Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/storyofamericanpOOcaff 
 
THE STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
9 
 
CopvriQhf fo>'j>ur-rx^^ J.n^'^ ^ McVrii.i Wm-T.rH 
 
 THE MUSIC R00:M ' , , 
 
 T" HISTLE R u'as f.rperimcntin<i V'ifh tdcns d- ' ‘n>d / 
 
 TiZ il >l oJ>^ "f ^'’"’■■ 7 ''^'"';":.::; 
 
 'r 0/ Ihf A,""'-'- 
 
 rtiiiA outside the Ilk-lure, so chomcteiistir of , irln -e irhik- •■’> 
 
 demic notions, the ludi, in the ridinri hobil looks out of \ r. 
 
 left is shoirn a reflection of sometiunfl aiiain outside the />. • ^ i'„,i,r,.„ 
 
 ^cas the contrast betu-een the reflection and the aclua if!"' bihiud 
 
 the one in black and the one in u-hile; to j'''' ' 'ihiL re ,. esented „e,r 
 
 the black. At the time the picture was painted all these d I 
 
 technical problems. Collection of Colonel Frank J. Hecker 
 
THE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PAINTING IN AMERICA 
 FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO 
 THE PRESENT 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES H. CAFFIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1907, by 
 Fredekick a. Stokes Company 
 October, 1907 
 All rights reserved 
 
AUTHOR’S NOTE 
 
 My aim has been to trace the growth of Ameri- 
 can Painting from its scanty beginnings in Colo- 
 nial times up to its abundant harvest in the Present. 
 At first the story is necessarily associated with the 
 efforts of a few individuals. Later, however, as 
 students in increasing numbers seek instruction 
 abroad, it becomes concerned less with individuals 
 than with principles of motives and method. The 
 influence, in turn, of England, Dusseldorf , Munich, 
 and Paris, is discussed, and allusion to individuals 
 is introduced mainly in illustration of the general 
 theme. I have tried, in fact, not only to help the 
 reader to a knowledge of some few painters; but, 
 much more, to put him in possession of a basis of 
 appreciation, on which he may form judgments 
 for himself of the work that is being done to-day 
 by American artists. 
 
 Charles H. Caffin. 
 
 New York, September 23, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEE PAGE 
 
 I. Colonial and Revolutionary Conditions . 1 
 
 II. Painters in America after the Conclusion 
 
 OF Peace 23 
 
 III. The Growth of the National Spirit . . 46 
 
 IV. A Native Growth of Landscape Painting . 66 
 
 V. Remnants of the English Influence . . 85 
 
 VI. The Influence of Dusseldorf and Munich , 103 
 
 VII. The Beginning of French Influence: the 
 
 Barbizon ...... 121 
 
 VIII. John La Farge ...... 144 
 
 IX. French Influence — The Academic . . 159 
 
 X. Continuance of Barbizon Influence, and 
 
 Some Examples of Independence . . 198 
 
 XI. French Influence Continued: Realism and 
 
 Impressionism ..... 229 
 
 XII. Further Study of Light and Progress of 
 
 Landscape ...... 262 
 
 XIII. Whistler ....... 285 
 
 XIV. Some Notes on Mural Painting . , . 304 
 
 XV. Summary of Results ..... 332 
 
 XVI. Summary Continued . . j,, , s6l 
 
^ j 4 ^ 
 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 V 
 
 
 ti. 
 
 t 
 
 rA 
 
 I 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Music Room 
 Portrait of 
 
 James A. McNeill Whistler Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mrs. Robert 
 
 Weir 
 
 Artist Unknown 
 
 3 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Norton 
 
 
 
 Quincey 
 
 Artist Unknown 
 
 4 
 
 Portrait of John Lovell 
 
 John Smihert 
 
 7 
 
 Hagar and Ishmael 
 
 Benjamin West . 
 
 8 
 
 Portrait of C. W. Peale . 
 
 Benjamin West , 
 
 13 
 
 Portrait of Lady Went- 
 
 
 
 worth 
 
 John Singleton Copley . 
 
 14 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Izzard . 
 
 John Singleton Copley . 
 
 19 
 
 Portrait of Colonel Epes 
 
 
 Sargent 
 
 John Singleton Copley . 
 
 20 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Reid in the 
 
 
 Character of a Sultana Robert Edge Pine . 
 
 27 
 
 The American School 
 
 Matthew Pratt . 
 
 28 
 
 Portrait of Washington . 
 
 C. W. Peale .... 
 
 33 
 
 The Artist in His Museum 
 
 C. W, Peale .... 
 
 34 
 
 The “ Athenaeum Por 
 
 
 
 TRAIT ” OF Washington 
 
 Gilbert Stuart 
 
 39 
 
 Portrait of Dr. Fothergill 
 
 Gilbert Stuart 
 
 40 
 
 Portrait of Alexander Ham 
 
 
 
 ILTON 
 
 John Trumbull . 
 
 51 
 
 Battle ofTBunker Hill . 
 
 John Trumbull . 
 
 52 
 
 A Spanish Girl 
 
 Washington Allston 
 
 57 
 
 The Dead Man Restored to 
 
 
 Life 
 
 Washington Allston 
 
 58 
 
 Portrait of the Artist . 
 
 John Vanderlyn 
 
 61 
 
 [ix] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAOl 
 
 Ariadne of Naxos . . . John Vanderlyn . . 62 
 
 Destruction .... Thomas Cole ... 67 
 
 •The Expulsion from Para- 
 dise Thomas Cole ... 68 
 
 Landscape Asher B. Durand . . 78 
 
 On the Hudson . . . Thomas Doughty . . 74 
 
 Scene at Naponach . . William Hart ... 79 
 
 Yosemite Valley . . . Albert Bierstadt . . 80 
 
 Cotopaxi Frederick E. Church . 83 
 
 Shoshone Falls, Snake 
 
 River, Idaho . . . Thomas Moran ... 84 
 
 Portrait of Eliza Leslie Thomas Sully ... Q1 
 
 Portrait of Daniel Web- 
 ster Chester Harding . . 92 
 
 Portrait of the Artist . Charles Loring Elliott . 95 
 
 Heels Over Head . . . J. G. Brown ... 96 
 
 Washington Crossing the 
 
 Delaware .... Emanuel Leutze . . 107 
 
 Girl and Pets .... Eastman Johnson . . 108 
 
 Two Men Eastman Johnson . . Ill 
 
 Well and Water Tank, 
 
 Italian Villa . . . Frank Duveneck . . 112 
 
 Elizabeth Boott Duveneck Frank Duveneck . . 115 
 
 Lady with the White SnAWLlI'i'/Ziam M. Chase . . Il6 
 
 SuM.MER Idyll .... Walter Shirlaw . . . 119 
 
 Mother and Child . . William Morris Hunt . 120 
 
 The Boy and the Butterfly iri7/iam Morris Hunt . 181 
 
 The Bathers .... William Morris Hunt . 132 
 
 Midsummer George Inness . . . 187 
 
 Early Moonrise — Florida George Inness . . . 138 
 
 Peace and Plenty . . George Inness . . . 141 
 
 The Golden Age . . . John La Farge . . . 142 
 
 Pomona John La Farge . . . 147 
 
 Christ and Nicodemus . John La Farge . . . 148 
 
 Autumn John La Farge . . . 157 
 
 The Portrait .... Will H. Low . . . 158 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Ariadne 
 
 Wyatt Eaton 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 169 
 
 The Reflection 
 
 Benjamin R, Fitz 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 170 
 
 The Keeper op the Thresh 
 
 OLD 
 
 Elihu Vedder 
 
 
 
 175 
 
 Arcadia 
 
 H. Siddons Mowbray 
 
 . 
 
 176 
 
 The Sculptor and the King 
 
 George de Forest 
 
 Brush 
 
 179 
 
 Portrait Group 
 
 George de Forest 
 
 Brush 
 
 180 
 
 Virgin Enthroned 
 
 Abbot H. Thayer 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 Caritas 
 
 Abbot H, Thayer 
 
 
 
 184 
 
 The Look-out — All’s Well 
 
 Winslow Homer 
 
 
 
 187 
 
 The Spinet .... 
 
 T, W. Dewing . 
 
 
 
 188 
 
 Le Jaseur 
 
 T, W, Dewing . 
 
 
 
 191 
 
 La P^che 
 
 T. W, Dewing . 
 
 
 
 192 
 
 Trial of Queen Katherine Edwin A, Abbey 
 
 
 
 195 
 
 The Connecticut Valley 
 
 Alexander H, Wyant 
 
 
 196 
 
 Adirondack Vista . 
 
 Alexander H. Wyant 
 
 
 201 
 
 Old Church in Normandy 
 
 Homer D, Martin 
 
 
 
 202 
 
 Westchester Hills 
 
 Homer D. Martin 
 
 
 
 207 
 
 View on the Seine 
 
 Homer D. Martin 
 
 
 
 208 
 
 The Fire Worshippers 
 
 Homer D, Martin 
 
 
 
 211 
 
 Landscape 
 
 Henry W, Ranger . 
 
 
 212 
 
 The Brook by Moonlight 
 
 Ralph A, Blakeloch 
 
 
 215 
 
 Siegfried 
 
 Albert P, Ryder 
 
 
 
 216 
 
 The Flying Dutchman . 
 
 Albert P, Ryder 
 
 
 
 219 
 
 The Ice Cutters . 
 
 Horatio Walker 
 
 
 
 220 
 
 The Wood Cutters 
 
 Horatio Walker 
 
 
 
 223 
 
 Sheep Washing 
 
 Horatio Walker 
 
 
 
 224 
 
 Aye Maria 
 
 Horatio Walker 
 
 
 
 227 
 
 Dr. Gross’ Surgical Clinic 
 
 Thomas Eakins . 
 
 
 
 228 
 
 The West Wind 
 
 Winslow Homer 
 
 
 
 235 
 
 The Castaway .... 
 
 Winslow Homer 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 An Interlude .... 
 
 Sergeant Kendall 
 
 
 
 239 
 
 Sea and Rocks .... 
 
 Paul Dougherty 
 
 
 
 240 
 
 Calm befcTre a Storm . 
 
 Allen B, Talcott 
 
 
 
 243 
 
 Mrs. Carl Meyer and Chil 
 
 DREN 
 
 John S. Sargent 
 
 
 
 244 
 
 [xi] 
 
 
 
 
 DREN 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 Portrait of Miss Beatrice 
 
 Goelet . . . . 
 
 . John S, Sargent 
 
 . 
 
 247 
 
 Portrait of Henry G. 
 
 Mar- 
 
 
 
 QUAND . . . . 
 
 . John S. Sargent 
 
 . 
 
 248 
 
 Portrait Group 
 
 . John S. Sargent 
 
 . 
 
 251 
 
 A Portrait Study . 
 
 . Irving R. Wiles . 
 
 . 
 
 252 
 
 Miss Kitty . . . . 
 
 
 . 
 
 255 
 
 Portrait of Adelaide 
 
 Nut- 
 
 
 
 ting 
 
 
 . 
 
 256 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Thomas 
 
 
 
 Hastings . . . . 
 
 . John W. Alexander . 
 
 , 
 
 259 
 
 Portrait . . . . 
 
 . Wilton Lockwood 
 
 . 
 
 260 
 
 Lady in Black 
 
 . Robert Henri 
 
 , 
 
 263 
 
 Against the Sky 
 
 . Frank W. Benson . 
 
 . 
 
 264 
 
 The Wave . . . . 
 
 . Alexander Harrison 
 
 . 
 
 267 
 
 Calm Morning 
 
 . Frank W. Benson 
 
 . 
 
 268 
 
 Girls Reading . 
 
 . Edmund C. Tarhell 
 
 . 
 
 271 
 
 A Gentlewoman 
 
 . J. Alden Weir . 
 
 . 
 
 272 
 
 The Farm in Winter 
 
 J. Alden Weir . 
 
 . 
 
 275 
 
 Listening to the Orchard 
 
 
 
 Oriole . . . . 
 
 . Childe Hassam . 
 
 . 
 
 276 
 
 Lorelei 
 
 
 . 
 
 279 
 
 A Rainy Night 
 
 . Childe Hassam . 
 
 . 
 
 280 
 
 The Hemlock Pool 
 
 . John W. Twachtman 
 
 . 
 
 283 
 
 February . . . . 
 
 . John W. Twachtman 
 
 , 
 
 284 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's 
 
 Mother James A. McNeill Whistler 2Q3 
 
 Portrait of Carlyle . . James A. McNeill Whistler 2Q4 
 
 At the Piano .... James A. McNeill Whistler 297 
 Portrait of Miss Alexander ^4. MciVetVZ Whistler 298 
 
 The Ascension . . . John La Farge . . . 309 
 
 The Feet Washers . . W. B. Van Ingen . . 310 
 
 The Burning of the “ Peggy 
 Stewart/^ at Annapolis, 
 
 IN 1774* C. Y. Turner . . . 317 
 
 Pittsburgh Personified . John W. Alexander . . 318 
 
 [xii] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Triumph of Minnesota Edwin H. Blashfield . S21 
 
 The Dogma of Redemption John S. Sargent . . 322 
 
 The Treaty of the Tra- 
 
 VERSE DEs Sioux . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Frank D. Millet 
 
 327 
 
 Rome .... 
 
 
 
 Elihu Vedder 
 
 328 
 
 On the Canal . 
 
 
 . 
 
 TV, L, Lathrop . 
 
 333 
 
 Pittsburgh . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Colin Campbell Cooper . 
 
 334, 
 
 Solitude 
 
 
 . 
 
 Charles Melville Dewey 
 
 337 
 
 The Cloud . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Albert L. Groll . 
 
 338 
 
 May Night . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Willard L. Metcalf . 
 
 34,1 
 
 The Road to the Old 
 
 Farm 
 
 J. Francis Murphy 
 
 34,2 
 
 Early Spring . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Leonard Ochtman . 
 
 34,5 
 
 The Valley 
 
 
 . 
 
 Edward W. Redfield 
 
 34,6 
 
 The Sluice 
 
 
 . 
 
 Frederick Ballard Williams 
 
 34,9 
 
 The Shepherdess . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Gari Melchers 
 
 350 
 
 Mother and Child 
 The Sailor and His 
 
 Sweet 
 
 Gari Melchers 
 
 353 
 
 HEART 
 
 
 . 
 
 Gari Melchers 
 
 354, 
 
 Portrait of a Lady 
 
 
 . 
 
 Robert David Gauley 
 
 357 
 
 Lady with Muff . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Robert David Gauley 
 
 358 
 
 The Silver Gown . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Howard J. Cushing 
 
 363 
 
 The Mysteries of Nigh’: 
 
 r . 
 
 J, Humphreys Johnston 
 
 364, 
 
 Europa Sibyl . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Hugo B allin 
 
 367 
 
 Boys with Fish 
 
 
 . 
 
 Charles W. Hawthorne . 
 
 368 
 
 Spanish Fete . 
 
 
 . 
 
 F. Luis Mora 
 
 371 
 
 Easter Eve 
 
 
 . 
 
 John Sloan .... 
 
 372 
 
 Dumping Snow 
 
 
 . 
 
 George Luks 
 
 375 
 
 East Side Picture . 
 New England Farm in 
 
 Win 
 
 Jerome Myers . 
 
 376 
 
 TER .... 
 
 
 
 Dwight W. Tryon . 
 
 379 
 
 Twilight — Autumn 
 
 
 . 
 
 Dwight W. Tryon . 
 
 380 
 
 Moonlight . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Dwight W, Tryon 
 
 383 
 
 Lake George . 
 
 
 . 
 
 Eduard J, Steichen . 
 
 384, 
 
 [xiu] 
 
THE STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 

The Story of American Painting 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY CONDITIONS 
 
 I N 1784 the House met in Philadelphia to 
 ratify the Treaty of Peace. After seven 
 years of struggle the United States of Amer- 
 ica had shaken off the foreign yoke and were com- 
 mencing another struggle of seven years among 
 themselves before their full birthright as a united 
 nation should be established. Once more, as dur- 
 ing the much longer struggle of the United Prov- 
 inces against Spain, a new nation had been born, 
 and a combination of racial energy and local ad- 
 vantages was to produce an extraordinary harvest 
 of national development. But it was not to in- 
 clude, as in the case of Holland, an immediate 
 development in the art of painting. 
 
 For the latter, something more is needed than 
 a virgin soil, spotted over, as in pre-Bevolutionary 
 America, with a few isolated growths, struggling 
 bravely, but at a disadvantage, in an uncongenial 
 environment. Wherever in the world painting has 
 flourished, it has done so after a period of develop- 
 ment, gradually enriched by the accumulation of 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 local or borrowed traditions, until at length it has 
 blossomed into independent vigour. 
 
 Such scatterings of tradition as existed during 
 the Colonial period had been derived from Eng- 
 land, and reflected mostly the poor conditions of 
 English portrait painting which prevailed before 
 the rise of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Even the 
 influence of the latter, when it came to be estab- 
 lished, was overshadowed, so far as Americans were 
 concerned, by that of their countryman. West, 
 whose extraordinary reputation among his con- 
 temporaries has not been sustained by subsequent 
 judgment. 
 
 Nor in the years preceding the Revolution had 
 the scanty traditions of painting been favoured by 
 local environments. Men’s minds were turned to 
 other things than art, and the only conception held 
 of painting was as a means of producing portraits. 
 In the language of the times, the “limner” (this 
 title itself a corruption of the old English word 
 “ illuminer,” namely, of manuscripts) was spoken 
 of as having an accurate “ pencil ” in the deline- 
 ation of “counterfeit presentments.” The school 
 from which he had graduated was more than sel- 
 dom that of carriage painting. 
 
 Such had been the start of John Smibert, a 
 native of Edinburgh. He reached this country in 
 1720, three years after the arrival of Peter Pelham, 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
MRS. ROBERT WEIR nee 
 
 LUCRETIA TUCKERMAN, 17T0-1797 
 
 Y an unknown painter, who t) 
 
 •led to imitate the manner of the great 
 
 English portrait school 
 
 In 
 
 the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum 
 
PORTRAIT OF MRS. NORTON QUINCEY 
 nee MARTHA SALISBURY, 1727-1747 
 
 '"'‘COUNTERFEIT presentment''' of a 
 "" limner f a contemporary of Smihert. 
 
 Colonial dame hy some unknown 
 
 In the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum 
 
COLONIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 portrait painter and mezzotint engraver, and seven 
 years after that of the Swedish painter, Gustavus 
 Hesselius, who is credited with having been the ear- 
 liest painter in this country. In England Smibert 
 had had the good fortune to be taken up by Dean, 
 afterwards Bishop, Berkeley, accompanying him 
 to Italy, and later to Rhode Island, when the phi- 
 losopher-philanthropist came over to found a mis- 
 sionary college in this country for the conversion of 
 the Indians. At what is now Middletown, three 
 miles from Newport, Berkeley bought an estate 
 which he called Whitehall, and for two years and a 
 half officiated at Trinity Church, Newport, visited 
 the Narragansett Indians, and worked upon his 
 book, “ The Minute Philosopher,” writing the 
 greater part of it in a crevice in the cliffs over- 
 looking the sea. It was at this time that Smibert 
 executed the portrait group of Berkeley surrounded 
 by his family, which picture, together with the 
 Dean's library of a thousand volumes, became the 
 property of Yale CoUege. When, in consequence 
 of the failure of the home government to give 
 financial support to his scheme, Berkeley returned 
 to England, Smibert established himself in Boston, 
 and lived there until his death in 1751. 
 
 It is charaeteristic of the times that his sitters 
 were chiefly the New England divines, those leaders 
 of a stern theocracy that exercised political as well 
 as spiritual authority. Think of the mental and 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 moral atmosphere which surrounded the beginnings 
 in this country of an art which we regard to-day as 
 making an appeal to our gesthetic sensations. Not 
 even in the sister art of literature, though much 
 had been written, had any work of the imagination 
 been produced, nor would be until after 1820 . 
 Upon political pamphlets, or local records of places, 
 persons, and events, the writers had expended their 
 activity; their intellectual force upon the subtleties 
 of religious controversy. Such appeals as had been 
 made to men’s imaginations were of the kind that 
 may be read in the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 
 whose keen mind revelled in analysing the vividly 
 imagined horrors of hell. 
 
 “ O sinner,’* he preached,* ** consider the fearful danger 
 you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, that you are held 
 over in the hands of that God, whose wrath is provoked and 
 incensed, as much against you, as against many of the damned 
 in hell! — you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of 
 divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to 
 singe it and burn it asunder. It is everlasting wrath. You 
 will know certainly that you will wear out long ages, millions 
 and millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this 
 Almighty merciless vengeance; and then, when you have so 
 done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in 
 this manner, you will know that all is but a point of what 
 remains.” 
 
 Nor was this awful fate to be avoided by a man’s 
 
 *“ Sinners in the hands of an Angry God.” — Jonathan 
 Edwards. 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
John Smibekt 
 
 PORTRAIT OF JOHN LOVELL 
 
 jQO/LV 1710, graduated from Harvard 172S, -Master LovelV' leeame in mO usher of the 
 
 JLJ principal from 173/, to 1775. Being of loyalist persuasion, he 
 
 embarked for Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1776, and died there two years later. 
 
 In the Collection of Harvard University, Cambridge 
 
HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 
 
 Benjamin West 
 
 N example of the grandiose impotence that passed for the grand style'’’ among 
 the Italian im’itators, at the end of the eighteenth century ; it is sweetened 
 vnth West's particular brand of elegant sentimen t ality. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
COLONIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 own doing. All humanity — men, women, and little 
 children — all for the sin of one man and one woman, 
 were predestined to this horror f or eternity ; only the 
 “ goodness ’’ of God selected at gracious random a 
 few souls from damnation. These were conscious of 
 being saved, and were correspondingly puffed up 
 with self-satisfied righteousness. All their fellows 
 lay under the thick pall of eternal wrath ; by it was 
 darkened the sky of their lives; lives already 
 hardened through long conflict with severe physical 
 conditions and inured to the constant presence of 
 death and danger. What wonder that their hardy 
 and indomitable natures took refuge in a grim and 
 strenuous severity. The theatre in New England 
 was proscribed. Even as late as 1784 Massachu- 
 setts re-enacted the earlier sharp laws against the 
 stage; and New York and Philadelphia still 
 frowned upon it. 
 
