“The Room”

“Skylar dedicated the room to fellowship, philosophizing, and the arts. He hung prints of famous paintings on the wall: Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Monet’s “Impression: Sunrise” (whose exhibition, the first example of a new style of painting, gave Impressionism its name), and three Maxfield Parrish works: “Daybreak,” “Ecstasy,” and “Waterfall.” The Van Gogh served as testimony to Skylar’s belief that the truly glorious in life lay outside composed mentality and had about it something manic. From the Monet print, the admirer drew an analogy: that the so-called real world shimmered in an arbitrary vagueness just like that of the painting’s boat, river, clouds, and sun. Parrish’s creations, of course, served as express vehicles carrying their messages directly to the romantic receptors deeply ingrained in the Ohioan’s heart. In Parrish, Skylar found his own dreaminess, his own adoration of feminine beauty and charm, his own wish to be transported to a purer, finer world.”