlight-a picture of real charm.

"I got this last Sunday," he said. "I was starting this one," he turned the board over, showing a half-finished sketch on the other side,-"and it did n't go very well, and some Boy Scouts came along the road and asked me whether I 'd seen these two tall

trees. They were just over the hill, they said. So I went and found them."

"Do you go out with one of the sketching parties or-"

His eyes twinkled.

"I usually go alone. The younger fellows in the club could n't keep up with me."

Brookins is seventy-six.

"You see," he explained, turning the compo-board over again, "I paint on both sides. When I have all my boards full, I paint everything out and start in again."

"But surely you won't paint this out?" I seized the sun-dappled elms. "Well, I might save that one." He squinted his eye. "But they 're only student's sketches. Some day"-his face glowed-"I may be able to paint real pictures. Now, have you seen Mr. Colby's pictures? He paints real pictures. The great thing about this club," the old watchmaker went on, "is that we 're all students together. Some of the fellows are millionaires, and some are poor men, but we 're all students together."

"The club must mean a lot to you, Mr. Brookins," I ventured.

"It 's everything to me," he said. "It's all I have, that and my painting."

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Brookins, the State Street watchmaker; Perry, secretary and treasurer

of the Elgin Watch Company, around the corner on Randolph Street; dignified Judge Dupuy down at the Illinois Central offices; Drew, over at the Telephone Building; Wheeler, the wholesale fish-man on Fulton Street; Colby, down at Donnelley's printing-shop; Babize, the busy editor of "Investment News"; Valentine, the furniture man; Colburn, the prosperous physician on Michigan Avenue; Torrey Ross, who manufactures time-clocks; George Alexander, the stone-cutter; Clarke, the jewelry man; Lowe and Watson, lawyers; Ullrich, the department-store proprietor up in Evanston; and more than a hundred others of every profession and trade and age and station in life are all students together in the Chicago Business Men's Art Club, one of the most interesting organizations in the Middle West.

"Credit for the existence of this club," said Elbert G. Drew, its president, "belongs mainly to two Chicago men, Edward B. Butler, president of Butler Brothers, and Wallace De Wolf, the real-estate man, who gave the Zorn collection to the Art Institute. These two men have been painting for years. Butler took lessons from Frank Peyraud, one of our best known Chicago artists, and received so much encouragement from his teacher that he submitted pictures to the Art Institute exhibitions under an assumed name. They were accepted and hung, and critics praised them highly. De Wolf was just as successful. A few of us in Chicago who had the hankering to paint knew about Butler and De Wolf, and so we got the courage to start out ourselves. After I 'd been painting for a year or so, some of the officials here in the telephone company heard about my work, and persuaded

me to hang a dozen or so of my sketches in our new assembly-hall.

"The effect of that exhibition surprised me," Drew went on. "Several men in the company came to me and said just about what I 've just said to you. 'I've always had a hankering to paint, Mr. Drew, but-' 'Well, why don't you start in?' I asked them. They gave various answers. A sort of shamefacedness had kept some of them back, a feeling that painting was thought a little queer, almost ridiculous. Others seemed to be afraid that if their employers heard that they were painting pictures in their spare hours, it would count against them. You know, some employers do not appreciate the fact that a man working at a cultural recreation outside of the office is gaining beneficial knowledge and resourcefulness. Well,"-Drew laughed,-"the result of my little exhibition was that several of us in the telephone company who were interested in painting organized a club. We secured Karl Buehr of the Art Institute as a teacher, and the class met in the Telephone Building

"Then one day Buehr said to me: "There are a lot of men here in Chicago who would be delighted to do what you 're doing. Why don't you organize a business men's art club?' So Barrie of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company and I sent out invitations to every one we thought would be interested. Eighteen of us met one night at the Hamilton Club and started this club. That was in March, 1920.

"During the winter we rent a room at the Art Institute and take lessons there. Once a month we have a meeting and dinner and invite our wives and friends. We bring along our

scholarly type fascinated by technic. To Dr. Colburn on Michigan Avenue, who has made his office into a gallery of his own work. To Babize, florid, foreign-looking, sentimental, in his office on La Salle Street.

"Come here." Babize drew me to the window and pointed upward at the patch of sky visible between two skyscrapers. "Did you know that there was green in the sky? No; and I did n't either till I studied art. I've learned dozens of things. I've learned to see pictures everywhere. I can go down here in La Salle Street and show you a picture on every corner-the crowd, the newsboys, the light falling down in the cañon between the buildings. Everywhere a man goes he sees pictures.