 To this mental and moral rigour, however, the 
 Southern States presented a notable contrast. Bal- 
 timore was a warm supporter of the drama, and 
 much addicted to balls and routs, while the open-air 
 promenades of gaily-dressed people, with their 
 scenes of courtship and merriment, were a distin- 
 guished feature of her social life. Charleston also 
 was famous for wealth and gaiety and for the ele- 
 gance of her homes. In these and in the country 
 mansions, thickly sown over the Southern States, 
 were to be found most of the pictures which had 
 
 [9] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 been imported from Europe. It would seem as if 
 the conditions of life among these descendants of 
 cavalier settlers should have been favourable to art, 
 yet it is a strange fact that it was not in the rich, 
 luxurious South, but out of the flinty rigour of the 
 North and East that American painting began its 
 thrifty growth. Some of the painters, it is true, 
 made professional tours through the South, and 
 Southerners, attracted to Philadelphia, when it be- 
 came the capital of Government and fashion, were 
 among the best patrons of the painters then estab- 
 lished in that city. Nevertheless the fact remains, 
 that not Charleston or Baltimore, but Philadelphia 
 and Boston are the places chiefly identifled with the 
 early beginnings of American painting. 
 
 In pre-Revolutionary times the most notable of 
 the native-born painters were Benjamin West, John 
 Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peak, and Gil- 
 bert Stuart. By his contemporaries West was re- 
 garded as a prodigy. That a child, born in 1738, 
 in a Quaker village, Springfield, near Philadelphia, 
 and reared among conditions of strict and primitive 
 simplicity, should have evolved out of himself a 
 craving to be an artist; that his earliest lessons in 
 colour had been derived from the Indians, in the 
 crude pigments of yellow, red, and blue with which 
 they decorated their own persons; that, after the 
 present of a paint box from a certain Mr. Penning- 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
COLONIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 ton, the youth was able in time to produce results 
 that secured him commissions for portraits in Phila- 
 delphia and later in New York, and eventually, in 
 his twenty-second year, attracted a patron who pro- 
 vided the necessary means for his visit to Rome — all 
 this seemed phenomenal. And so also was his recep- 
 tion when at length he arrived in London. 
 
 But from this point he belongs to England rather 
 than to America ; so completely that, when Reynolds 
 died. West was elected President of the Royal 
 Academy, and received the order of Knighthood. 
 He died in 1820 , and was buried with pomp in St. 
 PauFs Cathedral. 
 
 It is true, however, that he had an indirect influ- 
 ence upon his countrymen, for his success fired their 
 imaginations, and his assistance was generously 
 given to American students who had found their 
 way to London. Yet this influence was unfortu- 
 nate. The English, giving him the privileges of a 
 pampered child, had encouraged him in the direction 
 in which Reynolds, fortunately for himself, had 
 been discouraged. Accordingly, while some of 
 West’s portraits, such as that of C. W. Peale, 
 possess considerable vivacity, his works of imagina- 
 tion are pompous and pretentious in conception, in 
 technique tentative and clumsy. They created a 
 taste for grandiloquent subject rather than for 
 painter-like excellence of workmanship. But, as 
 we shall frequently have occasion to notice, the gen- 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 eral aim of painting in the nineteenth century, in 
 which American painting will share, will be to get 
 away from excessive preoccupation with subject, 
 and more and more to develop the resources of 
 painting, as an art, independent of literary alli- 
 ances. So in this way, also. West is cut off from 
 the stream of movement. 
 
 On the other hand, John Singleton Copley, al- 
 though he subsequently settled down in England, 
 remains a vital factor in the story of American 
 painting. He identified himself very closely with 
 pre-Re volutionary times by the number of his por- 
 traits of eminent men and women; and is himself 
 also distinguished even to this day for the life-like 
 vivacity of these portraits and for his skill in paint- 
 ing. Indeed, this Boston painter, practically self- 
 taught, and with no examples of painting to guide 
 him, save the portraits by Smibert and such of 
 West’s as had found their way into the homes of 
 the city, developed a facility of craftmanship that, 
 considering the straitness of his opportunity, is most 
 remarkable. And it is to be observed that his 
 powers were fuUy matured before he settled in 
 England. 
 
 Copley’s parents had come from Ireland, and 
 settled in Boston to engage in the tobacco business. 
 About the time of his son’s birth ( 1737) , the father, 
 Richard Copley, died, and the boy was named after 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
PORTRAIT OF C. W. PEALE Be^amin West 
 
 N mqagi-y picture, though the elegantly affected pose of the hand may he more suggestive 
 of West's mannerisms than of the character of Peale. 
 
 In the Collection of the New York Historical Society 
 
V ’ . 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LADY WENTWORTH 
 
 John Singleton Copley 
 
 OTWITHSTANDING the hardness of the drawing and the metal-like textures^ the 
 portrait is charming in its high-hred elegance. 
 
 In the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library 
 
COLONIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 his maternal grandfather, John Singleton, of Quin- 
 ville Abbey, County Clare. Ten years later the 
 mother married that Peter Pelham, painter and 
 mezzotint-engraver and precursor of Smibert, who 
 has been mentioned above. His assistance to young 
 Copley, who early showed a gift for drawing, must 
 have been considerable, especially as the stepfather 
 taught him his own art of engraving. When Pel- 
 ham died, in the same year as Smibert, Copley was 
 fourteen, and for the rest had to be his own master. 
 He had no lack of commissions, however, and his 
 progress was rapid. 
 
 At this time Boston was a city of some eighteen 
 thousand inhabitants, confined to three hills, which 
 gave it its second name of Trimountain. As yet 
 there was no bridge across the Charles River, and at 
 high tides the city was cut off from connection with 
 the mainland. The better class of dwellings were on 
 the west side; houses of brick, with Corinthian pi- 
 lasters adorning the fa9ades, and columned porches 
 covered with roses and honeysuckles, and ap- 
 proached by sandstone steps which led up from 
 gardens filled with English elms and shrubs. The 
 fine furniture in these dwellings was from England 
 or France. Moreover, since Smibert’s day the 
 rigour of life was lessening. Two conditions had 
 contributed to the change. In the first place, the 
 domination of the divines had given way before the 
 rising influence of laymen, such as Otis and Samuel 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 Adams; men of broad culture who became by force 
 of character and through their zeal in public aff airs 
 the natural leaders of the community. In the sec- 
 ond place, class distinction had become more defined. 
 The men and women who throng the canvases of , 
 Copley are conscious of their worth and importance, 
 perhaps more than a little self-conscious, “ Pride 
 of birth had not then been superseded by pride of 
 wealth. The distinction of gentle blood was 
 cherished. Equality had begun to assert itself only 
 as a political axiom ; as a social principle, it had not 
 dawned upon the ultra-reformers.” 
 
 The Portrait of Lady Wentworth, painted when 
 she was nineteen and the artist twenty-eight, shows 
 him in full possession of his powers. It is true that 
 the draperies are inclined to be metallic in texture, 
 and the flesh parts marble-like in polish and hard- 
 ness; indeed, that the various textures throughout 
 the picture have a prevailing similarity of shining 
 rigidity, since the suggestion of atmosphere is lack- 
 ing, as it is more or less in all of Copley’s works. 
 
 “ Yet, the want of ease and nature in his portraits 
 is as authentic as the costumes. They are generally 
 dignified, elaborate, and more or less ostentatious 
 and somewhat mechanical, but we recognise in these 
 very traits the best evidence of their correctness. 
 They illustrate the men and women of the day, 
 when pride, decorum, and an elegance, sometimes 
 ungraceful but always impressive, marked the dress 
 and air of the higher classes. The hardness of the 
 
 [ 16 ] 
 
COLONIAL CONDITION'S 
 
 outlines and the semi-official aspect of the figures 
 correspond with the spirit of those times.” * 
 
 Despite, however, some deficiency of painter-like 
 quality, the portrait of Lady Wentworth bears an 
 impress of fine authority and is full of personal 
 character. 
 
 This Boston belle, who is represented toying with 
 the chain of a captive fiying squirrel (a detail which 
 Copley several times introduced into his pictures) , 
 was a daughter of Samuel Wentworth, and had 
 been engaged to her cousin, John Wentworth, the 
 last Royal Governor of New Hampshire. But, in 
 pique at his prolonged absence on some affair of 
 business, she married Theodore Atkinson, and it is 
 as his wife that she is here represented. He died, 
 however, in a few years, and within a fortnight of 
 his funeral she married her old love. When the 
 troubles with the Mother Country arose she accom- 
 panied her husband to England. He was appointed 
 Governor of Nova Scotia, holding the position from 
 1792 to 1808, when he resigned, but continued to 
 live in Halifax until his death in 1820. He had 
 been created a baronet in 1795 ; and three years later 
 Lady Frances was made a lady-in-waiting to Queen 
 Charlotte, with permission, however, to live abroad. 
 For eleven years she lived in Nova Scotia, and then 
 returned to England, where she died in 1813. 
 
 Considered on the one hand solely as a personal 
 document, this picture has extraordinary interest. 
 
 * Tuckerman’s “ Book of the Artists.” 
 
 [17] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 What an air of birth and breeding the lady exhib- 
 its, a consciousness of indisputable social rank and 
 beauty; what a complete poise of self-possession, 
 tinctured, however, with just a flavour of prim 
 severity ! How the portrait vivifies a certain phase 
 of the past to our imagination! Nor less remark- 
 able is the technical charm of the picture, when one 
 remembers out of what a poverty of artistic oppor- 
 tunity Copley had emerged to this proficiency. 
 Only a few years separate his art from Smibert’s, 
 and yet it is as f ar in advance of the latter’s as the 
 freer social conditions of Copley’s day surpass in 
 attractiveness the narrow rigidity of Smibert’s. 
 And it is precisely these altered social conditions 
 which had much, perhaps most, to do with Copley’s 
 achievement. Himself of good family, handsome, 
 brilliant in manner, and early gaining skill and suc- 
 cess as a painter, he moved in the best society, and 
 dressed and lived in style. Within the limited range 
 of New England life he played such a part as 
 Van Dyck in his day played in the larger world of 
 Antwerp and London. His art, moreover, has so 
 much of the same kind of distinction as Van Dyck’s 
 that one hazards a belief it might have approached 
 it very closely in degree of distinction also, had his 
 early opportunities been as favourable. 
 
 In 1769, when he was thirty-two years old, Cop- 
 ley, now a thoroughly successful painter, married 
 the daughter of Mr. Richard Clarke, a wealthy mer- 
 
 [ 18 ] 
 
I ? 
 
 5^ "O 
 
 r 
 
 e 
 
 a. 
 
 0«5 ^ ® 
 
 ^1 « 
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 5!. § 
 
 - "« 
 ^ 'g 
 
 'Ki O 
 
 ^1 
 
 o c 
 
 ^ § 
 
 ■§>1 
 
PORTRAIT OR COTOXEI. EPES SARGENT g. Cop,.v 
 
 of CopU,: pov-er of ckararferLoUon, o„nhu,e,l to IJ,c period before 
 ^■eeelTT / f!''"'. «/ deetro^ed by the 
 
 fro,n ttflZH-h ^:Zl!r 
 
 In Ihe (Collection of Mrs. G. M. Clements 
 
COLONIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 chant and agent of the East India Company, to 
 whom later was consigned that historic cargo of tea 
 which was flung into Boston harbour. Anticipat- 
 ing the trouble with England, Copley went to 
 Rome, where he painted the portrait of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Ralph Izard, the former a wealthy planter of 
 South Carolina, and his wife, before her marriage 
 a Miss Alice DeLancey, of Mamaroneck, New 
 York. Her flgure, as she submits a sketch to her 
 husband, is^full of charm; but his exhibits Copley’s 
 weakest trait of hardness in drawing. Moreover, 
 the elaborate artiflciality of the whole composition, 
 in so marked a contrast to the rather severe refine- 
 ment of the earlier portrait, throws an interesting 
 side-light, both on the influences he had encountered 
 since leaving home and on his own predilections. 
 We see that he had already come under the fascina- 
 tion of that pretentious grandiloquence which was 
 passing for the “ grand style ” in Europe; and may 
 judge from the rapidity with which he imitated this 
 mannerism, that at heart he was disposed toward it. 
 It is an interesting example of the artistic spirit, 
 curbed by the narrowness of environment, such as 
 Copley experienced in Boston, bursting forth under 
 freer conditions. Unhappily, the latter, in his 
 case, were inclined to be meritricious. 
 
 From Rome the painter went to London, where 
 he was kindly received by West, and soon became 
 popular with a public already familiar with his 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 work through the exhibitions of the Royal Acad- 
 emy. His wife joined him, sailing in the last 
 American ship which passed out of Boston har- 
 bour under the British ensign, and the rest of his 
 life was spent in England. Here he gained a great 
 reputation for historical pictures, such as The Death 
 of Chatham. But they were little more than an ag- 
 gregation of portraits, and do not compare in actual 
 artistic merit with such a single portrait as that of 
 Lady Wentworth. He died in 1815, at the age of 
 seventy-eight, and was buried in the Church of St. 
 John, at Croydon, near London. His son, under 
 the title of Lord Lyndhurst, was three times Lord 
 Chancellor of England. 
 
 West had left this country before there was any 
 suggestion of strained relations with England, and 
 had become so identified with the latter that prob- 
 ably no question of choice of allegiance occurred to 
 him. With Copley, however, it was different. 
 Clearly in his case the instinct of the artist was 
 stronger than that of the patriot. He was the first 
 of a numerous band of American painters who have 
 deliberately chosen to live in Europe, because there 
 they could find an atmosphere more congenial to 
 their art. 
 
 We have now to consider a group of men who, 
 after studying abroad, with equal deliberation re- 
 turned home or settled here, to throw in their lot 
 with the new nation. 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PAINTERS IN AMERICA AFTER THE CONCLUSION 
 OF PEACE 
 
 A T the conclusion of peace, there were among 
 the painters whose work attracts particular 
 JL notice just four, practising their art in 
 America. Of these, Joseph Wright was at Mount 
 Vernon, painting portraits of General and Mrs. 
 Washington to the order of the Count de Solms. A 
 native of Bordentown, N. J., where he was born in 
 1756, he had been a pupil of West, and then visited 
 Paris. Returning in 1783, he painted during the 
 autumn of that year at headquarters, Princeton, a 
 portrait of Washington, having first taken a plaster 
 cast of the sitter’s head. When the United States 
 mint was established at Philadelphia he was ap- 
 pointed designer and die-sinker, and there is reason 
 to believe that the first coins and medals executed in 
 this country were his handiwork. He died, a vic- 
 tim of the plague which ravaged Philadelphia, in 
 1793. 
 
 In the latter city were residing at the termination 
 of the war the three others of the four painters 
 alluded to above: Robert Edge Pine, Matthew 
 Pratt, and C. W. Peale. 
 
 [23] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 For Boston’s share in the story of American 
 painting* is by this time retrospective, and re- 
 mained so until Stuart settled there ten years later. 
 For the present the attractions of Philadelphia^ 
 as the seat of government and fashion, were supe- 
 rior. It was the biggest city in the country. No 
 other could boast of so many streets, arranged with 
 regularity and well paved, but so full of filth and 
 dead cats and dogs that their condition was made 
 the subject of a satire by Francis Hopkinson, bet- 
 ter known as the author of the “ Battle of the 
 Kegs.” No other city could boast so large a popu- 
 lation or so much renown. There Franklin had 
 made his discoveries, the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence had been signed, and Congress had deliberated. 
 No other city was so rich, so extravagant, so fash- 
 ionable. Lee, in his correspondence with Wash- 
 ington, described it as an attractive scene of 
 amusements and debauch; and Lovel, also writing 
 to Washington, had called it a place of crucifying 
 expenses.* Moreover, her citizens had the shrewd- 
 ness to permit one permanent theatre as a conces- 
 sion to the unregenerate taste of Senators and 
 Congressmen; although there was a strong objec- 
 tion to legalising this new species of luxury and 
 dissipation. 
 
 It was the Honourable Francis Hopkinson, mem- 
 
 * J. B. McMaster. 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
AFTER TFIE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 tioned above, one of the signers of the Declaration 
 of Independence, a graduate of Princeton, and an 
 Admiralty Judge of Pennsylvania, who was the 
 first in this country to sit to the Englishman, 
 Pine. The latter, born in London in 1742, a 
 son of John Pine the engraver, arrived in 1784, 
 and settled in Philadelphia, causing no little stir 
 by exhibiting privately to the select few — “ the 
 manners and morals of the Quaker City forbid- 
 ding its exposure to the common eye ” — the first 
 cast of the ‘‘ Venus de Medici ” brought to this 
 country. 
 
 It was his ambition, in which he anticipated 
 Trumbull, to paint a series of historical pictures, 
 commemorating the events of the Revolution and 
 including portraits of the principal participants. 
 For this purpose, in the intervals of his labours as 
 a teacher of drawing and a painter of occasional 
 portraits, he executed a number of ‘‘ distinguished 
 heads.” Among the latter were studies of Wash- 
 ington, General Gates, Charles Carroll, and Baron 
 Steuben. However, before he could realise his am- 
 bition, he died in 1790, at Philadelphia. 
 
 “ At the corner of Spruce Street, in Philadelphia, 
 a few years since,” wrote Tuckerman in 1867, 
 “ hung a shopr-sign, representing a cock in a barn- 
 yard, which attracted much attention by its manifest 
 superiority to such insignia in general.’’ It was 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 from the brush of Matthew Pratt (born at Phila- 
 delphia in 1734), who also executed a famous sign- 
 board, containing portraits of leaders of the Con- 
 vention of 1788, which used to hang at the corner of 
 Chestnut and Fourth Streets. 
 
 For in those days (I quote from J. B. Mc- 
 Master) the numbering of shops and houses had not 
 yet come into fashion, and every business street 
 presented an endless succession of golden balls, 
 of blue gloves, of crowns and sceptres, dogs and 
 rainbows, elephants and horseshoes. They served 
 sometimes as advertisements of the business, some- 
 times merely as designation of the shops, which were 
 indicated popularly in the newspapers by their 
 signs. The custom still lingers, but now we are 
 accustomed to regard the sign as bearing a direct 
 relation to the character of the business it advertises. 
 One hundred years ago, however, no such relation 
 was understood to exist, and it was not thought re- 
 markable that Philip Freeman should keep his 
 famous bookstore at Boston at the “Blue Glove” 
 on Union Street. 
 
 Through the exigencies of the times in which he 
 lived, Pratt painted many such signs, and seems to 
 have gained among his contemporaries more reputa- 
 tion for them than for his portraits. Perhaps not 
 unjustly, since the latter, as may be seen in the por- 
 trait of Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor 
 of the Province of New York, 1761-1775, which 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
PORTRAIT OF MRS. REID IN THE 
 
 CHARACTER OF A SULTANA Robert Edge Pine 
 
 HIS canvas recalls the fad in society during the latter part of the eighteenth century for 
 ladies to pose for their portraits in classic or romantic costumes. It was encouraged hy 
 the painters because it offered extra opportunity for picturesque arrangement. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
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 2 tq 
 
 
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 S' a 
 
 ft O 
 
 St 
 
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 a: 
 
 H 
 
 S- a 
 
 o w 
 
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AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 now hangs in the Chamber of Commerce, New 
 York, are heavy in colour and laboriously dignified. 
 They reproduce the worst features of West, with 
 whom Pratt studied for two years and a half, being, 
 indeed, his first American pupil. The occasion of 
 his visit to London was to escort thither his relative, 
 Miss Shewell, the long-affianced bride of West, to 
 whom he “ gave her away ” at St. Martin’s in the 
 Strand. The sojourn in his master’s studio is com- 
 memorated in The American School of the Metro- 
 politan Museum, his most important work. The 
 figure to the left, with the hat on, is West’s, who is 
 represented in the act of criticising one of Pratt’s 
 drawings, while the other students listen. With the 
 exception of this visit to London, one to Ireland in 
 1770, and another to New York in 1772, Pratt’s 
 life was spent in Philadelphia, and there he died in 
 1805. 
 
 But, by all odds, the most famous resident Ameri- 
 can painter of the period, and the one most interest- 
 ing to ourselves, is Charles Willson (or Wilson) 
 Peale; for his life was remarkably characteristic of 
 the time, and so intimately related to some of its 
 most important events. Born at Chesterton, Mary- 
 land, in 1741, he displayed from his youth mechan- 
 ical ability and remarkable versatility. In early life 
 he proved himself a clever worker in leather, wood, 
 and metal. He could make a harness, a clock, or 
 
 [29] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 silver moulding; he stuffed birds, extracted, re- 
 paired, and manufactured teeth, and delivered pop- 
 ular lectures. By degrees, discovering some skill in 
 drawing, he first took lessons in Annapolis f rom the 
 Swedish painter, Gustavus Hesselius, then studied 
 under Copley in Boston, and finally with West in 
 London. Upon his return to this country he lived 
 for two years in Annapolis, and in 1772 painted the 
 first life-size portrait of Washington, showing him 
 in his aspect before the Revolution. Washington 
 was at the time forty years old, and is represented 
 as a Virginia colonel, in blue coat, scarlet facings, 
 scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and a purple scarf 
 over the left shoulder. It was the uniform in which 
 he had served eighteen years before against the 
 French and Indians near the headwaters of the 
 Ohio, and in which a year later he had taken 
 part in Braddock’s disastrous expedition, where 
 his coolness and bravery saved a remnant of the 
 force. 
 
 At the outbreak of the Revolution, Peale joined 
 the army and commanded a company at the battles 
 of Trenton and Germantown. In the intervals of 
 fighting he worked upon his second portrait of 
 Washington, which had been commissioned by Con- 
 gress. The picture was begun during the gloomy 
 winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge, and continued 
 at Monmouth. Here Washington suggested intro- 
 ducing as a background the view from the window 
 
 [ 30 ] 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 of the farmhouse in which he was at the time sitting 
 for his portrait, and Peale painted in the Monmouth 
 Courthouse with a body of Hessians issuing from it 
 under guard. Later, when he finished the picture 
 at Princeton, he added a view of Nassau Hall. In 
 all he painted fourteen portraits of Washington, 
 and it is upon these, although his work includes the 
 portraits of many other famous men, that his repu- 
 tation is chiefly based. 
 
 It is customary to speak of these portraits as 
 being more interesting in the way of memorials than 
 as works of art. Yet it may be doubted if this 
 estimate is just, for Peak’s portraits have an actual- 
 ity as vivid as Copley’s. He lacked, it is true, the 
 latter’s versatility, his elegance of suggestion, and 
 facility in rendering sumptuous fabrics, because 
 he was more concerned with virility of character 
 in men than with the graces of femininity. He had 
 even less feeling than Copley for the aesthetic qual- 
 ities of painting, as in itself a source of emotional 
 expression; for with him it was purely a means to 
 an end. Yet within this narrow conception of art 
 he was so single-minded and sincere that his pictures 
 are extraordinarily convincing, and, if you view 
 them for what they aimed to be, faithful records 
 of objective facts, most stimulating and conclusive. 
 They are the work of a man who in many respects 
 was less than a painter, but in others very much 
 
 more. 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 He was active in the service of his country as in 
 that of art. In addition to his military career, he 
 had been a member of the Philadelphia Convention 
 of 1777. Having discovered some mammoth bones, 
 he commenced a collection of objects relating to the 
 sciences and arts, which was the first step in the 
 direction of a museum in this country. He also 
 attempted to estabhsh in Philadelphia a school of 
 fine arts, and was successful in organising the first 
 exhibition of paintings. Finally, in 1805, he co- 
 operated in the foundation of the Pennsylvania 
 Academy, the oldest of all our existing art institu- 
 tions. For the New York Academy of Fine Arts, 
 though founded four years earlier, had succumbed 
 to straitened circumstances, and it was not until 
 1828 that the present National Academy of Design 
 was launched upon its career. It is an interesting 
 characteristic of the Pennsylvania Academy that, 
 while its promoters included some painters, its man- 
 agement has always been in the hands of laymen. 
 Its original object, as set forth in its parchment of 
 incorporation, was: 
 
 ** To promote the cultivation of the Fine Arts in the United 
 States of America by introducing correct and elegant copies 
 from works of the first masters in Sculpture and Painting, and 
 by thus facilitating the access to such standards, and also by 
 conferring moderate but honourable premiums, and otherwise 
 assisting studies and exciting the efforts of artists, gradually 
 to unfold, enlighten and invigorate the talents of our coun- 
 trymen.” 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON C. W. Peale 
 
 ARD in drawing and suggestive of a scrupulous imitation of the subject, hit by 
 bit — the very opposite of the modern synthetic method of suggestion of the whole as 
 a whole — yet full of force by reason of its sincerity of purpose. 
 
 In the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library 
 
THE ARTIST IN HIS MUSEUM C. W. Peale 
 
 PICTURE of extraordinary interest, illustrating in the first place the beginning 
 of our museums, and in the second a portrait of Peale by himself at the age of 
 eighty-three. 
 
 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 This quaintly expresses the high and stalwart 
 purpose of the times ; a consciousness of the limited 
 conditions of the start, a conviction of the harvest 
 of the future; and among the contemporary 
 painters none was so representative of his time as 
 Charles Wilson Peale. . 
 
 On the other hand, the great exception to the 
 otherwise limited conditions of the period was Gil- 
 bert Stuart; for his qualifications as a painter were 
 not to be rivalled by any other American for nearly 
 half a century. He was born in 1755, at Narragan- 
 sett, where his father, a Scotch refugee, who had 
 been mixed up in the troubles of the Pretender, 
 owned a snuff-grinding mill on the Petaquamscott 
 Pond. He had married a Welsh lady, from whom 
 the son inherited a taste for music and skill in play- 
 ing the organ. The boy, when quite young, had 
 shown an inclination for drawing, in which he was 
 encouraged by a local physician. Dr. William 
 Hunter. In course of time a Scotch painter, 
 Cosmo Alexander, paid a visit to Newport. He 
 was attracted by the promise of talent in the youth, 
 who was now eighteen, gave him some lessons, and 
 invited his companionship in a journey back to 
 Scotland, where he placed him in Glasgow Univer- 
 sity. Very shortly afterv/ards, however, Alexan- 
 der died, and Stuart, friendless and homesick, found 
 passage back to Newport on a collier. He con- 
 
 [35] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tinned to progress in his art, and was practising at 
 Boston, when the first shots were fired at Lexing- 
 ton; whereupon, his family being of the Tory party, 
 he made his way to New York and thence sailed for 
 London. Not until all his funds were spent did he 
 make application to West, who with characteristic 
 kindness immediately befriended him, and, recog- 
 nising his ability, took him into his own house and 
 at length engaged him as an assistant. But, al- 
 though he worked for eight years in West’s studio, 
 he was uninfluenced by the latter’s point of view or 
 method of painting. 
 
 Perhaps it was because of the Scotch and Welsh 
 blood in his veins that he remained independent of 
 all the tendencies around him and saw exclusively 
 with his own eyes. In an age of considerable 
 affectation, when public taste was largely moulded 
 by the drama and the histrionic feeling was reflected 
 in painting, his portraits were singularly devoid of 
 any display. His aim was to get his sitters to 
 reveal their natural selves, and to put them at their 
 ease he exercised his remarkable gift as a raconteur, 
 drawing freely from his store of anecdote and 
 experience. It was the actual humanity of his sub- 
 ject, the individual character of the men or women 
 before his easel, that enlisted his shrewd and sympa- 
 thetic interest, and in defence of his frequent slur- 
 ring over of the drapery parts of the picture he 
 would say: ‘‘I copy the works of God, and leave 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 clothes to the tailor and mantua-maker.” Yet, if 
 he felt the clothes to be characteristic of the per- 
 sonality and contributory to its expression, he 
 would bestow upon them the most exact and lov- 
 ing care. 
 
 No better example of this could be desired than 
 the Portrait of Dr, Pother gill in his drab quaker 
 costume. This famous London physician, who had 
 been born in Yorkshire and educated in Edinburgh, 
 warmly sympathised with the American Colonies 
 and had espoused their cause in a pamphlet entitled 
 “ Considerations Relative to the North American 
 Colonies.” He had associated himself very closely 
 with Franklin, and the latter’s comment on hearing 
 of his death was, “ I can hardly conceive that a 
 better man ever existed.” In full accord with the 
 elevated refinement of the doctor’s personality are 
 the exquisite modelling of the face and hands and 
 the delicate craftsmanship exhibited in the render- 
 ing of the wig and coat and accessories. This early 
 example of Stuart is all the more precious because 
 of the dissimilarity which it presents to his usual, 
 more vigorous, and suggestive method. For what 
 distinguishes him from the famous English portrait 
 painters of his day is the entire absence of a parti 
 pris in his work ; he does not set out to make a pic- 
 ture, but to seize with certainty and directness the 
 actuality of the person in front of him. In doing 
 so, he was accustomed to concentrate the emphasis 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 on some salient feature. This is particularly illus- 
 trated in his famous portrait of Washington, 
 known as the Athenceum Portrait, 
 
 Stuart’s admiration for Washington had grown 
 into a passion. He was upon the flood tide of suc- 
 cess ; “ tasked himself with six sitters a day,” had 
 painted portraits of George III., and of the Prince 
 of Wales; his position in the fashionable world of 
 London — and he himself was a hon vivant — was as- 
 sured; yet he gave up all to return to America, 
 impelled by his admiration of Washington and his 
 desire to paint this man among men. He reached 
 New York in 1792, and two years later arrived 
 in Philadelphia, during the session of Congress, 
 to present to Washington a letter of introduction 
 from John Jay. Those were stirring times. The 
 Whisky Boys ” were rioting against the tax on 
 liquors ; the nation was in commotion over the stop- 
 page on the high seas of American merchantmen 
 by British privateers, and everywhere clanged the 
 opposing arguments of Federalists and anti-Fed- 
 eralists, of Republicans and Democrats. Amidst 
 the tumult of passion and prejudice reared the 
 strong, calm personality of Washington. In his 
 presence Stuart, who had seen all manner of men 
 from high to low without blinking, confesses that 
 he lost his self-possession. The first attempt at a 
 portrait was a failure; the artist rubbed it out; 
 the anecdotes with which he had beguiled other 
 
 [38] 
 
THE ATPIENAEUM PORTRAIT” OF WASHINGTON Gilbert Stuart 
 
 ^yTUART painted only three portraits of Washington from life. The first 
 he was dissatisfied with and destroyed; the second is in England. This 
 one came nearest to Stuart’s conception of the original, and in order that 
 he might not have to part with it, he kept it purposely unfinished. 
 
 In the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
 
PORTRAIT OF DR. FOTHERGILL 
 
 Gilbert Stuart 
 
 N unusual example of the artist, since in representing this Quaker gentleman he 
 has painted the head and the hands and the accessories of the wig and clothes 
 with a minute regard for texture and expression. 
 
 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 men into revealing their inner selves were of no 
 avail to unmask the impassive calm of Washing- 
 ton. A second picture was begun; Stuart had dis- 
 covered that upon the experiences of the late war 
 Washington would expand. He painted the por- 
 trait, which was presented to Lord Landsdown and 
 is now in England. It is known as the Lansdown 
 Portrait, a full length, with left hand on the sword- 
 hilt and the other extended. Still later, at Mrs. 
 Washington’s request, the President gave another 
 sitting, and in 1796 the Athenceum Portrait was 
 produced. It came nearest to Stuart’s conception 
 of his subject, and he delayed to finish it, that he 
 might not have to part with it. After his death 
 it was sold by his widow, and presented to the 
 Athengeum, Boston. It now hangs in the Museum 
 of Fine Arts in that city. These three, the first 
 of which was destroyed by the artist, were the 
 only portraits of Washington that Stuart made 
 from life. The numerous others are either replicas 
 of these or imaginary portraits, such as the Wash- 
 ington on Dorchester Heights, 
 
 While Peale’s first portrait of Washington rep- 
 resents him in his prime, the Athenceum shows him 
 in the evening of life, when the stress of day had 
 been succeeded, by ample calm. It illustrates also 
 Stuart’s faculty for seizing on the vital, salient 
 features of the subject. “ There were,” he him- 
 self said, “ features in Washington’s face totally 
 
 [41] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 different from what I have observed in any other 
 human being; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, 
 were larger than I ever met with before, and the 
 upper part of the nose broader. All his features 
 were indicative of strong passion, yet, like Socrates, 
 his judgment and great self-command made him 
 appear a man of different class in the eyes of the 
 world.” 
 
 The colour of Washington’s eyes was a light, 
 greyish blue, but, according to Mr. Custis, Stuart 
 painted them of a deeper blue, saying: “In 
 a hundred years they will have faded to the right 
 colour.” The immobility of the mouth is due to the 
 loss of teeth and to the ill-fitting substitutes con- 
 structed by Wilson Peale. 
 
 In 1794 Stuart settled in Boston, where he con- 
 tinued to reside until his death in 1828. His career 
 stands out in the early chapter of American paint- 
 ing as a single unrelated episode. He was the 
 only American of his day who was in the true 
 sense a painter. Beside him Peale and even Cop- 
 ley are still limners, enclosing figures in hard out- 
 lines and laying on the colours with tight and rigid 
 primness, so that, as we have remarked, there is 
 little or no difference in texture between the flesh 
 parts and the fabrics, no suggestion of the figures 
 being enveloped in atmosphere or illumined with 
 natural light, very little also of living movement 
 in gestures and poses. Their work, as compared 
 
 [42] 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 with Stuart’s, betrays the feeling of the draughts- 
 man, who secures first the exact form of his objects 
 and then increases their semblance to reality by 
 overlaying colour. Stuart’s, on the other hand, 
 has its origin in brushwork, guided by a painter’s 
 way of seeing his subject as an arrangement of 
 coloured masses, variously affected by light and 
 atmosphere. Consequently his outlines are varied 
 — defined, indefinite, firm, or fluent, as they appear 
 in life; the flesh, solid and yet supple, glows with 
 light, its texture clearly differentiated from the 
 other textures in the picture; the expression of the 
 faces is animated with life, and the figures are easy 
 and elastic in their poses. Moreover, while Peale 
 and Copley elaborately recorded as far as they 
 could all that was presented to the eye, Stuart 
 summarised his impressions in a forceful general- 
 isation. 
 
 He was unrelated to the conditions that preceded 
 and clustered round 1784, and differed in the char- 
 acter of his achievement from any contemporaries 
 either in America or England. For, when Stuart 
 arrived in London he was only twenty years old, 
 too young to have been permanently affected by 
 the lack of opportunity in his native country, and, 
 perhaps because of that blend of Scotch and Welsh 
 blood in his veins, too independent to be directly 
 influenced by West or anybody else. He looked 
 upon life with his own eyes, and discovered for him- 
 
 [43] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 self a way of seeing and representing what he saw. 
 The sum of his work is uneven in quality, but at its 
 best it anticipated the brilliant suggestiveness of 
 modern brushwork. 
 
 For this very reason one may possibly feel that 
 his portraits have less of the flavour of the period 
 than those of Peale and Copley and his other 
 American contemporaries. In the light of our 
 present study, which is not to drag the beginnings 
 of American painting into remorseless comparison 
 with the finer achievements of our modern painters, 
 but to put them back in imagination into the scenes 
 and conditions of which they were a part, Stuart’s 
 share in the story may seem an anachronism. It 
 was admiration of Washington personally that 
 drew him back to this country, not a zeal for re- 
 publican ideas, in the furtherance of which he had 
 borne no part. He did not share in the life-spirit 
 of the nation, and it may be suspected that his 
 portraits are more than a little tinctured with an 
 elegant cosmopolitanism. On the other hand, be- 
 fore the grimly intellectual or austerely visionary 
 faces of Smibert’s New England divines, the pre- 
 cise elegance and proud self-sufficiency of Copley’s 
 men and women of the world, or Peale’s bald mas- 
 culine records of the man upon whom devolved 
 the leadership of a new nation, we can recognise a 
 series of types and in our imagination reconstruct 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE 
 
 their environment. The very limitations of the 
 painters possess a value of human and historical 
 interest. We may transport ourselves beyond the 
 then present, as the founders of the nation did, 
 “ and feel the future in the instant.” 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 W HILE the struggle for independence 
 was proceeding it had little or no 
 effect upon the story of American 
 paintmgc Its influence became apparent later in 
 the resultant growth of national consciousness, and 
 it is this phase of the story that occupies our pres- 
 ent study. Again we will select a date as a van- 
 tage point from which to obtain a survey; and, as 
 in the previous chapters we adopted that of 1783, 
 when the first peace with Great Britain was con- 
 firmed, so now it shall be the conclusion of peace 
 in 1815, after the second War of Independence. 
 
 There are two good reasons for the choice. In 
 the thirty-one years which had elapsed, the idea of 
 Independence had been fully realised, especially 
 during the three years of the later struggle, when 
 the succession of victories by sea and land rein- 
 forced the patriotism of the people with a new 
 sense of national confidence. Moreover, out of 
 the latter developed two new phases of independ- 
 ence: the one industrial, which was born immedi- 
 ately; the other, to appear some twenty years later, 
 in its character spiritual or intellectual. 
 
 [46] 
 
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 The second war was scarcely over before the 
 need of industrial independence was felt. Already, 
 while hostilities were proceeding and the cotton of 
 the South was debarred from exportation to Liver- 
 pool, and the cotton and woollen goods of England 
 from importation to this country, mills for the 
 manufacture of cotton and woollen goods had been 
 started in New England. These, upon the conclu- 
 sion of peace, when the markets were glutted with 
 foreign importations, found themselves threatened 
 with extinction. The manufacturers immediately 
 demanded protection, and in the following year ob- 
 tained from Congress an act establishing a tariff. 
 It was the beginning of a new idea, that political 
 independence involved the need of industrial inde- 
 pendence. Nor was it long before the idea of 
 economic independence, originating in the necessi- 
 ties of the moment, discovered its relation to the 
 spiritual and intellectual aspirations of the new 
 nation. In 183T, before the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 ciety of Cambridge, Emerson delivered that ad- 
 dress entitled, “ The American Scholar,’’ which was 
 hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “ Our Intel- 
 lectual Declaration of Independence.” In it 
 Emerson sounded a new note. “ Our day of de- 
 pendence,” he said, “ our long apprenticeship to the 
 learning of other lands, draws to a close. The 
 millions that around us are rushing into life can- 
 not always be fed on the sere remains of foreign 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, 
 that will sing themselves.” 
 
 The utterance represents a singular combination 
 of fallacy and truth. For in the kingdom of 
 thought, wherein Emerson himself dwells and of 
 which painting is a province, there are no bound- 
 aries of oceans or continents, no disabilities of de- 
 pendence or alienshij), but a community of free 
 intercourse. Before another generation had passed 
 away Americans would realise the need of this 
 and begin to take full advantage of it. Mean- 
 while, in their pertinence to the conditions of the 
 time in which they were spoken, those were true 
 words. 
 
 For, by the wars with England and the restora- 
 tion of the monarchy in France, this country was 
 isolated. Moreover, the problems before it, politi- 
 cal, industrial, and educational, were peculiar to it- 
 self and to be wrought out only by self-reliance. 
 So this utterance had all the power of an exhorta- 
 tion and all the encouragement of a prophecy. 
 For the time being, too, its application to painting 
 rang true; for the feet of the painters of this period 
 were turned toward Rome, and the decadent art of 
 Italy, whence certainly was to be derived no source 
 of strength for our infant art. 
 
 This new spirit of intellectual and spiritual in- 
 dependence and that other of economic independ- 
 ence, accompanied by so marvellous a territorial 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT, 
 
 expansion, were reflected, as we shall see, in the 
 growth of an American school of landscape paint- 
 ing. Meanwhile, before considering it, we must 
 look back from our vantage point and attach the 
 new phase of our story to the preceding one. The 
 connecting link is John Trumbull. 
 
 Born in 1756, in Lebanon, Connecticut, a son 
 of the Colonial Governor of that State, he was 
 twenty years old when the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence was signed. A graduate of Harvard 
 University, he had been influenced by the portraits 
 of Smibert and Copley, and was already learning 
 to become a painter when the War of the Revo- 
 lution began. Immediately he joined the army, 
 and, his skiU in drawing being noted by Washing- 
 ton, he was set to making plans of the enemy’s 
 works. From this he was promoted to a position 
 upon the general staff, with the rank of brigadier- 
 major, and subsequently served as colonel under 
 Gates. But aggrieved at the date which Congress 
 assigned to his commission, he resigned from the 
 army, made his way to France, whence he pro- 
 ceeded to England, and under West recommenced 
 the study of painting. The execution of Major 
 Andre, however, had aroused in England a spirit 
 of retaliation, and Trumbull was arrested and im- 
 prisoned as a spy. The intercession of West saved 
 his life, and after eight months’ imprisonment se- 
 
 [49] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 cured his release, on condition that he leave the 
 country. When peace was established, however, 
 he went again to England and continued his stud- 
 ies with West, not returning to the United States 
 until 1789. 
 
 It must be admitted that his qualifications as a 
 painter were not commensurate with the scope of 
 his ideals. Moreover, he approached his subject 
 from the patriot’s rather than the painter’s point 
 of view. He was filled with the seriousness of 
 his time, with the sense of responsibility to the 
 grave issues through which the young nation was 
 progressing, moreover, with that self-consciousness 
 of the part which it behooved a patriot to play. 
 His nearness to the great events made it impossible 
 for him to view them apart from their political 
 significance and to regard them, as a painter 
 should, principally as an opportunity for a painter- 
 like presentation. Further, the very temper of the 
 time was antagonistic to any other view than the 
 immense importance of the facts as facts, and 
 nothing he could have learned from West tended 
 to modify this unpainter-like point of view. For 
 upon the point of view from which a painter ap- 
 proaches the subject of a historical painting, hinges 
 the whole matter. 
 
 It may appear to some a hard saying that paint- 
 ing is a vehicle of doubtful suitability for the com- 
 memoration of great historical events, such as the 
 
 [50] 
 
PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON Johx Trumbull 
 
 C ONSIDERED one of the painter s best portraits. It was painted not from life, hut from 
 a bust by Ceraccki. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 

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GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 Battles of Bunker Hill and Trenton, which among 
 others Trumbull essayed to picture; still more hard, 
 that patriotism, so far from being a stimulus to 
 the painter in his art, may be a cause of weakness. 
 But look at the illustration here reproduced of 
 Trumbull’s picture of the Battle of Bunker Hilk 
 and ask yourself if the eff ect it produces upon your 
 imagination is in any way comparable to, say, that 
 of Longfellow’s poem, “ Paul Revere’s Ride.” If 
 it is not, what is the reason? 
 
 We have already noted one reason, in the paint- 
 er’s preoccupation with accuracy of facts, so that 
 the spirit of the occasion is ungrasped. There is 
 another; that the poet had the advantage because 
 his medium was words, by the sound and rhythm 
 of which, as well as by their meaning, he could 
 present picture after picture to our imagination, 
 kindling it more and more by each successive ap- 
 peal to our emotions, until we seem to hear the very 
 clang of the horse’s hoof, its laboured panting, and 
 the heavy breathing of its rider; see the startled 
 faces appearing at the windows, as each quiet vil- 
 lage is awoke, and feel the torrent of patriotic ar- 
 dour that swept through the country-side on that 
 fateful night. It is conceivable that a painter 
 might paint a picture of this incident which should 
 move us as much as the poem does. But recognise 
 at the outset the odds against him. Instead of the 
 impetuous variety of words and tramp and rhythm 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 of the lines, he must fix on some one action of horse 
 and rider; instead of villages flying past, some one 
 set scene for a background; instead of a gradual 
 working up of fervour to a point of culmination, 
 some one fixed, first and final, display. If he does, 
 after all, succeed in awakening our emotions, it 
 will not be through his restricted array of facts 
 so much as through some suggestion to the imag- 
 ination, by means of the impressiveness of the pic- 
 ture’s composition and of its colour and light and 
 shade. In a word, not by accuracy of detail or 
 emulating the artifices of the stage manager, but 
 because of the painter’s reliance upon those quali- 
 ties which are peculiar to his own craft. 
 
 That the first requisite of a picture should be 
 to have pictorial qualities, that is to say, that it 
 should embody a subject which can be more vitally 
 expressed in paint than in any other medium, and 
 should be so treated as to bring out to its full possi- 
 bilities the craft of the painter, would never have 
 occurred to Trumbull, any more than it did to 
 West, or, for that matter, to Reynolds. The latter, 
 fortunately for his subsequent reputation, was held 
 by his public almost exclusively to portraits, other- 
 wise he would have squandered his talent, as more 
 than once he did, over ambitious canvases based on 
 mythological, historical, or religious themes. For 
 the eighteenth century in England was character- 
 ised by the growth of English prose, culminating 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 in enthusiasm for oratory and stage representa- 
 tions. It was a period of triumph for the written 
 and spoken word, especially for the latter, and the 
 ambition of the painter was to emulate this tri- 
 umph in his pictures. Similar conditions prevailed 
 in this country, and even in a heightened form, 
 owing to the stimulus of national events. Consider 
 the hold which the phraseology of the Declaration 
 of Independence still has upon the imagination, 
 and how much more powerfully it must have pos- 
 sessed those who had witnessed the realisation of its 
 ( 
 
 principles. Its phrases, familiar and oft repeated, 
 gave an impetus to the worship of the written and 
 spoken word that has continued to our own day, 
 and it is a fact to be noted that the first genuine 
 art expression of the new nation was not in the 
 form of painting or sculpture, but of literature 
 and oratory. 
 