"It's curious how much a man gets involved in a thing like this. When a noted artist said about a certain water-color of mine, 'You have just missed it,' he gave me more pleasure than I 've ever had from any success in my own business. There is something peculiarly satisfying about painting. A man can go through life and be moderately successful or even very successful in business, and yet never have the satisfaction of saying that he has created something his own, something individual. But painting gives him that chance. He can create something individual. privilege."

It's a rare

Illinois Central tracks, then turned to the left, threading along strings of freight-cars and rubbish heaps till suddenly we emerged on a long, narrow slip between two coal-pockets. Moored along the wharves were several fishing-boats, two or three dingy, picturesque house-boats displaying the sign "Fresh Fish," and in the shadow of a water-tank a fisherman was reeling up his nets.

Some of the group were already on the scene, with easels set and palettes mixed, busily sketching in the subjects they had chosen. There were striking subjects enough, the fishing-boats and nets, with the coal-pockets and watertanks looming above them, and in the background the late afternoon sun pouring over the jagged cliff of Michigan Avenue. A shout hailed Drew.

Now and then a sketcher rose, stretched his legs, relit his pipe, and then settled swiftly to the task of catching the changing light on slip and fishing-boat and water-tank. Field, telephone engineer, came over to ask Watson, attorney, just how he managed that peculiar reflection of the copper sky in the silky gray-green water of the slip. Clarke, jeweler, and Torrey Ross, time-clock manufacturer, fell into a discussion of the relation of drawing to painting in which every one in ear-shot joined.

Ross was painting on sheets of aluminum. He had found that by far the most satisfactory material, he said, because it didn't stretch. Besides, it was absolutely permanent, and he explained to me how much of the work

He led the way down Randolph Street and across Michigan Avenue, over the wooden bridge that spans the

the rotting of the canvas on which they had painted. Yet he would have to go back to canvas when his present supply of aluminum was exhausted,

he added ruefully. The Aluminum Company would n't sell their product in less than one hundred pound lots any more.

84

Probably none of the members of the Chicago Business Men's Art Club will become a world-artist, but the influence of the club in widening the interest in, and increasing the respect for, art is bound to be enormous. That is why professional artists welcome the club and encourage it. Of course there are exceptions. One day the club was having lunch together. Joseph Pennell was lunching at another table, and Drew, being introduced to him, asked Pennell to come over and talk to the club. Had Drew known that Pennell thinks that most modern professional artists are bunglers or charlatans and fiercely resents the amateur in the art world, he would have hesitated; but he knew nothing of Pennell save his greatness as an etcher. He said:

"Pennell laid it into us. 'What business have you fellows meddling with paint?' he shouted. 'Get out and 'Get out and clean up the ugly bill-boards. Get some beauty into your manufactured goods. That's your job. Don't meddle with paint!''

"We are interested in those things," Drew commented. "We hope more and more to help manufacturers to improve the appearance of their goods; but it happens, also, that we want to draw and paint."

In this country we are too apt to sit on the side-lines and let the professional do it. We crowd by the hundred thousand to base-ball and foot-ball

arenas, to operas and picture galleries and concerts and theaters, but it rarely occurs to us to try for some of the fun of performing ourselves. The Business Men's Art Club of Chicago is a counteractive to that national tendency. The movement is spreading through the Middle West. In January, 1922, a similar club was organized in Minneapolis by Russell A. Plimpton, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and it is growing rapidly. Last summer a group of the club made a tour through the Lake Superior country and came back with a wealth of sketches for their winter's work. In October a Milwaukee club was founded under inspiration of Dudley Crafts Watson, the energetic director of the Milwaukee Art Institute, and a few weeks later followed a club in Indianapolis.

This winter a notable exhibition of the work of the Chicago club is being held in the galleries of Marshall Field & Company, and Drew writes that arrangements have been made to present the best of this exhibit to the hospitals of Chicago "in the hope that these pictures will carry a message of cheer and help to popularize art among every-day folks."

"Physicians and psychologists advocate a hobby, an avocation, for every business man," says the yearbook of the club. "He needs the stimulation of a change of ideas, the calling into use of unaccustomed faculties. To this end painting offers an unparalleled opportunity. There is inspiration in it; a freshening of energies; a reopening of long-forgotten avenues of thought; a new appreciation of the beauty and wholesomeness of life."