 That Trumbull recognised the power of the 
 word is illustrated amusingly in one of his letters. 
 It was addressed to his agent in Washington, 
 through whom he was expecting to make sales of 
 the engravings of his pictures. Apparently, the 
 results were not satisfactory, for he urges his cor- 
 respondent to go about among the Senators and 
 Congressmen, and talk, talk, talk. “You must 
 remember,” he adds, “ that we are living under a 
 logocrajcyy * 
 
 * Word-government, or government of the word. 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 His attitude toward painting may be gathered 
 from another of his letters: 
 
 “ I am fully sensible/’ he wrote, “ that the pro- 
 fession [of painting], as it is generally practised, 
 is frivolous, little useful to society, and unworthy 
 a man who has talents for more serious pursuits. 
 But to preserve and diffuse the memory of the 
 noblest series of actions which have ever presented 
 themselves in the history of man, is sufficient war- 
 rant for it/’ 
 
 Thus, his highest conception of a painter was 
 to be a historian in paint; and his pictures illus- 
 trate it. 
 
 Very different from this practical man of affairs 
 who practised painting, was his contemporary, 
 Washington Allston. The latter in one of his 
 letters describes his sensations in presence of the 
 works of the Venetian colourists, Titian, Paul 
 Veronese, and Tintoretto. He tells how the magic 
 of the colouring affected him irrespective of the 
 subjects; that he recognised in it an abstract lan- 
 guage, comparable to that of music. In a word, he 
 acknowledged the independence of painting as a 
 medium of expression; and, idealist, dreamer, ro- 
 manticist, that he was by nature, had most of the 
 qualifications that distinguished the great roman- 
 tic painter, Delacroix. But he lacked the capacity 
 of the latter to keep himself detached from the 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
A SPANISH GIRL 
 
 Washington Allston 
 
 artist was never in Spain. The picture in its sentimental aloofness from any reality 
 JB ^f is characteristic of the period in which it was painted. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
THE DEAD MAX RESTORED TO LIFE 
 
 Washixgtox Allstox 
 
 CLEVER composition, elaborated on artistic-scientific lines, therefore lackinq 
 in spontaneity and in the suggestion of being the record of an actual scene. 
 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 literary alliance, while yet drawing from literature 
 his inspiration. It was the tragedy of Allston’s 
 life that he was subservient to the dominion of the 
 word; moreover, he was a man of frail physique, 
 whose ideas outstripped his strength. 
 
 An exception to the rule that the South, while 
 patronising art, did not produce artists, he was of 
 good Southern family, born at Waccamaw, South 
 Carolina, in 1779. At seven years old, in conse- 
 quence of the frailty of his constitution, he was 
 sent to the more bracing climate of Newport, 
 Rhode Island, where his school days were passed in 
 the companionship of Edward S. Malbone. The 
 latter, a native of Newport, two years his senior, 
 had early displayed that skill in drawing which 
 resulted in his becoming an excellent miniature 
 painter, and his example confirmed the young All- 
 ston’s own taste for drawing. Also there was much 
 in the latter’s gentle nature, with its love for the 
 marvellous and the poetic, that fitted in with the 
 refined abstraction of Malbone’s disposition. The 
 result was an ardent friendship between them, that 
 continued while Allston was studying at Harvard 
 and the older youth was working as a portrait 
 painter in Boston. His college days over, Allston 
 returned to South Carolina and found Malbone 
 successfully engaged in Charleston, and the two 
 planned a visit to England; Allston, with charac- 
 teristic imprudence, disposing of his share in the 
 
 [59] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 family estate for a small sum of ready cash. They 
 were together in London for a few months, and 
 there Malbone painted The Hours, three girl fig- 
 ures representing the Past, Present, and Future, 
 circling in a dance, which is regarded as his most 
 important work. Then the companionship ended, 
 for Malhorie returned home, and six years later, 
 after a vain attempt to restore his shattered health 
 by a voyage to Jamaica, died at Savannah in 1807. 
 
 During four years’ sojourn in Rome, where, in 
 companionship with Vanderlyn, Allston enjoyed 
 the intimacy of many famous men, among others 
 of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hans Anderson, Wash- 
 ington Irving, and Turner, he came under the spell 
 of Raphael, ‘‘the greatest master,” as he put it, 
 “ of the affections in our art,” and of Michelan- 
 gelo, “ of whom I know not how to speak in ade- 
 quate terms of reverence— even Raphael bows 
 before him.” The grace of the one may well have 
 been dangerously seductive; the terrific power of 
 the other, engulfing to a young man whose instruc- 
 tion in the actual rudiments of his art had been so 
 limited, and whose mind was already apt to be 
 overoccupied with reverie and contemplation. 
 One result of his Italian experience, therefore, was 
 to direct his thoughts to conceptions beyond his 
 ability and strength to body forth, many of them 
 more adapted to poetic than to pictorial expres- 
 sion. He left numerous drawings of studies for 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
:>ORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST John Vanderlvn 
 
 In the Colleetion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 

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GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 his pictures, in which the sesthetic intention shines 
 forth spontaneously and clearly, whereas in the 
 finished work it became laboured over and obscured. 
 Thus in the Dead Man Restored to Life (by touch- 
 ing Elijah’s bones as he was being buried), not- 
 withstanding the general handsomeness of the 
 composition, there is evidence of a laboured piecing 
 together of its several parts, so that the total effect 
 is rather one of pose and artifice, reminiscent of 
 the mechanics of the Italian “ grand style,” but 
 without that comprehending grasp which welds all 
 into an appearance of having grown into being, 
 spontaneously and inevitably. 
 
 Allston married a sister of the celebrated divine. 
 Dr. Channing, and settled in Cambridge, Massa- 
 chusetts, where he lived a life of very beautiful 
 seclusion in the society of a few choice friends. 
 Twenty-six years before his death he had made 
 what he called “ a highly finished sketch ” of a very 
 large picture, Belshazzar's Feast, He had been 
 still working over the unfinished canvas on the day 
 that he died, in 1843. It remained a pathetic memo- 
 rial to the magnitude of his ideals and the insuffi- 
 ciency of his personal accomplishment. 
 
 To this early period of the Republic belongs 
 another notable name, associated also with promise 
 only partially realised, that of John Vanderlyn. 
 Though he painted many excellent portraits, his 
 
 [6S] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 fame rests chiefly on two pictures, Marius Among 
 the Ruins of Carthage^ and the nude figure of 
 Ariadne, Born in Kingston, New Y ork, in 1776, he 
 worked as a boy with a local blacksmith. His 
 brother was established in New York as a physician, 
 and through his influence and that of Aaron Burr 
 Vanderlyn studied under Stuart, and then, with 
 his patron’s help, paid a visit to Paris. He 
 revisited that city in 1803, when he became intimate 
 with Allston, the two friends later, as we have 
 seen, living together in Rome. It was there that 
 he painted the two pictures mentioned above. The 
 Marius was shown at the Paris Salon of 1808, 
 where it attracted the notice of Napoleon, who per- 
 sonally selected it for one of his gold medals. The 
 Ariadne is in the old-fashioned style of painting 
 of that period, being neither a study of life such 
 as we are accustomed to to-day nor invested with 
 that quality of abstract beauty that characterises 
 the work of the Italian masters, on which it was 
 modelled. It is, however, a picture of considerable 
 distinction, both in drawing and colour. 
 
 Though an early work, it was nevertheless the 
 last of Vanderlyn’s notable achievements. Whether 
 it were a fact that he was an instance, and there 
 are many in painting, of quickly reached maturity 
 as quickly exhausted, or that the times in America 
 were not yet ripe for works of imagination, or that 
 the slowness with which he painted interfered with 
 
 [64] 
 
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 
 
 his popularity as a portrait painter, certain it is 
 that Vanderlyn became an unsuccessful and disap- 
 pointed man. One day, in 1852, he reappeared at 
 Kingston and borrowed a shilling of a friend to 
 pay for the transportation of his baggage to the 
 hotel. Arrived there, he retired to his room, and 
 the following morning was found dead. The brief 
 vitalising influence of his career, as of Allston’s, 
 had been the “ grand style ” of Italian art. In 
 Vanderlyn’s unfulfilled promise, in Allston’s later 
 years as he sat in front of his never-to-be-finished 
 picture, impotently trying to re-enact the miracle 
 of the dead restored to life, and to make the pres- 
 ent live by contact with the dead bones of the past, 
 there is a deep pathos. Both looked backward, 
 while all the energy of their countrymen and of 
 their time was bent in a direction forward. They 
 were also by instinct cosmopolitan and aloof from 
 the spirit of independent nationalism, which had 
 became the guiding influence of their contem- 
 poraries. Meanwhile this spirit, encouraged by 
 Emerson, had inspired a group of painters, who 
 are remembered as the “ Hudson River School.” 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A NATIVE GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 T he most direct outcome of the develop- 
 ment of a national spirit was the appear- 
 ance of the so-called “ Hudson River 
 School.” It was a title given to a group of land- 
 scape painters who began by working in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Hudson. It is customary to speak 
 of these men disparagingly because they did not 
 paint as well as the majority of modern painters. 
 They should, however, be honoured, despite their 
 technical deficiencies, for the motive and manner 
 of their inspiration. 
 
 In the first place, they went to nature for their 
 motive, and, secondly, they studied it in that love 
 and pride of American conditions which, outside 
 of painting, characterised their age. They were 
 the first of American painters to give expression to 
 the prevailing spirit of nationalism. 
 
 While the earliest of these landscape painters 
 was Thomas Doughty, the one who gave the im- 
 petus to the new movement and helped most to 
 make it popular was Thomas Cole. In a sense also 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
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 In the Collection of the New York Historical Society 
 
THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE Thotmas Cole 
 
GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 he was a link between the new enthusiasm for 
 nature-study and the older predilection for his- 
 torical and “ grand style ” subjects, since in those 
 pictures which his contemporaries particularly 
 applauded — Expulsion from Paradise ^ and the two 
 series respectively called The Course of Empire 
 and The Voyage of Life — ^he was not satisfied to 
 depict nature for its own sake, but made it the 
 vehicle for moral allegories. The public recognised 
 in them what it had already appreciated in Bry- 
 ant’s “ Thanatopsis ” — the introduction of nature 
 as a setting for elevated sentiments. But Cole’s 
 more enduring claim to be remembered consists in 
 his having aroused an appreciation of the picto- 
 rial possibilities of the Catskills, and of American 
 landscape in general. 
 
 He was born in England in 1801, and when 
 nineteen years old accompanied his family to this 
 country, his father, a wallpaper-maker, settling in 
 Steubenville, Ohio. But the son was of a wander- 
 ing disposition, and his roamings led him far- 
 ther and farther afield, until at length he reached 
 Philadelphia, and in the Academy had the first 
 chance of studying pictures. Meanwhile it was 
 nature that prompted his own desire to paint, and 
 when he finally arrived in New York it was with 
 a number of studies made in the Catskills and along 
 the Hudson. These came to the notice of Trum- 
 bull and Durand, who saw in them the beginnings 
 
 [69] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 of a new development of native art. They were 
 exhibited; Bryant among others praised them; 
 some found purchasers, and Cole’s successful career 
 was started. He made visits to England, France, 
 and Italy, and his pictures appeared in the Royal 
 Academy. But, though he made his permanent 
 home near the village of Catskill, close to some of 
 the most beautiful scenery of what he called his 
 “ dear Catskills,” his love of nature, pure and sim- 
 ple, became confused with other motives. Possess- 
 ing a religious and romantic temperament, a stu- 
 dent of Bunyan and Sir Walter Scott, he yielded 
 to the stronger influences of the time, which, as 
 we have seen, were literary, didactic, and oratori- 
 cal, rather than pictorial. In The Eoopulsion from 
 Paradise, for example, we miss the note of nature- 
 study; the landscape has been compiled; while in 
 Destruction, number four of his Course of Em- 
 pire, he has emulated the artifices by which Claude 
 built up his imaginary scenes of classic grandeur; 
 only, unlike the Frenchman, whose artistic instinct 
 kept him to the sole motive of a beautiful picture 
 in which the figures count simply as spots of anima- 
 tion, Cole, with no skill of figure-drawing, has 
 made these puppets the main actors in the great 
 spectacle. The total effect is in consequence bom- 
 bastic and the details pitifully weak. 
 
 Yet, as we have seen, he was not the first Ameri- 
 [T'O] 
 
GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 can landscape painter. This title belongs to 
 Thomas Doughty (1793-1856), who had been 
 painting from nature for five years before Cole’s 
 appearance in New York. His work, like that of 
 Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) and J. F. Kensett 
 (1818-1872), breathes the true spirit of what the 
 French call the paysage intime^ that love of the 
 simple country-side, of nature for its own sake, 
 which characterises the pictures of the Barbizon 
 School and of their forerunner, Constable. These 
 paintings of the Hudson Valley had in them the 
 true stuff that has made landscape painting the 
 sincerest form of modern expression; what they 
 lacked was skill in the craftsmanship of painting 
 and the painter’s point of view. These men looked 
 on nature with an eye at once too niggling and too 
 comprehensive. 
 
 In the first place, for example, the landscape by 
 Durand, reproduced here, is too big in size and too 
 extensive in subject to be embraced by a single 
 vision. The eye wanders over it, as it would in 
 presence of the original scene, receiving a number 
 of enjoyable impressions, but no impression of 
 unity and completeness. Lacking these qualities, 
 which are the result of selection, simplification, and 
 organic arrangement, the subject is not so much 
 pictorial as panoramic and topographical. It rep- 
 resents the ordinary way of looking at a landscape 
 rather than the artist’s way. In the second place, 
 
 [71] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 there is an absence of synthesis, that is to say, of 
 a summarising of essentials, in the actual represen- 
 tation of the details. A uniformly patient and 
 conscientious putting together of little effects is 
 spread like a network over the whole; the painter 
 has not grasped the salient characteristics of the 
 whole or its parts, has not enforced these and sub- 
 ordinated the rest. The result is, that his trees 
 and mountains do not assert themselves as masses, 
 but invite attention to the infinite, niggling strokes 
 of which they are composed,* and this is partly the 
 cause and partly the effect of the w’^ay in which 
 the brush was handled. 
 
 In some parts it has spread a thin tint over the 
 canvas, in others worked like a pencil point; no- 
 where with the breadth and fulness and firmness 
 that distinguish the methods of the real painter. 
 We recall the fact that Durand, until his thirty- 
 ninth year, was only an engraver, a very skilful 
 one, and it is the engraver’s rather than the paint- 
 er’s feeling which is evident throughout the canvas. 
 Kensett also began life as an engraver, and his 
 landscapes equally betray the fact. But the previ- 
 ous occupation of these men was not the only 
 
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GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 reason for this lack of painter-like quality in their 
 work. With the sole exception of Stuart, no 
 painter in the true sense of the term had appeared 
 in America. It was not until later, when Ameri- 
 cans came in touch with the Barbizon men and 
 learned from them how to look at nature, how to 
 select from it and compose the essentials into a 
 picture, and how to paint with a full, firm brush 
 in masses, that landscape painting, as distinct from 
 mere representation of landscape, commenced in 
 this country. 
 
 Meanwhile it is very cheap criticism to decry 
 these men of the Hudson River School for their 
 lack of technical ability. Rather should they be 
 remembered as the leaders among us in that return 
 to nature which, unknown to them, had also led 
 Rousseau and his followers to Barbizon, and was 
 to become in literature and painting the strong, 
 distinctive characteristic of the nineteenth century. 
 Nor should it be overlooked how closely in our own 
 country the movement was related to the general 
 trend of thought and action. While Cole with his 
 palette and brushes retraversed the ground that 
 Washington Irving had made famous with his pen, 
 and his landscapes embodied the elevated senti- 
 ment of Bryant’s poetry and the mystery and vast- 
 ness of Cooper’s descriptions of nature, the work 
 of all these painters refiected and contributed to the 
 love and pride of their own country which was 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 filling high with hope and certainty the heart of the 
 nation. 
 
 It should be noted that the careers of these men 
 of the Hudson River School lasted far on into the 
 century. Accordingly, we may as well shake our- 
 selves free from the shackles of chronology for a 
 little while, and complete this portion of our story. 
 
 The simple study of nature, begun by Doughty, 
 Durand, and Kensett, was carried on by the two 
 brothers, William and James McDougal Hart. 
 Both were born in Scotland, the former in 1823, 
 the latter in 1828, and were brought to this country 
 in 1831, their family settling in Albany. Here, 
 as they grew up, they were apprenticed to a coach- 
 maker, and gained their first experience as paint- 
 ers in decorating carriages. William Hart by self- 
 instruction graduated from carriage panels to can- 
 vases, working first on portraits, later on land- 
 scapes. He passed on his experience to his younger 
 brother, who also studied under Schirmer at 
 Diisseldorf. 
 
 This was in 1851, the year in which Leutze re- 
 turned to America, after studying in the same 
 school; and Hart may have been influenced by him 
 to go thither, as certainly other students were. 
 Indeed, for a short time during the middle of the 
 century Diisseldorf represented to American stu- 
 dents the goal of their desires, just as Paris does 
 to-day; and the fact was not without influence 
 
 [76] 
 
GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 upon our painting. For Schirmer himself was a 
 tame and sentimental painter, and the whole ten- 
 dency of the school was toward a trivial exactitude 
 of method and a banality of motive; both seen 
 most characteristically in the sentimental genre 
 pictures of lovely and virtuous peasantry. A 
 great many such pictures found their way to Amer- 
 ica, and, of course, because of their representing a 
 little anecdote or story, were popular with a public 
 that was still very much under the dominion of the 
 Word and not yet trained to an appreciation of a 
 painting as a painting. So, indirectly on public 
 taste, and directly on a considerable number of 
 painters, the influence of the Diisseldorf school was 
 unfortunate. 
 
 Hart, however, lived it down, gaining with ex- 
 perience more freedom of brushwork and develop- 
 ing a charming resourcefulness in colour. Nor was 
 he touched by the sentimentality of the school. His 
 landscapes, like his brother’s and those of the other 
 painters of the Hudson River School, represent as 
 frank and sincere a delight in the lovable aspects 
 of nature as one can imagine. It is, however, a 
 purely objective one; and this fact, I think, is very 
 interesting. It is not until later, when our paint- 
 ers shall have come under the influence of the Bar- 
 bizon group, that they will begin to concern them- 
 selves with the moods of nature, the reflection in 
 the latter of their own moods. This consciousness 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 of self and need of self-expression represent an 
 older, if not necessarily a maturer, habit of mind — 
 a product of the effort everywhere to realise and 
 emphasise the individual. But, as yet, our early 
 painters had not begun to think of themselves as 
 individuals; like the rest of the community, they 
 were engaged for the present in building up a 
 nation; it was the spirit of nationality that fired 
 them and found its natural expression in love of 
 country and in love of nature as its embodiment. 
 So their attitude tow^ard it was that of the child, 
 frankly delighting in the beauty of the thing 
 spread out before their eyes. 
 
 By degrees, as the country was opened up and 
 the wonders of the Rocky Mountains were un- 
 folded, the painter’s imagination, like that of his 
 fellows, became stimulated and his ideal expanded. 
 He turned from the simple surroundings of the 
 homestead to the miracles of nature, and began to 
 be affected by the prevailing enthusiasm for “the 
 biggest thing on earth.” It was the grandest and 
 most tremendously impressive manifestations of 
 nature, demanding large canvases, which now at- 
 tracted such men as F. E. Church, Thomas Moran, 
 and Albert Bierstadt; and, a thing to be noted, 
 this preoccupation with the grandiose, which had 
 begun in an awakened pride of country, led to the 
 pursuit of bigness for its own sake. Church 
 sought his subjects from South America to Lab- 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
YOSEMITE VALLEY Aj.bert Bieustadt 
 
 ‘W' ^HILE Bierstadt was the first to introduce into this country the infiuence of Bitsseldorf, he followed Church in his fondness 
 for the grandiose in nature. His better examples., such as the present one., very cleverly represent the facts of the scene., hut 
 with a uniform precision of detail that becomes monotonous. 
 
 In the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library 
 
GROWTH OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 rador; Bierstadt and Thomas Moran in the Rocky 
 Mountains. But how thoroughly these men be- 
 longed to their age is proved by the enthusiasm 
 which their work aroused in the public. 
 
 Bierstadt, of German origin and with a Ger- 
 man’s passion for the romantic, had the faculty 
 of possessing himself with the spirit of the scene. 
 Moreover, although his method of painting was 
 hard and sleek — owing to his Diisseldorf training — 
 his draughtsmanship was excellent. One may see 
 in the accompanying illustration of Yosemite Val- 
 ley what a power he had of representing the 
 constructive force of mountain masses, and of sug- 
 gesting perspective. A thing, however, to be 
 observed, as affecting the dignity of the picture, 
 is that its size is comparatively small. The painter 
 concentrated his effort, and concentration on the 
 part of the spectator is also possible, whereas over 
 a very large landscape-canvas there is a corre- 
 sponding lessening, by dispersion, both of effort 
 and effect. 
 
 Yet even this picture, though unquestionably 
 it may give us a sense of nature’s impressiveness, 
 does not conclusively impress us. We are not made 
 to realise the emotions which the painter must have 
 felt and we ourselves should feel in presence of the 
 actual scene. We are conscious of no condition 
 of feeling but one of purely intellectual compre- 
 hension; we are pretty well assured what the scene 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 looks like, but not what it feels like. It is almost 
 exclusively a view. 
 
 Apart from questions of technical skill, this is 
 the sharp line of difference between the earlier 
 landscapes and those of the present day, in which 
 we shall find the expression of a mood in nature 
 to be the painter’s aim. It is a difference of point 
 of view and motive. The mental attitude of Bier- 
 stadt. Church, and Moran still remained like that 
 of Trumbull, and their landscapes might be styled, 
 without straining the word, “historical.” 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
_ . _ _ Cowriaht, by Detroit Photoqraphic Co, 
 
 SHOSHONE FALLS, SNAKE RIVER, IDAHO Thojias Moran 
 
 M yHE best of our painters of the grandiose in nature,, Thomas Moran studied Turner to some purpose. The strength of the rampart-like 
 # rocks and the impetuous rush of icater are admirably depicted It is in the rather inert and heavy treatment of the misty part of the 
 picture that the latter especially falls short of the technique oj moae'^u work, until its closer observation of phenomena under the effect 
 of light. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REMNANTS OF THE ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 I N the previous chapter we saw how the devel- 
 opment of national consciousness found ex- 
 pression in a native growth of landscape 
 painting. We noted that, while the beginnings of 
 the “ Hudson River School ” were inspired by a 
 simple love of nature, its followers gradually de- 
 veloped an enthusiasm for the grandiose and spec- 
 tacular; and, moreover, that from first to last the 
 work of these painters was technically insufficient. 
 It will be the topic of the following chapters to 
 show how the technical resources of American 
 painting were fertilised by foreign influence. 
 
 For Emerson’s doctrine, that ‘‘ our long appren- 
 ticeship to the learning of other lands draws to a 
 close,” had been put to the test and found wanting. 
 It could arouse a motive, and a good one; hut not 
 provide the means to realise it adequately. The 
 fallacy of the doctrine consists in this — ^that it took 
 account only of the subject matter of an artist’s 
 work. He felt, and rightly, too, that there should 
 be enough in the accomplishments and aspirations 
 of the American nation to supply all the needed 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 suggestion of ideas. But for a work of art some- 
 thing more is necessary than ideas; of even more 
 importance is the form in which they are ex- 
 pressed. For it is the form in which the poetic 
 idea, or the musical harmony, or the pictorial rep- 
 resentation is embodied, that gives each its par- 
 ticular qualification to be reckoned as a work of 
 art. The building must be erected before it can 
 be used for the purpose for which it is intended. 
 Similarly, technique is the necessary structural 
 antecedent to the expression of an idea through a 
 work of art. 
 
 Of technical knowledge all that survived in 
 America in the middle of the century was a rem- 
 nant of the English tradition. It was insufficient 
 for real progress, as the few men who went abroad 
 at the middle of the century discovered. They 
 found new forces in fermentation, and straightway 
 began to assimilate them. Indeed, a convenient 
 way to study the modern development of the story 
 of American painting is to recognise the fermen- 
 tation which occurred in European art during the 
 past century and to trace how American painting 
 gradually alligned itself with the foreign move- 
 ment. So far from its being a story of self-suffi- 
 cient isolation, it has come to be one of complete 
 identification with the strivings of other countries. 
 For, to-day, so far as concerns technical considera- 
 tions, painting is an international art with a free 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 trade in methods, the clearing-house of which has 
 been Paris. 
 
 Before, however, the latter became generally 
 recognised as the metropolitan centre of art in- 
 struction, a few Americans travelled to Diisseldorf 
 and Munich. Therefore the telling of the story 
 demands an allusion to the remnant of the English 
 tradition and to the influence of these other schools, 
 as preparation for the concluding and decisive in- 
 fluence of Paris. 
 
 The English influence had never been completely 
 dissolved, notwithstanding the tension of political 
 feeling, which perhaps had somewhat abated, 
 though it was to be tightened again during the 
 period of the Civil War. Our painters were wel- 
 comed in England; and English painters, coming 
 over here, were well received. Thus, until the mid- 
 dle of the century, the English tradition still lin- 
 gered on, especially aff* ecting portraiture and genre 
 painting. 
 
 But even in England the great day of portrait 
 painting was past. It had reached its meridian 
 in Gainsborough and Reynolds and in the Scotch- 
 man, Raeburn, who in the pure force of painting 
 was often their superior. It had declined through 
 the tender sweetness of Romney and Hoppner, 
 until it reached a sunset of superflcial splendour in 
 Lawrence. The latter’s facile skill and exuberant 
 inventiveness delayed the catastrophe, while at the 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 same time it helped to make it inevitable and com- 
 plete. The study of nature had yielded to senti- 
 mentality, that of men and women to an extrava- 
 gant interest in their clothes, the original vigour 
 of the motive was undermined, and it needed only 
 less skilful practitioners to reduce the art to a mere 
 representation of insipid prettiness or of middle- 
 class banality. 
 
 During the second quarter of the nineteenth 
 century portraiture in America, as in England, 
 exhibited hard polished surfaces of colour, a dry 
 regard for (ietails, and little discernment between 
 the textures of flesh and fabrics. Still, to so sweep- 
 ing a summary there are some exceptions, among 
 which, for our present purpose of studying condi- 
 tions rather than men, we may mention four — 
 Thomas Sully, Henry Inman, Chester Harding, 
 and Charles Loring Elliott. 
 
 The life of Sully covers the extended period of 
 eighty-nine years, and would be memorable if 
 only for its enormous productivity. He was born 
 at Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England, in 1783, his 
 father and mother being popular figures on the 
 English stage. When the son was nine years old 
 they accepted an engagement to settle in Charles- 
 ton, South Carolina, where in time the boy received 
 instruction from his brother-in-law, M. Belzons, a 
 miniature painter. After painting in Richmond 
 
 [ 88 ] 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 and Norfolk he moved to New York, and thence 
 to Boston, where for a few months he studied 
 under Gilbert Stuart. In 1809 he went to London 
 and painted for a little while with West; but from 
 the evidence of his work it is probable that the 
 painter in London who chiefly interested him was 
 Lawrence. 
 
 His style, indeed, represents a mixture, consid- 
 erably diluted with himself, of Lawrence and 
 Stuart. It exhibits the latter’s purity of fresh 
 tones and the other’s tricks of giving the sitter an 
 expression of pleasant prettiness; but misses alike 
 the virility of Stuart’s and Lawrence’s decorative 
 elegance. From 1810 to his death in 1872 he lived 
 in Philadelphia. 
 
 Henry Inman was a far stronger painter than 
 Sully, and one whose work hardly receives to-day 
 the recognition that it deserves. No doubt, it was 
 uneven in quality ; but some of his portraits of men 
 are remarkably strong in characterisation. That, 
 for example, of Chief Justice Marshall, owned by 
 the Law Association of Philadelphia, is one of 
 those sterling achievements in the presence of 
 which one loses the idea of paint and is conscious 
 only of the living, forceful personality. Yet, if 
 one examines the method of painting, there is no 
 disappointment. It is painstaking without being 
 laboured or fumbling; very solid and conscientious. 
 
 [89] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 It lacks Stuart’s free-handed happiness of touch 
 that hits off expression as if by improvisation, yet 
 Stuart never painted anything more alive than this. 
 
 Inman was born at Utica, New York, in 1803. 
 He became in time a pupil of that eccentric painter, 
 John Wesley Jarvis, an Englishman by birth, who 
 was as much a glutton for work as he was for the 
 delights and weaknesses of the flesh. Inman was 
 elected the first viee-president of the National 
 Academy, and enjoyed unusual success both in 
 Philadelphia and New York. But he was a vietim 
 of asthma, and frailty of health reduced his capac- 
 ity for productiveness. Some friends, among whom 
 was James Lenox, the founder of the Lenox 
 Library and its eollection of pictures, arranged for 
 him to visit England to paint the portrait of 
 Wordsworth and other famous men. His visit 
 was altogether a happy episode; the asthma for the 
 time being ceased to trouble him; he made many 
 friends; his portraits were appreeiated, and he was 
 urged to settle in England. He returned, how- 
 ever, to Ameriea; but a few months later, in 1846, 
 died of heart disease. 
 
 The vieissitudes of Chester Harding’s early life 
 present an interesting reflection of the state of the 
 times. He was born at Conway, Jlassachusetts, 
 in 1792; but when he was fourteen years old the 
 family moved into Western New York. He was 
 
 [90] 
 
PORTRAIT OF ELIZA LESLIE Thomas Sully 
 
 American authoress^ sister of the painter, Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. 
 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
< UT OK OANOKK WCBSTKR 
 
 In the Collection of tlie linoinnati Museum Associatioi 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 a young giant, over six feet in height and of great 
 strength, expending the latter until his twenty-first 
 year in the rough hardships of pioneer work. Then 
 he supported a roving existence by peddling and 
 chair-making, settling down for a little while as a 
 tavern-keeper, and then moving afield again until 
 he reached Pittsburgh. Here, while engaged as a 
 house-painter, he made the acquaintance of a trav- 
 elling portrait-painter, who kindled his imagination 
 but refused him any technical instruction. Unde- 
 terred, however, by this early symptom of trades 
 unionism, he went to work with brushes and paint 
 and produced what was at least a resemblance of 
 his wife. The rest is a story of steady endeavour. 
 Having gained some facility, he migrated to Ken- 
 tucky, thence to Cincinnati and St. Louis, every- 
 where securing customers and increasing alike in 
 his skill and prices. Finally he reached Boston, 
 and, meeting with a success that seems to have im- 
 paired even the popularity of Gilbert Stuart, estab- 
 lished himself in that city, which, except during a 
 visit paid to England, continued to be his home 
 until his death in 1866. Like Inman, he enjoyed 
 in England a very considerable vogue. But, so far 
 as I am acquainted with his work, it never equalled 
 Inman’s at its best, and is rather on a par with that 
 painter’s average work; creditably lifelike, but 
 lacking in distinction either of character or style. 
 
 It is in the latter respect that Charles Loring 
 
 [93] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 Elliott proved himself in advance of his time. The 
 son of an architect in Auburn, New York, where 
 he was born in 1812, his father wished him to fol- 
 low his own profession. But, set on being a painter, 
 he was allowed to go to New York, where Trum- 
 bull gave him some instruction, which was after- 
 ward supplemented by an indiiferent painter 
 named Quidor. But it had involved a good deal 
 of drawing from the cast, and resulted in Elliott 
 becoming a sure and ready draughtsman. Plis skill 
 in paint, however, must have been the product of 
 a natural gift, for he developed a facility in using 
 the brush, fully charged with paint, that had a 
 character of its own and was expressive also of 
 character in the sitter. He could not have learned 
 this from his contemporaries, and it is not recorded 
 that he ever went abroad, so that this individuality 
 and meaningfulness of brushwork are the more re- 
 markable. He anticipated by some instinct the 
 qualities of painting that, during the generation 
 after his death in 1868, were acquired by others 
 from abroad. 
 
 The genre painting of the middle of the century 
 is interesting to-day chiefly as an illustration of the 
 kind of picture that amused our forebears and still 
 amuses those of us who care more about some little 
 anecdotal subject-matter than the method of the 
 painting. Because of the perennial nature of this 
 
 [94] 
 
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST 
 
 Charles Lortng Elliott 
 
 LLIOTT appears at his best in bust portraits, such as this one, which fully sustains his 
 reputation of being the foremost American portrait-painter of the middle of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
dfrii'sd from his Eiv/lish training. 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 preference and the fact that John G. Brown’s long 
 career bridges the past with the present, w^e may 
 select him as typical of the many genre painters 
 that might be mentioned. 
 
 We shall again have occasion to notice genre 
 painting when we consider the influence of Diissel- 
 dorf ; for the present let us summarise the English 
 phases of it. It originated with Hogarth in the 
 first half of the eighteenth century; firstly, in his 
 little domestic groups or “ conversation pictures,” as 
 he called them; secondly, in the scenes from fash- 
 ionable life or vulgar life, which, as he explains, he 
 composed “ on canvas similar to representations on 
 the stage.” “ ]\Iy picture is my stage, and men and 
 women my players, who by means of certain ac- 
 tions or gestures are to exhibit a dumb show.” 
 
 This was a motive very different from that of 
 the Dutch genre. While the latter was occasionally 
 preoccupied with the rendering of incidents, its 
 best and most usual characteristic was the prime in- 
 tention of making a picture, in which the incident 
 was assigned to a secondary function of supplying 
 an excuse for a beautiful arrangement of colour 
 and light and shade. The Dutchmen were paint- 
 ers first, illustrators of manners second, but seldom 
 moralists, as Hogarth was. Such picture-dramas, 
 as the series of Marriage a la Mode, proceed from 
 act to act with a logic as relentless, a satire as pun- 
 gent, a moral force as compelling, as the dramas of 
 
 [ 97 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 Ibsen. On the other hand, like the latter’s, they are 
 saved by their art from being didactic. Hogarth, 
 besides being a moralist, was an excellent painter. 
 Yet the latter quality is the one that was overlooked 
 by the public on whom the didactic, story-telling, 
 literary-dramatic features of his pictures made a 
 deep impression. They helped to confirm the Eng- 
 lish preference, not, however, exclusively English, 
 for what is intelligible to the understanding rather 
 than suggestive to the imagination, for intellectual 
 concreteness rather than abstract sensations. They 
 established the vogue of the picture which enacts a 
 scene. 
 
 Fifty years after Hogarth, Moreland ap- 
 proached nearer to the Dutch genre. He, too, 
 was an excellent painter, and his pictures of rural 
 scenes are thoroughly pictorial in their charm of 
 colour and light. But he lived at a time when the 
 highest thing in art was held to be the painting of 
 the historical or mythological subject in the “ grand 
 manner ” of the Italians, and a public, intent on 
 subject matter rather than on qualities of painting, 
 considered his work \uilgar. The same charge was 
 brought still fifty years later against the genre 
 pictures of Wilkie ; but by this time the reputation 
 of the bombastic picture was a little stale, the mid- 
 dle elass Avas coming to its own, and popularity 
 with the public meant success to the painter. Wil- 
 kie, accordingly, followed by Landseer and Mul- 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 ready, all three of them clever practitioners with 
 the brush, so far as representing the actual appear- 
 ances of things, held their own in the popular esti- 
 mation, and followers of them, less skilful with the 
 brush, confirmed the public in their appetite for 
 the story-telling pictures. The latter were no 
 longer trenchant with satire, but amiably humor- 
 ous or sentimental: little literary pleasantries in 
 paint. It was this sort of influence that John G. 
 Brown inherited and has continued to transmit. 
 
 He was born at Durham, England, in 1831. He 
 attended the schools of the Edinburgh Academy, 
 and also painted in London until 1856, when he 
 transferred his life and work to New York. With 
 the quick eye of a stranger for what is novel to 
 him, he began to paint the types of people around 
 him, and then the street boys of New York. His 
 pictures of the boy upon the sidewalk, selling 
 papers, shining shoes, or larking with his fellows, 
 won admirers, and he has continued to paint them 
 ever since. Such consistency to one subject was 
 no doubt the result, partly of choice, partly of the 
 taste of his public. His genial nature has always 
 gone out to his boy-subjects; he has discovered the 
 best that is in them and represented it with sym- 
 pathy, though, it must be admitted, with some sac- 
 rifice of reality. For his boys have a mildness and 
 ingenuousness that, to the casual observer, at least, 
 is not characteristic of the class. But this very 
 
 [99] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 softening of the type pleased a sentimental public, 
 and they insisted on having Brown’s street boys as 
 they had learned through him to know them. In 
 this way not a few painters are compelled, whether 
 they wish it or not, to go on repeating their motives. 
 The public, demanding an example of what it calls 
 one of their ‘‘ characteristic ” pictures, will not let 
 them change. 
 
 So there are few collectors in this country who 
 have not at some time or other owned a “ Brown 
 still fewer who have not in the course of their artis- 
 tic development disposed of it. The reason of the 
 public taste is not difficult to trace. In the early 
 stage of our appreciation we are attracted, as I 
 have already said, by the subject matter of the 
 picture. The first consideration is — “ What is it 
 about? ” Then, if it is about something with which 
 we are familiar, we take a curious delight in identi- 
 fying all the little details of resemblance to reality 
 — the bristles in the blacking-brush, the label on the 
 bottle, the seam of the breeches, and the stitches of 
 the patch. It all looks “ so natural,” and we think 
 it a wonderful piece of painting; because in our 
 infancy of appreciation, just as in our infancy of 
 age, we place a high value on the faculty of imita- 
 tion. To mew like a cat is quite an accomplish- 
 ment, so also to make a painted boy look like a 
 real boy. 
 
 At least we think it looks real,” but this is a 
 [ 100 ] 
 
REMNANTS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 begging of the whole question. We shall come 
 to this topic of realism later on, when we describe 
 how our painters came in contact with the teach- 
 ings and study of realism abroad, but meanwhile 
 may briefly anticipate the inquiry, Are these boys 
 of Brown’s regarded as character studies, really 
 like the boys of the streets? Have not their crude 
 mixture of good and bad, of ugliness and attrac- 
 tiveness, their queer, intensely human, if distorted, 
 individuality been scoured to a characterless pro- 
 priety, and polished into a meek amiability by an 
 application of moral sapolio, until they may be fit 
 for the parlour but are no longer suggestive of 
 the streets? Compare, for example, the studies of 
 street boys which Murillo made, as they lay basking 
 in the sunshine of the market place of Seville. 
 These, indeed, are the real thing, even to the sun- 
 caked dirt on their feet, which so disturbed Ruskin. 
 And the pictures of them have a further pictorial 
 reality. The warm air envelopes their lazy bodies, 
 the sunshine burnishes their limbs. There is no 
 suggestion of air in Brown’s pictures, no light of 
 nature, no burnish save that of varnished paint. 
 Actual boys in actual daylight could not look like 
 his; the latter have neither realism of character nor 
 realism of representation. Still less have these pic- 
 tures the capacity to arouse an abstract enjoyment 
 through the qualities of colour, light and shade, 
 and tonality. 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 In brief, then, it was to learn to look at nature 
 naturally, and to represent it as it is, and yet with 
 such creative artifice of technical charm as shall 
 affect the imagination independently of the sub- 
 ject, that our painters had to seek inspiration from 
 abroad. England had failed them; Diisseldorf 
 and Munich will he tried and found wanting; the 
 lesson, at last, will he acquired in France. 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF DUSSELDORF AND MUNICH 
 
 I T was in the beginning of the 'fifties that 
 American painting came under the influence 
 of Dusseldorf. We have noted already that 
 the landscape painters, James M. Hart and Albert 
 Bierstadt, were students of its Academy, and shall 
 now allude to the two figure-painters, Emanuel 
 Leutze, who was a distinct product of its teaching, 
 and Eastman Johnson, who outlived its influence. 
 Further, we shall note how greatly the importa- 
 tion of Dusseldorf pictures affected the taste of 
 the American public. 
 
 The reputation of Dusseldorf as an artistic cen- 
 tre had been the growth of some twenty-five years, 
 since Schadow had been appointed director of its 
 Academy and had gathered around him a body of 
 students who remained faithful to the spot and 
 bound themselves into a community, as interesting 
 as it was unique. Let it be said at once that 
 Schadow’s influence rested upon the fact that he 
 was a real painter; and that, while others were 
 draughtsmen who tinted their drawings wdth paint, 
 he revived in Germany the art of actually con- 
 structing the picture in paint — ^the art, in fact, of 
 
 [ 103 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 painting. But the characteristic distinction of 
 Dlisseldorf, at first, was a psychological one. This 
 quaint little town upon the Rhine had hecome, as 
 early as 1830, the nucleus of German Romanticism. 
 Bound together hy sympathy with this spirit, the 
 painters sjient their days in painting, their evenings 
 and occasions of recreation in reinforcing their 
 imaginations with the reading and discussing of 
 Romantic poetry and legends. The world of the 
 present did not exist for them, their preoccupation 
 was solely witli the past. Mendelssohn, the musi- 
 cian, for a while was a memher of the little commun- 
 ity; hut the one person, not a painter, who exerted 
 the greatest influence on the movement was a cer- 
 tain Judge Immerman, the reformer of the stage 
 at Dlisseldorf. Under his direction two perform- 
 ances a week were given, and the younger painters 
 engaged in amateur performances. The stage be- 
 came a mirror of the past. In it the painters found 
 suggestions for representing the themes derived 
 from literature and legendary tradition. 
 
 Such was the inspiration at Dlisseldorf. It was 
 not a product of the present that had in it the 
 capacity of further growth. INIoreover, its de- 
 pendence upon literature and the drama had in it 
 the germ of sterility. For, by the time that the 
 original fervour of a Schadow and a Lessing had 
 dwindled to the poetic sentimentality of a Schir- 
 mer, what had been an alliance wdth the written 
 
 [104] 
 
DliSSELDORF AND MUNICH 
 
 and spoken word sank into a bondage to it. And 
 even when the precise and petty style of brush- 
 work, which since Schadow’s time had characterised 
 the methods of Diisseldorf, was later broadened 
 and enriched by some of its followers who, like 
 Knaus and Vautier, studied subsequently in Paris, 
 their pictures could not escape altogether the taint 
 of their literary inspiration. 
 
 Lessing, the strongest of all the school, became 
 the teacher of Emanuel Leutze. Though the lat- 
 ter was a native of Germany, having been born at 
 Gmund, in Wiirttemberg, in 1816, he is reckoned an 
 American painter, since he was brought to Phila- 
 delphia as a child, and received his first instruction 
 there, and, in after years, when his course at Diis- 
 seldorf had been supplemented by study at Vienna, 
 Munich, and Rome, settled permanently in this 
 country, dividing his time between New York and 
 Washington. 
 
 His best-known picture, and, by general assent, 
 his strongest, is Washington Crossing the Dela-- 
 ware:, now in the Metropolitan Museum. It has 
 one virtue : it is simple and sincere, without heroics. 
 It almost illustrates the incident as it may have 
 been conducted by men far too absorbed in the 
 peril and possible failure of the enterprise to have 
 any thought of arranging themselves in a striking 
 theatrical group. On the other hand, it represents 
 a plodding and constrained method of brushwork, 
 
 [105] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tame even in a small canvas, spread here over one 
 that measures twenty-one feet by twelve. It is 
 worthy of note that with Leutze the attempt of 
 American painters to execute large historical sub- 
 jects ceased, not to be revived until nearly fifty 
 years later, when it reappeared in Abbey. 
 
 While Leutze worked upon this picture in Diis- 
 seldorf, Eastman Johnson was one of his pupils. 
 When still a youth in his home at Lovell, ]\Iaine, 
 where he was born in 1824, Johnson had begun to 
 make portraits in crayon, and with so much suc- 
 cess that at twenty-one he moved to Washington, 
 and later to Cambridge and Boston, securing pa- 
 trons in all these cities. He was now in a position 
 to go abroad, and at Diisseldorf improved his draw- 
 ing and acquired a knowledge of painting. For- 
 tunately he supplemented his study with a four 
 years’ sojourn in Holland, during w^hich he fa- 
 miliarised himself with the Dutch paintings of the 
 seventeenth century. Their influence w^as tw^ofold. 
 It led him to prefer genre subjects to historical, and 
 developed his owm natural gift of colour. At a 
 time wdien the prime consideration both with paint- 
 ers and the public w^as that a picture should repre- 
 sent an incident, a poem, or a story, he, following 
 the example of the Dutch artists, learned, while 
 choosing a subject of popular appeal, to treat it as 
 an opportunity of inventing a scheme of harmoni- 
 ous colouring. In a w^ord, he merged the narrator 
 
 [106] 
 

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DUSSELDORF AND MUNICH 
 
 in the artist. After his return to America he 
 painted many pictures of country-life in New York 
 State and Kentucky, and during the war many 
 subjects of patriotic significance. They are small 
 in size, but broad in handling, having little of 
 the tightness and dry smoothness of surface char- 
 acteristic of Diisseldorf. They are also very 
 charming in colour, the work of a man who could 
 enrich the mere subject matter with artistic sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 In the portraits also that occupied his later life 
 he exhibited the Dutch faculty of seizing the ex- 
 ternal character of his sitter, and of depicting it 
 in a forcible and straightforward way. Although 
 they lack the dash and bravura of some modern 
 portraits, they hold their own by their disciplined 
 methods of virility and decision. 
 
 At Diisseldorf, as we have hinted, the flames of 
 Romanticism dwindled to the candle light of do- 
 mestic genre; the drama was superseded by light 
 opera, and a virtuous and picturesque peasantry, 
 seen across the mild effulgence of rose-coloured 
 footlights, thronged the stage. Until Millet 
 pricked the pretty bubble of misrepresentation, and 
 taught men to study human life as it really is, 
 these fancy idylls of peasant genre, turned out 
 from Diisseldorf or under its influence, flooded our 
 American market. Anyone who is conversant 
 with the operations of the picture salesrooms 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 knows how large a part they have played in the 
 greater number of collections. Their popular 
 appeal may have done much to interest people in 
 pictures, but it certainly postponed for a consider- 
 able time a just appreciation of the true nature of 
 pictorial art. 
 
 By the middle of the century the fame of Diis- 
 seldorf, as a school, had passed to IMunich. The 
 latter’s relation to American art, in point of time, 
 began after the topic which is to be treated in the 
 next cha2)ter ; but it will be convenient to dispose of 
 it here, particularly as it represented only a brief 
 phase of foreign study and had no abiding influ- 
 ence. The ideal of Munich was the historical pic- 
 ture: its greatest pride, Piloty. The latter’s 
 training had been enforced by foreign study, 
 especially in Paris, and when he returned home in 
 1855 he produced a sensation, for among the 
 INIunicli 2^ainters of the day, who had almost lost 
 the sense of colour, he suddenly appeared as a 
 master of what he called “ colouristic realism.” He 
 had, that is to say, a faculty of representing vigor- 
 ously with broad strokes and juicy brushwork the 
 colour properties and appearances of objects. If 
 he painted a boot, for example, there was no mis- 
 taking its bootlike quality; it was leather, sure 
 enough, black and hard and polished, and gleaming 
 with high lights — uimiistakably a boot. 
 
 [ 110 ] 
 
TWO MEN Eastman Johnson 
 
 ^ M yHIS double portrait is distinguished by the dignity and character of the heads, by ease of gesture and firmness of 
 m drawing in the figures, and by a rich and fairly luminous color-scheme. It was painted in 1881. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
WELL AND WATER TANK, ITALIAN VILLA Fuank Di vknec k 
 
 / jSTFJKI'JST/XG att an Ubisf ration of any earh/ effort taj a Munirh-f rained painter to (jet anunj from the studio tradi- 
 tion of dark ^ old-master ish canvases and ehdxjrate.hj com))Hed compositions to the natural effeHs of open-air sunshine. 
 
 Tn of r’infinriMti Museum Association 
 
DUSSELDORF AND MUNICH 
 
 Moreover, Piloty was a man of mental vigour, 
 with the German exuberance of temperament, that 
 entered heartily into the grandeur of the historical 
 ideal, and attacked the intricacies of a crowded 
 canvas with the assurance and facility of a man 
 pulling on his gloves. By him the dramatic motive 
 was introduced upon a larger stage with a fuller 
 company of principals and supers, a more mag- 
 nificent mise-en-scene, and a more grandiloquent 
 libretto. For, though he taught men how to paint, 
 he tightened for a time the bondage of painting 
 to literature. It was not yoked, as at Diisseldorf, 
 to a peasant’s ox cart, but followed behind a tri- 
 umphal car, on which History sat enthroned. Nor 
 was he a great painter in the modern sense of the 
 term. His realism was of the mannered kind. It 
 did not take account of the appearance of things 
 in real light and atmosphere, but imitated with a 
 plentiful use of the brown pigment, bitumen, the 
 hea\y shadows of the old pictures in the galleries, 
 discoloured by time and dirt and varnish. Among 
 the pupils whom his magnetism attracted and who 
 subsequently became professors at Munich were 
 Wagner and Diez, the latter a robust painter of 
 old German scenes in small pictures of delicate 
 tonality, modelled on the genre of the Dutchmen. 
 It was under these three men that a few of our 
 painters received instruction: Frederick Dielman 
 studying with Diez, William M. Chase with 
 
 [ 113 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAX PAINTING 
 
 Piloty and Wagner, while the latter was one of the 
 teachers of Walter Shirlaw during his six years’ 
 stay in Munich. 
 
 The interest of this INIunich episode in its rela- 
 tion to the story of American painting centres 
 around Duveneck and Chase because of the influ- 
 ence they have exerted upon others. The former 
 spent ten years in JMunich, and during that time 
 himself became a teacher. Among those who 
 studied with him there, and in the little village of 
 Polling in the Bavarian Alps, and in Venice, were 
 John W. Alexander, Frederick P. Vinton, Joseph 
 R. De Camp, and Julian Story. For many years 
 he has been instructor in painting at the Cincinnati 
 Art School. 
 
 Indeed, it is as a teacher, rather than as a 
 producer of pictures, that his position is nota- 
 ble. He was the first of American instructors to 
 make the bnishwork instead of the crayon-drawing 
 the foundation of the picture; to impart a painter’s 
 rather than a draughtsman’s point of view\ In- 
 stead of completing an elaborately shaded drawing 
 and then painting over it with a careful observance 
 of the lines and details and more or less finishing 
 up of each j)art as one proceeded, he taught the 
 student to cover his canvas with paint, boldly block- 
 ing in the large masses of the subject; afterwards 
 superimposing the various succeeding planes to 
 produce the modelling, and, in order to secure an 
 
 [lU] 
 
ELIZABETH BOOTT DUVENECK 
 
 Frank Duveneck 
 
 ^ # y HE costume throughout is in shades of brown. The brush- 
 K loork, while inclined to be a little sleek, is broad and 
 direct. It reflects the influence of Munich training be- 
 fore the artist had learned for himself to study the effects of 
 nature’s lighting. 
 
 In the Collection of the Cincinnati Museum Association 
 
LADY WITH THE WHITE SHAWL 
 
 A 
 
 WiLLiA^t ]NI- Chase 
 
 N\ iiJrl mi:. 
 
 PORTRAIT of the o,-thfe wife, as choke in feeling as in the dehcate 
 
 bteadth of its ie Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy 
 
 of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
DUSSELDORF AND MUNICH 
 
 ensemble of effect, gradually advancing the whole 
 canvas through the separate stages to a finish. 
 
 Whether Chase learned this process from Du- 
 veneck, or acquired it subsequently from the 
 example of the famous French teacher, Carolus- 
 Duran, whose somewhat similar method we shall 
 discuss in another chapter, it has been the one that 
 he also has imparted to innumerable students. But 
 his influence has not been confined to the public ; he 
 has taken a leading part in most of the artistic 
 movements of the last twenty-five years, and has 
 been prominent at exhibitions with his own pictures. 
 In oils, water-colours, pastels, and even etchings 
 he has proved his versatility, revealing an extraor- 
 dinary dexterity in the use of each medium, and a 
 refined sense for the pictorial qualities of colour, 
 tone, and lighting. Portraits, genre subjects, land- 
 scape, and still life have occupied him by turns. A 
 few of his portraits, notably The Woman in a 
 White Shawl, exhibit genuine insight and feeling; 
 but these are qualities one does not generally as- 
 sociate with his work, any more than one looks for 
 evidence of imagination. It is with the external 
 appearances that he is preoccupied ; he is primarily 
 and almost exclusively a painter, pure and simple. 
 
 It was not until about 1875 that the older of 
 these Munich students made their mark in the exhi- 
 bitions at home; so that we have anticipated by 
 many years the place which the school occupies 
 
 [117] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 chronologically in our story. But as I have said 
 before, it seemed convenient to dispose of this 
 phase of it, that the French influence, which is now 
 to occupy our attention, may be considered without 
 interruption. 
 
MOTHER AND CHILD 
 
 MTllia3I Morris Huxr 
 
 GOOD example of Hunt's preference for strong and simple lines 
 and large, handsome 7}iasscs of form, distinguished also by a noble 
 sincerity of feeling. 
 
 In the Collection of Mrs. Richard Morris Hunt 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE: THE 
 BARBIZON 
 
 F R0]\I the middle of the century onward 
 France has been the main source of in- 
 fluence, as well for American painting as 
 for that of other countries. In a word, painting 
 has been affected like other departments of thought 
 and culture by the centripetal tendencies of modern 
 times. The ease and rapidity of modern com- 
 munication has drawn the world into closer and 
 more intimate consciousness of what is being 
 thought and accomplished elsewhere, so that a free 
 trade in ideas, resulting in a kind of cosmopolitan- 
 ism, is the characteristic of the day. And for 
 painting, the clearing house of the world has been 
 Paris. 
 
 This, however, is not to be understood as imply- 
 ing that American painting is to-day merely an 
 offshoot of French art, having no character or 
 quality of its own. Later on in our story we may 
 be able to discover some traits sufficiently marked 
 and widespread to constitute an American char- 
 acteristic, and without doubt we shall find plenty of 
 evidence of individuality on the part of separate 
 
 [ ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 painters; yet it is no less true that the foundations 
 of our j)rogress have been derived from Paris. 
 They consist in motive and method. 
 
 It is from the conflict of opinions upon these 
 topics, which has occupied Paris for the past fifty 
 years, that our painters, like those of other nations, 
 have derived, on the one hand, their point of view, 
 their way of looking at their subject; and, on the 
 other, their manner of rej)resenting it. The |)ar- 
 ticular use which they liave made of both is tlie 
 measure in each case of the painter’s individuality. 
 
 Nor is the conflict of which Paris has been the 
 centre founded upon entirely novel principles; it 
 has been largely concerned with the readjustment 
 to its own times of old ones. Briefly, it has been 
 the modern phase of the old perpetual struggle 
 between conservatism and progress; and to aj^pre- 
 ciate it properly we must recognise the advantage 
 alike of the one and of the other: of conservatism 
 as the expression of something fundamentally and 
 perennially desirable, of progress as the adaptation 
 of this to the forward spirit of the age. Painting, 
 no more than any other art, can afford to detach 
 itself from the past, still less stand still in the face 
 of the present. If it is to be vital, it cannot be a 
 stagnant pool ; its tributary streams and tidal move- 
 ments must be related to the ocean of great waters. 
 
 The conservative element in modern art has been 
 supplied by the Academic system, notably in Paris 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 by that- of the F rench Academy and its official 
 school, the Kcole des Beauoo Arts; while the pro- 
 gressive involves the various efforts which indi- 
 viduals or groups have made to combat it. At the 
 middle of tlie century, when the three pioneers of 
 Paris-seeking students — Ilunt, Inness, and La 
 Farge — v/ent abroad, the issue was between the 
 Ecole on the one hand and the Barbizon movement 
 on the other. A generation later, individualism 
 having adopted a number of cries, was exhibiting 
 itself under various aspects of realism, impression- 
 ism, “ art for art’s sake,” and plcin air; all of which, 
 like the earlier Barbizon movement, were but at- 
 tempts to render nature naturally, rather than in 
 accordance with certain principles, adhered to arbi- 
 trarily, as it was thought, by the Academy. 
 
 The latter, with its Ecole des Beaux ArtSj has 
 been officially maintained in order to preserve a 
 standard of excellence and a system of teaching. 
 Both are based upon the pre-eminence of line over 
 colour, of drawing over painting. Such an out-and- 
 out doctrinaire as Ingres asserted that “Form is 
 everything, colour nothing.” Whether the doc- 
 trine be applied to landscape or figure painting, it 
 implies the superiority of art over nature, and the 
 need of modifying the forms of nature that they 
 may be made to emulate the perfection of classic 
 models. Thus the so-called classic landscape is an 
 elaborate piecing together of natural and archi- 
 
 [ m] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tectural features, selected from various sources, 
 including the imagination, and assembled on the 
 canvas to produce an ideal composition, that shall 
 atfect us in a purely abstract way by the dignity 
 of line and massing. 
 
 It was this attitude towards nature that the 
 painters of the Barhizon group opposed, both in 
 their lives and in their art. They set out, not to 
 improve upon nature, but to learn from it. An- 
 ticipating the spirit of scientific research which 
 became the leading characteristic of the age, they 
 substituted for abstract and typal generalisations 
 an intimate study of individual appearances. In 
 studying the individuality of nature they became 
 themselves intensely individual — thus embodying 
 another leading characteristic of the age. They 
 discovered also a new conception of the ideal. 
 
 It was founded, not, as in the case of the Aca- 
 demicians, upon fancied perfection, but upon truth. 
 It w^as the result of a new principle of selection. 
 Instead of borrowing from many sources or of 
 modifying the forms to produce an arbitrary per- 
 fection, it selected from the scene itself its salient 
 features, eliminating the unessentials and compress- 
 ing the whole into a vivid synthesis. And the lat- 
 ter included not merely the external appearance, 
 but the inward spirit of the scene. 
 
 Through communing with nature, these men 
 acquired so strong a sympathy with their subject 
 
 [m] 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 that the mood of their own spirit became reflected 
 in nature; their works interpreted their own souls 
 in terms of nature ; they were nature-poets. It was 
 in this respect that their idealism was of a new 
 kind, based, not upon a material perfection, but on 
 spiritual expression. This again was a very won- 
 derful anticipation of what came to be the need 
 of the nineteenth century. In the rapid advance 
 of materialism, the claims of spirit were being 
 overlooked; and not the least of the benefits con- 
 ferred on painting by the men of Barbizon, was 
 this restoration of spirit to its proper relation to 
 matter. They became, one might almost say, the 
 religious painters of the century. Add to this 
 loftiness of motive the fact that they were in a 
 technical sense excellent craftsmen, and the im- 
 portance of the influence which they exerted upon 
 the first of our France-seeking students may be 
 realised. It was fortunate also that these students 
 — William Morris Hunt, George Inness, and John 
 La Farge — were men of commanding ability. 
 The impressions gleaned at Barbizon were trans- 
 mitted by them to other painters in this country, and 
 to the general public, with a degree of authority 
 and persuasiveness that have given the principles 
 involved a firm and lasting hold upon the American 
 imagination. 
 
 Hunt, the oldest of the trio and the first to go 
 [ 125 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 abroad, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1824. 
 He entered Harvard, but was compelled by poor 
 health to seek the benefit of a change of climate, 
 and accordingly went to Diisseldorf and joined the 
 Art Academy, with the intention of becoming a 
 sculptor. This was in 1846. Nine months later 
 he moved to Paris, suddenly altered his plans for 
 the future, and determined to be a painter. Per- 
 haps the fame of a certain picture, Eojnans of the 
 Decadence, and the extraordinary interest which its 
 appearance at the Salon of 1847 aroused, had 
 something to do with stimulating his imagination 
 in a new direction ; at any rate it was the painter of 
 this picture whom he sought as a teacher. He 
 joined the studio of Couture. The latter, a pupil 
 of Delaroche, had been trained in the “ classic ” 
 manner of drawing the figure, which may be sum- 
 med up in Tennyson’s description of INIaud: 
 
 ** Faultily fiiultless, icily regular, splendidly null, 
 
 Dead perfection, no more.” 
 
 But in Couture’s case the frigid and sculptor- 
 like character of the so-called “ ideal ” figure was 
 warmed with a romantic ardour and enriched with 
 colour. It was this combination of qualities that 
 had created a sensation; for it seemed to reconcile 
 the conservatism of the older men with the eager 
 throb of younger life. Yet as a matter of fact, 
 the picture, like its subject, belonged to an older 
 
 [126] 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 order of things and had no relation to the spirit of 
 the age. The latter, in scientific and mechanical 
 affairs, was directed to an exact study of the cause 
 and effect of natural phenomena; in literature, like- 
 wise, to a realistic examination of present life. 
 This picture, with its elaborate classic setting, com- 
 posed of fragments of Roman architecture ce- 
 mented together by the painter’s imagination, 
 with its crowd of voluptuaries, men and women, 
 under the influence of liquor, in shameless aban- 
 donment, contained an element of perennial truth. 
 By inference men could draw from it a moral for 
 the present, but it was hidden under a masquerad- 
 ing of the past. Zola, presenting the same moral, 
 clothed in the actual forms of the rich and poor of 
 his own time, thereby made it sting the conscience 
 of the public. That was shocking, for people do 
 not like the naked truth. In this picture there was 
 no such violation of propriety; the truth was, as 
 it were, only nude; nakedness diffused through a 
 prism of make-believe perfection — art not life. 
 
 But there was a contemporary of Couture’s 
 whose ideal was art and life; life in art, art vitalised 
 by the expression of life. As yet, however, he was 
 only that ‘‘ wild man of the woods,” Jean Francois 
 Millet, unheeded. He, too, in his early struggle 
 for bread had painted “ ideal nudes ”; now his sub- 
 jects were the peasants of Barbizon, rough-hewn 
 types of men and women, coarsened and twisted out 
 
 [m] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 of shape by toil, as far removed as possible from 
 Couture’s. 
 
 Yet Hunt, and it is a strange fact, became, 
 during the latter part of his sojourn in France, as 
 strongly influenced by Millet as he had been by 
 Couture. Perhaps it may be explained in this 
 way: Starting out with the intention of being a 
 
 sculptor, he had evidently a prior sensitiveness to 
 form; then, as he came to know pictures, the feel- 
 ing for colour was aroused; he found both satisfied 
 in Couture’s work. Moreover, he had come out to 
 learn, and the student’s first craving is for definite 
 formularies. Couture, well equipped with set 
 methods and maxims, could show his pupils exactly 
 “ how to do it,” and in his studio Hunt remained 
 for several years, an enthusiastic follower of the 
 master’s technique. 
 
 But gradually the eagerness of the mere student 
 abated. The influence of Millet, coming later, 
 touched a maturer need. Firstly, it gave him the 
 inspiration of a motive. Millet’s uncouth simplic- 
 ity of truth struck a vein of sincerity in himself. 
 It taught him a notion of the “ ideal ” very differ- 
 ent from the one aimed at and inculcated in Cou- 
 ture’s studio — an idealisation, not of unnatural per- 
 fection, but of human nature as it is, not of high- 
 wrought passion and romance, but of the fulfilment 
 of the daily routine of duty. It w^as a motive at 
 once artistic and moral, based on Truth. And 
 
 [ 128 ] 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 secondly, it was presented with a correspondingly 
 simple sincerity of technique. Millet’s strong, 
 broad generalisation was as far removed from the 
 exquisite refinement of Couture’s method as from 
 the niggling exactness of the Dusseldorfians ; its 
 grand sweep of line and dignity of masses were not 
 obviously enforced, but to be discovered under the 
 guise of clumsy forms; it was a method in which 
 nothing is sacrificed to truth of nature, and yet 
 commonplace is always overcome by art. 
 
 It was a technique so peculiarly the product of 
 Millet’s own conscience that it was not to be learned 
 by anyone else; and the principle which it involved, 
 of beginning with nature and ending in art, was so 
 different from Couture’s, which was art only, first, 
 last, and all the time, that Hunt never wholly 
 emerged from the conflict of these two influences. 
 He attempted to affect a compromise, but with 
 only partial success, and remained to the end a 
 painter of whom more might have been expected 
 than he actually achieved, since he never gained the 
 assurance of belief in himself which is possessed by 
 many a smaller man. 
 
 Returning home, he settled in Newport, Rhode 
 Island, and then moved to Boston, where the re- 
 mainder of his life was spent. Around him 
 gathered a number of pupils, impressed by the 
 charm of his personality and the dignity of his 
 artistic ideals. This in itself helped to impede his 
 
 [ 129 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 own technical advancement, since it kept him over- 
 occupied with theories and limited his opportunities 
 for the actual practice of painting. 
 
 Yet this sacrifice of himself certainly redounded 
 to the benefit of others, for he sowed the seed which 
 has since grown and multiplied. The gist of his 
 teaching was that it is not the subject but the way 
 in which the subject is rendered, that determines 
 the artistic merit of a picture; that in the hands of 
 an artist, any subject, no matter how simple and 
 insignificant, can be made artistic, and that this 
 artistic quality, a product and expression of him- 
 self, is what the painter should aim chiefly to em- 
 body in his pictures. Furthermore, that the ideal 
 of good brush work is not to concern one’s self with 
 niggling precision of detail for detail’s sake, but 
 to obtain truth of character and expression. 
 
 A writer in the ’sixties describes his work as 
 naive,” which, from our present point of view, 
 it certainly was not. There is nothing in it of the 
 child-spirit ; on the contrary, very much of the virile 
 and intellectual. But it displayed, what was an 
 unfamiliar quality to his contemporaries, a capac- 
 ity for seeing artistic possibilities in the simplest 
 subjects. 
 
 Turn to the accompanying reproduction of The 
 Bathers, There is here involved no elevated con- 
 ception, as in Cole’s Course of Empire, nor gran- 
 deur of visible appearance, as in Church’s Coto- 
 
 [ 130 ] 
 
THE BOY AND THE BUTTERFLY William Morris Hunt 
 
 "W "WUNT'S influence and teaching were directed against the popular interest 
 a — ~M in the subject-matter of a picture, and on behalf of the claims of paint- 
 ing as a form of expression. Here the child's figure is but an excuse for 
 the broad and simple rendering of the tones and texture of the flesh and the 
 movement of the figure. 
 
 In the Collection of Mrs. Richard Morris Hunt 
 
From « CopUy PHnt, Copyright, 1898 , by Curtu and Camera. 
 
 THE liATHERS 
 
 >> ILLIAM MoilIUS HrVT 
 
 n''" "-f lon,..,,olden in the 
 
 .unhght. afforded the artistic motires of this heuutifut picture. 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 pacci, yet, as a picture, it is vastly superior to either. 
 The reason is that in the making of it the artist’s 
 motive was a joy in the possibilities of beautiful 
 expression that the subject offered. First, the 
 poise of the figure, the elastic force of the body and 
 limbs, suspended rather than resting in perfect ease 
 of balance; secondly, the charm of colour as the 
 sunlight plays over the nude form, glistening upon 
 the ripples of flesh, illuminating the shadowed parts 
 and kindling all the tones into a healthy, vigourous 
 glow. Everything else in the picture is made con- 
 tributory to these two possibilities of beautiful ex- 
 pression — poise and sunlit flesh-colour — so that, if 
 you had the good fortune to see the original at the 
 recent Comparative Exhibition, I think you will 
 agree that it communicated a heightened sense of 
 joy in life. 
 
 If this is so, then, you will observe this picture 
 after all has an idea involved in its subject that 
 appeals to the imagination. We perhaps reach the 
 heart of the matter when we realise that an idea 
 may be an abstract one, not connected with any 
 definite individual or incident, about which a great 
 deal can be said in words, or which can be described 
 in the form of a story. But the trouble is that so 
 many people are lacking in imagination, or, even if 
 they have imagination, it is not stirred by feeling, 
 it needs to have the idea conveyed to it through a 
 tale of words. I wonder how many people cared 
 
 [13S] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 about Millet’s Man With a Hoe before Mr. 
 Markham versified its appeal, and, on the other 
 hand, how many of those who had appreciated it 
 already found the appreciation increased by the 
 verbal exposition ? 
 
 Hunt’s pictures included portraits, figure-sub- 
 jects, and landscapes, some of the last named con- 
 taining sheep, which are painted with a truth of 
 character that recalls the work of Jacque. At a 
 time when precision of detail was apt to be con- 
 sidered the highest requisite in a picture. Hunt 
 substituted for it truth of character and expression. 
 Some of his portraits are said to have been indif- 
 ferent likenesses, hut the representation, as it 
 appears in the picture, is invested with distinction 
 and seeming individuality. His last important 
 works were two decorative paintings for the Capi- 
 tol at Albany, which, owing to a threatened collapse 
 of the dome, have been hidden by a ceiling, and have 
 perished. They were executed under a very se- 
 vere pressure of having to he finished by a certain 
 date, and the strain proved too much for the artist. 
 He died the following year (1879), at the Isle of 
 Shoals. 
 
 ararararjrararjTjrarar 
 
 George Inness was a pathfinder whose original- 
 ity and fiery zeal for nature blazed a new trail that 
 has led on to the present notable expansion of 
 American landscape painting. Born at Newburg, 
 
 [134] 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 New York, in 1825, the son of a retired grocer, he 
 was apprenticed as a youth to an engraver. This, 
 as we have seen, was the profession in which those 
 landscape painters of the Hudson River School, 
 Kensett, Durand, and Casilear, began by achieving 
 success. In fact, at that time it was the one branch 
 of art most likely to yield a comfortable livelihood, 
 but it was of too exacting a nature for the frail 
 health of George Inness. His father would have 
 set him up in business, but the son’s heart was reso- 
 lutely fixed on things artistic, and he sought in- 
 struction from a French painter residing in New 
 York. For the rest, Inness was his own teacher, 
 though the tenor of his career was changed into a 
 new direction by the influence of the Barbizon 
 artists. 
 
 He went abroad in 1850, and again for a longer 
 period in 1870. We will attempt to summarise the 
 impressions derived from the two visits. 
 
 Hitherto he had been chiefly engaged in studying 
 form, in learning to draw the appearance of trees 
 and rocks and ground, of water and sky. It may 
 have been his short experience in engraving or the 
 example of Durand and Kensett that set his study 
 in this direction, but the thoroughness with which 
 he pursued it was from within himself, an instinct 
 for analysis, derived perhaps from his Scotch an- 
 cestry. 
 
 He learned, first of all, that principle of syn- 
 [135] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 thesis, of selection and arrangement, to which I 
 have already alluded, that the best art does not 
 consist in representing everything in sight, but in 
 discovering what are the salient and essential char- 
 acteristics, and in setting these down in a masterly 
 summary. He learned, in effect, the value of 
 omitting details so as to secure additional force for 
 the ensemble; and his previous rigour of minute 
 study now Iielped him, for it is recognised among 
 artists that only he who has learned to put in, can 
 he successful in leaving out. 
 
 lie learned, in the second place, a new motive: 
 no longer to look for “views” in nature, but to 
 study fragments of it intimately; to render por- 
 traits of nature, in which the local facts should be 
 of importance, not as facts, but as vehicles of ex- 
 pression. It was a mood of nature, or a mood 
 aroused in himself, that he strove to embody; and, 
 by thus becoming a subjective painter, he cut him- 
 self off entirely from the objectivity of contem- 
 porary American landscape. And the peculiar 
 quality of his subjective motive is interesting. 
 
 In his temperament the logical was combined 
 with the spiritual. He was given to reasoning 
 upon the eternities, and for many years was a pro- 
 fessed Swedenborgian. Thus he was particularly 
 drawn toward Corot, in whose work he recognised 
 the spirituality. In fact, Corot and Inness both 
 approximated to what we shall later find to be one 
 
 [ 136 ] 
 
MIDSUMMER 
 
 George Inness 
 
 rpi E suggestion of a mood of nature, or, if you will, of the artist's own mood, induced hy the 
 appearance of nature. In the massy foliage, piled-up clouds, and spread of landscape there is 
 a sense of opulence and vigor, hut all activity is suspended in the drowsy warmth, as if the earth 
 mre taktnff a msta The picture, painted in 1875, ilhadrates the artist's middle styU, wherein details 
 have hec^ absorbed into a synthesis of effect, full of suayestion both of the scene as a whole and of the 
 impression it makes upon the imagination. 
 
 In the Collection of James W, Ellsworth, Esq. 
 
EARLY MOONRISE--FLORIDA 
 
 George Ikxess 
 
 ^ W ^ HE forms of the trees have melted into droivsi/ shapes, massed against the 
 a himinositg of the sky. The moonlight, ereeping over the shadowed 
 
 meadow, touches into soft prominence an object here and there. The 
 picture is a fine example of the expressional value of synthesis. 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 of the underlying principles of motive in Japanese 
 art. It is, in effect, to distinguish between “ap- 
 pearance’’ and “reality”; to regard the material 
 visibilities of nature, subject as they are to change, 
 as being mere appearance, while the reality is the 
 inward spirit, a portion of the Universal, Eternal 
 Spirit, that is embodied in the impermanent appear- 
 ances of matter. Both Corot and Inness came in 
 time, like the Japanese painter, Hashimoto Gaho, 
 to discover for themselves a method of painting in 
 which they carried the principle of synthesis as far 
 as possible, so as to subordinate the assertion of 
 form to a suggestion of its essence or spirit. And 
 lest some reader have no sympathy with this trans- 
 cendental attitude toward nature, I would remind 
 him that, if he is fond of nature, he must have ex- 
 perienced some occasion when to lie upon the 
 ground and let the beauty of the scene, irrespective 
 of this or that feature of the landscape, soak into 
 him, was pleasure enough. If so, it was the result 
 of physical contentment, leading to a satisfaction 
 of the emotions; and from the latter to a conscious- 
 ness of spiritual refreshment or elation is but a 
 step, to many temperaments a natural and inevi- 
 table one. 
 
 This progression of Inness’s motive and manner 
 of painting, however, was a gradual one. Not all 
 at once could he free himself from the habit of 
 minute representation. His earliest pictures are 
 
 [ 139 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 liney, filled with details carefully drawn in with the 
 brush. Later, his style, of which Peace and Plenty 
 at the Metropolitan IMuseum is a good example, 
 becomes broader; he no longer draws, but paints, 
 with the brush; the objects begin to count as masses. 
 Notwithstanding the large size of the canvas and 
 the multiplying of features, which prevent us 
 grasping the scene as a whole, the impression which 
 it produces on the imagination is a tolerably single 
 one, very well summed up in the title. It is a nota- 
 ble step in the direction of rendering the expres- 
 sion of the landscape. But compare the other 
 example illustrated here. Midsummer, and note the 
 progress which has been made in the way of syn- 
 thesis. How^ masterful is the characterisation of 
 the great oak tree! We recognise at once its lusty 
 vigour and the luxuriant opulence of its massy 
 green foliage. Yet note how little detail or even 
 modelling it presents; it is painted flatly in broad, 
 simple masses of tones of green, differing from 
 one another in the amount of light which they re- 
 flect. 
 
 Later his pictures have still less solidity of paint- 
 ing; the pigment has been spread thinly with a large 
 brush, and at close range the broad flat spaces of 
 colour may seem to be perfunctory and careless. 
 In reality, they are a mingling of subtly differenti- 
 ated tones, pricked here and there wdth an accent 
 of detail; and, when viewed from the proper stand- 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
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THE GOLDEN AGE Johx La Faroe 
 
 RARE and lovely instance of this artist’s 
 rendering of the nude. 
 
 In the Collection of Otto Heinigke, Esq. 
 
BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 point, a short distance from the frame, are full of 
 meaning and suggestion. These landscapes are the 
 product of a mind that, in the matter of painting, 
 had freed itself from the necessity of conscious 
 intellectual processes and entered into liberty of 
 spirit, and of a hand become so facile by practice 
 that it moved in immediate and faithful response to 
 the suggestion of the mind. They are the expres- 
 sions, not of what is palpable and material, but of 
 an emotional or spiritual mood. 
 
 The artist died suddenly, during a visit to Scot- 
 land, in 1894. 
 
 [ 143 ] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 J OHN LA FxVRGE was born in New York 
 in 1835, and grew up under conditions very 
 favourable to the acquisition of superior 
 knowledge and taste. For his father’s house in 
 Washington Square, well stocked with books and 
 pictures and prints, was a rendezvous of cultivated 
 people, many of them belonging to families who 
 had escaped the revolutions in F ranee and San Do- 
 mingo. Thus his classical studies at school, which 
 were of the old-fashioned, extensive, and thought- 
 ful kind, v/ere supplemented by the literary, 
 artistic, and critical atmosphere of the home life. 
 
 In 185G he visited Paris, residing with his cousin, 
 Paul de St. Victor, a writer and critic, in whose 
 house he came into direct touch with the best 
 thought of Paris of that day. During his “ wan- 
 der-year ” in Europe he visited Munich, Dresden, 
 and London, but returned home at length with the 
 conviction that the most important developments 
 of the day were represented by the Barbizon artists, 
 Rousseau, Corot, and IMillet, and by Delacroix. 
 He now entered a lawyer’s office in New York, for, 
 
 [ 141 ] 
 
JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 as he says, “No one has struggled more against 
 his destiny than I; nor did I for many years 
 acquiesce in being a painter. Though I learned 
 the methods and studied the problems of my art, 
 I had hoped to find some other mode of life, 
 some other way of satisfying the desire for a con- 
 templation of truth, unbiased, free, and unde- 
 tached.” 
 
 To my mind there is something very interesting 
 in this slow, gradual growth of La Large toward 
 the vocation in which he has since become so distin- 
 guished, that he may be reckoned the most pro- 
 foundly learned artist that America has yet pro- 
 duced. His love of art antedated his professional 
 practice of it ; he pursued it, first of all, as a branch 
 of the wider culture in which he was training him- 
 self ; and, at an age when most students are trying 
 to adapt some little particular phase of art to 
 their own purpose, he was seeking to discover its 
 relation to the large field of human thought and 
 life. In his case, for a time, the particular and the 
 personal aspect of art was lost sight of in the uni- 
 versal aspect. 
 
 What I have in mind is the difference between 
 thinking and working outward from a centre, and 
 thinking and working inward toward the centre 
 from the horizon of a large circumference. For 
 example, the average student starts with learning 
 to draw and paint the human figure. This is his 
 
 [ 145 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tiny centre, and from it he begins to broaden out a 
 little, arranging his figures into compositions, and 
 by degrees, perhaps, making them the source of 
 some kind of expressional appeal. But as a gen- 
 eral rule, the start made in this way does not lead 
 very far; the circle around the centre is circum- 
 scribed; the picture has little capacity to stir the 
 emotions or the imagination, and shows a tendency 
 to be mostly a manipulation, more or less 
 dexterous, of the thing it started with — the 
 drawing and painting of the human figure. On 
 the other hand, suppose a man whose mind has 
 been habitually directed toward the larger aspects 
 of human life and its relations to its seen and un- 
 seen environment, who has learned to regard the 
 scheme of men and things as parts of a vastness 
 of design, the limits of which melt into infinity of 
 time and space. He analyses the relations of these 
 parts to one another and to the whole Universe, 
 discovers principles of agreement and antagonism, 
 and works, not by rule of thumb or at the uncertain 
 beck of temperament, but along the lines of a plan 
 that, for him at least, affords the basis of a sound 
 hypothesis for motive and method. When a man, 
 possessed of this habit of seeing things in relation 
 to the Universal, draws inward to the particular 
 that lies under his hand to be done, he brings to the 
 doing of it qualities of mind and principles of 
 practice that make the particular no longer a httle 
 
 [ 146 ] 
 
POMONA John La Fakge 
 
 DESIGN for the stairway in the house of the late Mr. William H. Vanderbilt. 
 
 In the Collection of Otto Heinigke, Esq. 
 
AND XICODEMUS 
 
 'wrTTC' . . JoHx La Far( 
 
 from the moo„. ,n conjunct, on ,clth the faint Hal 
 
 I', the Collection of William T. Evans, Esq. 
 
JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 centre from which to spread out tentatively, but 
 the white-hot core into which are fused the forces 
 that he has gathered from outside. 
 
 It has been so with La Farge. Just as art is 
 to him only one of the phases of material and 
 spiritual being, so an individual w^ork of art, while 
 suggesting to him that it is all sufficient in itself, a 
 complete harmonious unity, will yet be the greater 
 in its power to move and hold the imagination if it 
 suggests also that it is but a fragment of a uni- 
 versal harmony and unity. He conceives of a 
 “ Universal Geometry,” with wFich man’s separate, 
 fragmentary ‘‘plans” of arranged beauty — ^his 
 works of art — can be and should be co-ordinated. 
 Space will not allow me to pursue this idea, except 
 to suggest an analogy to it in the laying out of 
 Central Park, New York, by the late Mr. Fred- 
 erick Law Olmsted. As you traverse it you are 
 confronted with a great number of separate 
 vistas; they appear one after the other, very dif- 
 ferent in character, yet each seems complete in it- 
 self. A fuller knowledge reveals that each is har- 
 moniously related to the others, and that all are 
 correlated to what, for the purpose of illustration, 
 straining the words, we may call the “ Universal 
 Geometry ” of the whole plan. And although this 
 ultimate harmonising of all the different ingredi- 
 ents can nowhere or at any one time be seen with 
 the eye, yet, when it has been once realised, it per- 
 
 [ 149 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAlSr PAINTING 
 
 suades the imagination to find a greater beauty than 
 before in each part. 
 
 When La Farge at length determined to follow 
 the practice of art as a profession, he studied for 
 a time under Hunt, at Newport, which place, since 
 1860 , along with New York, has been identified 
 with his work. The latter, apart from decoration, 
 which will stand as the most striking manifestation 
 of his genius, has consisted of oil paintings of 
 landscape and flowers, of drawings for illustration, 
 and of water-colours of scenes in Samoa and Ja- 
 pan. The last named are studies of the luxuriant 
 colouring of vegetation, sky, water, and rock, 
 rapidly brushed in under the spontaneous enthusi- 
 asm of the moment, and, to some extent, as notes 
 or records of colour, to be elaborated later in some 
 window or wall painting. His drawings, some of 
 which were made to illustrate poems by Tennyson 
 or Browning, are of unusual interest, powerful and 
 subtle in characterisation, and beautiful also as a 
 decoration of the page. 
 
 It is as a colourist that he has gained distinction 
 and influenced others. Not that a man can learn 
 to be a colourist; but the natural gift for it has to 
 be cultivated, and in discovering new secrets for 
 himself he has been a guide to others. During his 
 early travel abroad he was naturally drawn toward 
 the work of the old Venetian colourists; but, being 
 an original genius, he could look outside of tradi- 
 
 [ 150 ] 
 
JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 tion, and was greatly interested in the colour ex- 
 periments of Holman Hunt and John Evereftt 
 Millais, two members of the Pre-Raphaelite 
 brotherhood, and of Ford Madox Brown. 
 
 It was one of the tenets of these young painters 
 to represent everything exactly as they saw it, and 
 accordingly to give each object its local ” colour. 
 Other painters of the day imitated the prevailing 
 tone of old pictures, that was partly the result of 
 original use of glazes, partly of the fading out of 
 colour, of the accumulation of dirt, and of succes- 
 sive varnishings. These men, however, put their 
 bright colours in a vivid and harsh juxtaposition 
 that, while it might be true to the local tints of 
 nature, was artistically false. Could the natural and 
 artistic truths be reconciled? If so, then the limited 
 range of colours used in the convention of Venetian 
 painting could be enlarged, reinforced, and intensi- 
 fied by the brilliance of nature’s colouring. 
 
 Briefly, La Farge solved the problem. By de- 
 grees he discovered what we shall have occasion to 
 refer to later, that the imitating of the local colours 
 is only a part of truth to nature. To confine one’s 
 self to this is like taking fish out of the water in 
 which they belong. The local colours must be rep- 
 resented in their own medium of lighted atmos- 
 phere, which surrounds all things and draws them 
 together into a natural appearance of tone. Light, 
 in a word, became the study of La Farge; light in 
 
 [ 151 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 its operation upon local colour; in the infinite di- 
 versity of its way of striking objects, directly or 
 by reflection or refraction; and the diminution of 
 light on objects, as things recede from the eye, 
 owing to the layers of intervening atmosphere. He 
 noted also that under the influence of light, a local 
 colour is made more or less brilliant by the juxta- 
 position of other local colours, which in turn are 
 similarly affected. This briefly summarises the 
 principles gradually reached by La Farge, as the 
 result partly of his own observations and partly of 
 the research of scientists. Working thus independ- 
 ently, he anticipated, as we shall see later, the 
 French artist, Manet, and the Impressionists, in 
 applying their principles to painting. 
 
 He began by working on subjects of still-life 
 and flowers, turning later to landscape. Of the 
 last he painted but a few examples, yet they are 
 very remarkable. Like the Barbizon men, he de- 
 picted only a fragment of nature, comprehending it 
 with intimacy of feeling, while, like a Pre-Raphael- 
 ite, he attempted an actual portrayal of the local 
 colours of the scene; but he went further than 
 either, in what he himself has called “ the render- 
 ing of the gradations of light and air through wFich 
 we see form and a step even beyond this, in that 
 he was not satisfled with a generalised appearance 
 of light, but sought to represent it under special 
 aspects of time and season. Thus he not only had 
 
 [ 152 ] 
 
JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 assimilated the foremost movements of that time, 
 but also anticipated the later studies of Manet and 
 Monet. The explanation of this fact, I believe, is 
 that the advance made by Manet and Monet was 
 based on scientific principles, upon the application 
 to painting of that exact scrutiny of phenomena 
 which was the predominate feature of thought in 
 other phases of life, and that La Farge is himself a 
 scientist as well as an artist. He has given an in- 
 cidental corroboration of this in the following 
 words : “ There is in each competent artist a sort 
 of unconscious automatic mathematician, who, like 
 the harmonist in music, the colourist in painting, 
 resolves in his way the problem of sight and sound 
 which the scientist puts into an equation.” 
 
 A nature so compounded of the scientific and the 
 artistic presents the kind of soil in which symbol- 
 ism flourishes. In La Farge’s case it produced 
 some remarkable drawings, such as The Wolf 
 Charmer^, and attracted him toward the painting 
 of religious subjects. But this phase of his work 
 we will consider later in connection with mural 
 painting. For the present let us notice how this 
 combination of the scientific and artistic has served 
 him in another branch of decoration, that of col- 
 oured windows. 
 
 It was a happy coincidence that to an artist, thus 
 occupied with the problems of light, should have 
 come an opportunity of working in the most trans- 
 
 [ 153 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 lucent of all mediums — glass. It resulted in the 
 practical invention of a new kind of material, and 
 the production in the window of a richness and 
 subtlety of colours impossible in the older form of 
 glass. 
 
 To put it as briefly as possible: the makers of so- 
 called “ stained glass ” windows had used what is 
 called in the trade “ pot-metal,” that is to say, glass 
 which is coloured in the mass, while it is molten 
 in the crucible or pot. Such glass, which was im- 
 ported from England, was necessarily limited in 
 its range of colour, and there was also a limit to the 
 amount of richness and subtlety that could be ob- 
 tained by what is technically known as “ plating,” 
 that is, placing one tone or tint of glass behind 
 another. Accordingly, the English window-makers, 
 even such as Burne-Jones, relied chiefly upon the 
 patterns of the forms, the drawing of the designs. 
 But this would not satisfy La Farge, who saw his 
 design from its inception, not in outline, but in 
 full-fleshed form of colour. 
 
 He happened to be sick in bed, and, observing 
 some toilet articles made of what is called “ opal 
 glass ” in imitation of china, noticed that in the 
 imperfect specimens the material, like an opal, ex- 
 hibited, as well as the local colour, its complemen- 
 tary one.^ He noticed also that when the opal 
 
 * White light being regarded as a combination of blue, red, 
 and yellow, the complementaries to each is the union of the 
 
 [ 154 ] 
 
JOHN LA FAROE 
 
 glass was placed alongside a piece of pot-metal 
 the opalescent quality brought out a certain har- 
 mony. He felt he had discovered a means of in- 
 creasing subtlety of colour effects, and of extra 
 richness, too, for it is a known fact that the bril- 
 liancy of a colour is intensified by the juxtaposition 
 of its complementary. Moreover, his mind, travel- 
 ling quickly on, foresaw other possibilities in the 
 use of this material, owing to the variety of modu- 
 lations of thickness, surface, and colour to which it 
 can be treated in the making. 
 
 He began to experiment with pieces cut from 
 objects made in opal glass, and then found a glass- 
 maker who was willing to make him sheets of the 
 material. He used it at first in conjunction with 
 pot-metal, and gradually elaborated his methods, 
 until, in the Battle Window in Memorial Hall, 
 Harvard University, he combined a variety of ef- 
 fects. “ In this window,” he says, “ I used almost 
 every variety of glass that would serve, and even 
 precious stones, such as amethysts and the like. 
 And I began to represent effects of light and mod- 
 ulation of shadow by using streaked glass, glass 
 of several colours blended, and glass wrinkled into 
 forms, as well as glass cut into shapes, or blown 
 into forms; even glass into which other glass had 
 
 two others ; thus red and yellow — orange, is the complementary 
 of blue; blue and red — purple, that of yellow; blue and yel- 
 low — green, that of red. 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 been deposited in patterns. I also painted the 
 glass very much and carefully in certain places; so 
 that in a rough way this window is an epitome of 
 all the varieties of glass that I have seen used be- 
 fore or since.” 
 
 This quotation gives some idea of the variations 
 possible in the actual making of the material; and 
 since the date of the Battle Window (1870) they 
 have been multiplied. What is now called “ Amer- 
 ican glass ” is capable of unlimited effects; and in 
 the hands of a master-colourist, like La Farge, it 
 is an instrument which produces the richest har- 
 monies and extraordinarily subtle orchestration. 
 So far, no other artist has approached him in the 
 variety and originality of his use of the material. 
 It was the child of this artist-scientist’s genius, 
 and has yielded to him its choicest service. 
 
 The reader will remember that it was in the early 
 ’fifties that Hunt, Inness, and La Farge sought 
 their first impressions in France, and that, since 
 that date, the movement of students had been to 
 Diisseldorf and Munich. Indeed, it was not until 
 the close of the third quarter of the century that 
 Paris became the regular goal of American stu- 
 dents. 
 
 [ 156 ] 
 
AUTUMN 
 
 John La Faroe 
 
 ^ W ^HI8 -figure, notwithstanding its classical draperg, 
 # has no flavor of the academic. The type of the 
 head is not what is popularly considered 
 “ideal.” But the main difference, as it is the chief 
 beauty, lies in the subtlety of the color, particularly in 
 the various reflected and refracted lights of the drapery. 
 
 In the Collection of John Gellatly, Esq. 
 
THE PORTR AIT 
 
 N erampte of „n‘Hde«r’ subject, occordlng to the academic potnt 
 of view; sweetened, however, with a tittle tinge of eenUment, 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FRENCH INFLUENCE — ^THE ACADEMIC 
 
 T he year 1876 is a memorable landmark in 
 our industrial and artistic development. 
 Then it was that the Centennial Exposi- 
 tion at Philadelphia revealed for the first time to 
 numbers of our people the artistic resources of the 
 Old World. They were displayed not only in pic- 
 tures and sculpture, but in the products of fac- 
 tories and workshops, and the lesson of the occasion 
 was the commercial value as well as the desirable- 
 ness of beauty. To the superior attractiveness of 
 the foreign articles, in which the skill of the maker 
 had been supplemented by artistic design and 
 treatment, neither merchants nor public could be 
 blind; and when, upon the close of the Exposition, 
 a large number of these objects were presented to 
 the City of Philadelphia, they were installed as a 
 permanent exhibition of arts and crafts in one of 
 the buildings at Fairmount Park. Then it was 
 recognised that some practical step should be taken 
 to give technical and artistic training to our own 
 craftsmen. Accordingly, as the result of a citi- 
 zen’s movement, was founded the Philadelphia 
 
 [159] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 School of Industrial Art, the first of its kind in 
 this country. 
 
 The Centennial, however, only quickened and 
 broadened forces that were already at work in the 
 community. Gradually at first, and later with 
 leaps and bounds, the little America of the Fathers 
 had grown into a vast continent, already too 
 small to confine the impetuous energies of its peo- 
 ple. The increase and diffusion of wealth, and 
 the growing facilities of oceanic transportation, 
 prompted f oreign travel, and made it easy ; the bar- 
 ricades of national isolation were being broken 
 down, and already the tide of travel toward Europe 
 was in flood. 
 
 The familiarity with the art of the Old World, 
 thus made possible to many, had already produced 
 concrete results. In 1870 the Museum of Fine 
 Arts, Boston, was incorporated, and the Metropol- 
 itan Museum of Art, New York, was granted a 
 charter by the Legislature, which in the following 
 year, at the request of the municipal authorities, 
 passed an Act making an appropriation for a 
 building in Central Park. These new museums, 
 like the earlier Pennsylvania Academy, were or- 
 ganised by business and professional men. They 
 were the product of the layman’s interest in art. 
 And, whereas, in the case of the older institution in 
 Philadelphia, the motive had been the modest one 
 of introducing ‘‘ correct and elegant copies of 
 
 [ 160 ] 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 works of the first masters in sculpture and paint- 
 ing/’ now the enterprise of the promoters was more 
 ambitious, and their wealth made it possible to sup- 
 plement the necessary copies of antique sculpture 
 with original works of painting. The American 
 amateur had begun to invade the foreign picture- 
 market and offer alluring inducements to private 
 owners to part with their treasures. When, there- 
 fore, the Centennial Exposition stirred the public 
 imagination, there was already an active nucleus 
 of organised and private appreciation of art 
 around which the extended interest could gather. 
 It served to give immense impetus to a movement 
 already under way. But one thing more was 
 needed — a stirring among painters themselves ; and 
 this, by a happy chance, coincided in point of time 
 with the Exposition. 
 
 During 1875 and 1876 the first harvest of Pari- 
 sian teaching reached our country. A group of 
 young painters arrived, trained in the newest meth- 
 ods of the French School, proclaiming its superi- 
 ority, and equipped to prove it. They appeared at 
 a moment when they could do much to draw at- 
 tention to the Exposition, and also receive from it 
 an indorsement of what they themselves stood 
 for. 
 
 All along the line of artistic production it was 
 realised that some approximation must be made to 
 foreign methods and standards of taste, and here, 
 
 [ 161 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 at least in the department of painting, was a body 
 of enthusiasts, eager and able to show the way. 
 
 If you study the magazines of the period, you 
 will find the evidence of an immediate and continu- 
 ing improvement in the quality of the illustrations. 
 It was primarily due to the quick apprehension of 
 new talent on the part of the editors, and then, 
 later, to the additional opportunity given to the 
 artist by the gradual development of the photo- 
 engraving process. But this exceedingly interest- 
 ing chapter in our native art is outside the scope 
 of our present story. More to the point is it that 
 many of these younger men became teachers in 
 our art schools, and thus effectually spread the 
 knowledge of the new technique among students, 
 until the French method of teaching has become 
 the basis of instruction in this country. 
 
 But the way of these enthusiasts was not alto- 
 gether smooth. By the older men of the National 
 Academy of Design they were regarded somewhat 
 as revolutionaries ; troublesome disturbers of almost 
 sacred traditions; dangerous, and not to be en- 
 couraged. Thus a cleavage in the ranks of paint- 
 ers ensued. Some of the older men, pre-eminently 
 John La Farge, gave the new arrivals the sup- 
 port of their encouragement, and, as a consequence, 
 a new organisation was effected. The Society 
 of American Artists was founded in 1877, and in- 
 corporated the following year. John La Farge 
 
 [ 162 ’] 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 was elected president, and among its early mem- 
 bers were Robert Swain Gifford, William Sartain, 
 Louis C. Tiffany, J. Alden Weir, Will H. Low, 
 William M. Chase, J. H. Twachtman, Abbott H. 
 Thayer, Francis Lathrop, and D. Maitland Arm- 
 strong. These names belong to the years 1877- 
 1879, and were supplemented a little later by those 
 of Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Edwin H. Blash- 
 field, George de Forest Brush, Thomas Allen, J. 
 Carroll Beckwith, Robert F. Blum, Kenyon Cox, 
 Bruce Crane, Frank Duveneck, Birge Harrison, 
 Frank Fowler, George Inness, Jr., H. Bolton 
 Jones, Francis C. Jones, George W. Maynard, 
 Frank D. Millet, John H. Niemeyer, Eastman 
 Johnson, Walter L. Palmer, William T. Smedley, 
 Dwight W. Tryon, Elihu Vedder, Frederick P. 
 Vinton, Douglas Volk, Sarah C. Whitman, George 
 Fuller, Thomas Hovenden, William L. Picknell, 
 Arthur Quartley, Charles S. Reinhart, Alexander 
 H. Wyant, and Theodore Robinson. 
 
 With very few exceptions these painters received 
 their training abroad, and for the most part in 
 Paris. Indeed, in those early years admission to 
 the Society was in the nature of a final gradua- 
 tion of the studentship abroad. It is interesting to 
 recall this roll of names, for, although William 
 Morris Hunt and George Inness are absent, it in- 
 cludes practically all the men of the advance guard 
 in that progress which has put American painting 
 
 [lea] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 in line with the art of other countries. Nearly 
 two-thirds of them are figure-painters, and the pro- 
 duct of Academic training. It is this that we have 
 now to consider. 
 
 As we have already seen, the three pioneers in 
 the movement to France — Flunt, La Farge, and 
 Inness — came under influences that existed in an- 
 tagonism to the Academic teaching. But it was 
 under the latter that the figure-painters of the next 
 generation came. It was natural enough that the 
 great teachers in the official schools should attract 
 them. As Duveneck and Chase at Munich put 
 themselves, respectively, under the famous Diez 
 and Piloty, and Maynard and Millet under Van 
 Lerius at the Academy at Antwerp, so the French 
 students clustered around such eminent masters as 
 Gerome, Cabanel, Bouguereau, Boulanger, Le- 
 febvre, Eonnat, and Carolus Duran. 
 
 The last named stands apart from the others in 
 that he made the actual brushwork rather than the 
 charcoal drawing the foundation of his method. 
 Bonnat also was distinct, because in consequence 
 of his close study of old Spanish painting he had 
 modified his Academic training with a strongly 
 naturalistic tendency. He painted, for example, 
 wonderful portraits in which every inequality of 
 the surface and texture of the flesh was faithfully 
 rendered — marvels of characteristic physiognomy. 
 
 [ 164 ] 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 On the other hand, the rest of the masters we have 
 mentioned were neither naturalistic in their mo- 
 tives nor skilful painters in their methods. Their 
 aim was beauty of individual forms and elegance 
 of line in composition; the basis of their method 
 was perfectly finished drawing, to be subsequently 
 coloured. They were not colourists, nor had their 
 brushwork any character of distinction, while mat- 
 ters of light and atmosphere concerned them little. 
 Yet they had not escaped entirely the influence of 
 outside tendencies; for example, they frequently 
 popularised their pictures by giving them a senti- 
 mental or anecdotal appeal. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to attempt to show 
 how American students were influenced individu- 
 ally by one or another of these masters, but rather 
 to summarise results. What they acquired, briefly 
 stated, was a precise and scholarly knowledge of 
 the human form in its relation to painting. The 
 crux that confronted them, on returning home to 
 America, was the use to which this knowledge could 
 be put. Those, who at this period or later remained 
 in Paris after the conclusion of their student days, 
 in a measure evaded the issue by devoting them- 
 selves to the kind of subjects that were interesting 
 the Frenchmen, and their work became French in 
 feeling and character. But to those figure-painters 
 who returned to America the problem was far 
 more difficult. 
 
 [ 165 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICiiN PAINTING 
 
 They had returned because their sympathies were 
 with their own country, but the latter offered them, 
 little encouragement. Abroad the figure-painters 
 devoted themselves primarily to the representation 
 of the nude; then to classic and historic subjects, 
 or to costume or peasant genre. But in none of 
 these directions was there much opening for the 
 painter in America. 
 
 To the American public the nude was scarcely 
 distinguishable from the naked. It had not the 
 familiarity with culture that discovers in the hu- 
 man form the highest symbol of abstract beauty; 
 and two centuries of Puritanical tradition and 
 prejudice had engendered a prudishness that even 
 to-day, while not quite so virulent, is still prevalent 
 and hide-bound. The classics, as a mine of poetic 
 thought and concrete ideals, were equally unfami- 
 liar, while the scope of history had become nar- 
 rowed down to episodes of the Revolution and the 
 Civil War. Costume subjects smacked of an 
 “effete” aristocracy, while the people over here 
 who correspond to the ouvrier and peasant abroad 
 lacked the latter’s individuality. The painter in 
 search of the picturesque found himself confronted 
 with the monotonous uniformity of store clothes, 
 of a public-school average of manners, and of 
 organised labour, regulated by union conven- 
 tions. 
 
 This is how the home conditions appeared to the 
 
 [ 166 ] 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 returning students, and it was not much exagger- 
 ated by their imaginations. 
 
 Meanwhile the influx of foreign pictures was 
 increasing, and collectors who would have hesitated 
 to buy a nude, a classical or historical subject, a 
 costume or peasant genre, by an American, in- 
 vested in the foreign article. For, an investment 
 they considered it, and a safe one, since the foreign 
 painters had received the official indorsement of 
 their own country, in the shape of medals and 
 honours. Such pictures, it was presumed, though in 
 many cases erroneously, would always bring their 
 money back with interest. Moreover, foreign 
 things were the fashion. The Exposition and the 
 return of American students, while they were to 
 be of ultimate benefit to native art, were for the 
 time being a source of impoverishment to the indi- 
 vidual artist. He found it difficult to sell his pic- 
 tures, for the investor-collector was swayed by the 
 argument of the dealers — that, granted the supe- 
 riority of the foreign article, it was a shrewder 
 speculation to invest in the real thing. And this 
 had a further advantage. It saved the collector’s 
 face. The nudes might seem to be shamelessly 
 indecent, the classical subjects completely unintel- 
 ligible, but they were French, and that covered a 
 multitude of embarrassments. Is it not a fact that 
 one does a lot of things in Paris, that one would 
 not so much as speak of in New York or Phila- 
 
 [ 167 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 delphia or Boston? These pictures were French, 
 which at once explained, even if it did not condone, 
 them, and, most important, gave them a cache. 
 
 Now, these conditions, distressing enough at the 
 time to individual painters, were on the whole to 
 the advantage of American art. It is true they 
 drove many men to the necessity of seeking a living 
 in illustration rather than in painting, and of for- 
 saking the precariousness of imaginative work for 
 the surer returns of portraiture. They even post- 
 poned for nearly twenty years an active demand 
 for figure-subjects; until, in fact, the vogue of 
 mural painting was established. On the other hand, 
 these conditions had their comnensations. They 
 
 X ./ 
 
 headed off any general tendency that might have 
 existed to imitate the motives as well as the methods 
 of the foreigner; brought to the surface such indi- 
 viduality as existed in American figure-painters, and 
 set the current of our art in the direction of express- 
 ing what is distinctly American. They helped to 
 bring the painting of the figure in line with that 
 of landscape. For the latter, though gaining rein- 
 forcement from abroad, has throughout its course 
 of steady progression been a product and expression 
 of native sentiment. By comparison, the progres- 
 sion of figure-painting has been fitful and uncer- 
 tain. 
 
 Among the few painters who in the ’seventies 
 [ 168 ] 
 

 THE REFLECTION 
 
 Benja3iin R. Fnz 
 
 ^ W yHIS artist died young. He was of Munich training., and., although this figure in its 
 M purity of drawing and feeling comes near to being the loveliest nude yet painted in 
 America^ it misses what a later knowledge might have given. The figure, notwithstanding 
 that it is represented naturalistically in the open air, is not enveloped with lighted atmosphere. 
 
 In the Collection of William T. Evans, Esq . 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 and early ’eighties ventured to render the nude in 
 easel pictures, the most notable were B. R. Fitz and 
 Walter Shirlaw, of Munich training, Wyatt Eaton, 
 a pupil of Gerome, and Elihu Vedder, who studied 
 under Picot in Paris, but derived his real instruction 
 from living in Rome. 
 
 The best example by Fitz, The Reflection, rep- 
 resents a girl standing on the edge of a pool, look- 
 ing down into the water. It has the charm of 
 absolutely unconscious loveliness, and the technical 
 merit of being well drawn and painted. On the 
 other hand, though the figure is shown in the open 
 air, no attempt has been made to render the effects 
 of light and atmosphere. In this it betrays its 
 academic origin, as also do the easel pictures of 
 nudes by Wyatt Eaton and Walter Shirlaw. 
 These represent a riper type of beauty than the 
 girl by Fitz, but the same words of commendation 
 can be given them. Less skilful as a painter, Ved- 
 der has far more facility of drawing and a richer 
 imagination than either of the others possessed. 
 His illustrations to the poems of Omar Khayyam, 
 as well as his easel-pictures and mural paintings, 
 reveal an unusual gift for decorative treatment of 
 line and mass, and a still more unusual gift of orig- 
 inal and creative thought. The latter is a rarer 
 quality in painting than in some other branches of 
 art, such as poetry and music, and there have been 
 painters who have tried to cover up their own lack 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 of it by belittling Vedder. They would say that 
 in the strict sense of the term he is not a painter. 
 It is true; but the same might be said of Gerome, 
 Bouguereau, and Cabanel, and of many of their 
 puj)ils. The academic method, as we have already 
 observed, is based upon form; the colouring is 
 rather in the nature of a tinting that only approxi- 
 mates to the realities of flesh colour, since it takes 
 little or no account of the action of light upon the 
 surfaces. Vedder takes none whatever, and goes 
 even further in not attempting even an approxima- 
 tion to the local flesh tones. The reason is that 
 painting, as the representation of real appearances, 
 does not interest him; it is for him a symbol of 
 expression; from his point of view the human fig- 
 ure is but a concrete symbol, and his colouring of 
 the figure like his use of it is not realistic but 
 symbolical. His imagination, these critics have in- 
 sisted, is too “ literary.” We shall have more to 
 say about this when we discuss a little later the 
 catch-cry of “ art for art’s sake,” which began to 
 be lieard in the following decade. At present we 
 will observe that the charge amounts to this — that 
 Vedder has ideas embracing the mysteries of life 
 and death; a store of conceptions formed by expe- 
 rience and reflection and by intimacy with the 
 thoughts of great minds, and has used his art to 
 give expression to them. If his art were weak and 
 overweighted with the thought, there might be 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 some ground for the criticism; but it is not. In 
 fact, the main point of the criticism is that intel- 
 lectual and imaginative originality is rare among 
 painters, as in other professions, and the man who 
 possesses it is apt to be an offence to some who 
 do not. 
 
 And here a word may he said upon the subject 
 of what many arbitrarily call the “ ideal ” pic- 
 ture. It involves the use of the nude or of figures 
 wrapped in draperies, for the most part, supposed 
 to be “ classical.” This class of motive is based 
 upon the assumption that the painter’s duty and 
 privilege is to improve upon the imperfections of 
 the human form and to give the figure an ideal per- 
 fection. Therefore the world of real men and 
 women will not do; the painter must invent some 
 fancy of his own. As a rule, he does not so much 
 invent as follow along some well-worn ruts that 
 have led for centuries to the same goal. Here some 
 nymph of antiquity for the thousandth time dis- 
 poses of her maiden beauty to invite the approach 
 of her divine or human lover; or steps into her 
 bath or emerges therefrom; or beautiful youths 
 and maidens pose themselves in self -admiring 
 groups, or weave their bare limbs and nicely calcu- 
 lated draperies into a rhythmic maze. The in- 
 numerable changes rung on these and such like 
 themes have produced some of the most beautiful 
 pictures in the world, but by artists who were 
 
 [ 173 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 nearer to the sources of Classic culture than we are 
 to-day, especially in America. Regarded as a prod- 
 uct of ourselves, such modern pictures are at best 
 a graceful affectation; and, as a consequence, reach 
 only a pretty mediocrity. Their influence is even 
 detrimental, so far as they help to foster a wrong 
 cenception of the “ ideal.” In appropriating this 
 attribute exclusively to an aim at material perfec- 
 tion and losing sight of that higher ideal of spirit- 
 ual and imaginative expression, the modern Aca- 
 demic painter has reduced his art to a condition of 
 inferiority, as compared with music and poetry and 
 even the finer kinds of prose. It is but a more or 
 less elegant make-believe, in a world that is very 
 real. It takes no account of man’s higher aspira- 
 tions and needs, and in its impersonal, unindivid- 
 ual treatment of form runs counter to the indi- 
 vidualism and exact study of phenomena, which 
 have become the characteristic of the age. 
 Whereas, in this respect the Academic painter di- 
 vorces art from life, the trend of the time has been 
 to discover a union of the two. 
 
 With many of our painters, however, the Aca- 
 demic training has been but the prelude to very 
 independent and personal development. Three 
 examples may be quoted. Two of these, George 
 de Forest Brush and Abbott H. Thayer, were 
 pupils of Gerome, himself a man of intellectuality 
 
 [ ] 
 
THE KEEPER 
 
 Copyright by Elilm Tedder 
 
 OF THE THRESHOLD 
 
 Elihu Yedder 
 
 J STRIKIJS G exam'ple of this artist s decorative and expressionai control of line and 
 mass in composition, and of the character and quality of his imagination; also, in 
 the original, of his symbolic use of color. The meaning of the symbolism, while in 
 a genet al way directly grasped, is too abstract to justify any one man in attempting to cur- 
 tail its significance by confining it icithin a form of ivords. It appeals, as symbolism should, 
 diversely to diverse minds and experiences. 
 
 In the Collection of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 but devoid of imagination. What we may believe 
 they derived from him was a mental discipline and 
 faculty of thought which enabled them to put to 
 entirely independent uses the principles that they 
 learned from him, and ultimately to give free rein 
 to their own imagination. 
 
 In Brush’s early pictures after his return home 
 the brushwork is trim and sleek and hard, like his 
 master’s, and he reflects also the latter’s partiality 
 for embodying some story and archaeology in his 
 pictures. But as a basis for these qualities Brush 
 did not, like Gerome, search the Classics or the 
 strange life of the East. His thoughts were to- 
 ward his own country and what it might yield in 
 the way of motive. He found material for story, 
 archaeology, and strangeness in the North Ameri- 
 can Indians; and food for his imagination by dis- 
 covering in their present condition a clue to their 
 past. He attempted to recreate the spacious, 
 empty world in which they lived a life that was 
 truly primitive, unmixed with any alloy of the 
 white man’s bringing; and to interpret not only 
 the externals of their life, but its inwardness, as 
 with mingled stolidity and naivete these men-chil- 
 dren looked out upon the phenomena of nature, 
 fronted the mystery of death, and peered into the 
 stirrings of their own souls. 
 
 In these Indian pictures, far too few in number. 
 Brush still betrayed the tentative technique of the 
 
 [ 177 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 student, for their drawing is tame and the painting 
 constrained and timorous. But the imagination, 
 revealed, is deep and elevated, and no one has ap- 
 proached him in the completeness with which he has 
 suggested the solemn romance of those primitive 
 conditions. In Silence Broken, for example, a 
 goose has burst from a bank of foliage immedi- 
 ately above the head of an Indian in a canoe. One 
 is conscious of the rush of sound, vibrating through 
 the vast isolation. The Indian looks up, but does 
 not cease his paddling; he kneels in the boat, a 
 figure of monumental composure. And here, in 
 Mourning Her Brave, a squaw, muffled in a blan- 
 ket, stands in the snow on the mountain side chant- 
 ing a dirge, as she stares dully at the leaden, unre- 
 lenting sky. The suggestion is elemental; a note 
 or world-old wailing and protest out of the void of 
 time. Or again, in the Sculptor and the King, 
 the one has wrought upon a block of sandstone, 
 drawing from it some expression of the thought 
 within himself, and now he waits in trembling 
 eagerness for the word of the King. The latter 
 holds himself erect and rigid, with the habit of 
 superiority, but in his mind is embarrassment. This 
 man, his inferior in social standing, has reached out 
 beyond the King’s experience and done something 
 that makes royalty itself seem powerless ; a strange 
 new thing, a creation. The King is oppressed 
 with wonder. 
 
 [ 178 ] 
 

 PORrUAIT GROUP 
 
 George oe Forest Brush 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 O X /' of the series of this artist's renderings of his wife and children. 
 
 In tlie Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
 i 
 
 ti 
 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 One can only touch upon the thought of these 
 pictures. If you have seen them, you will recall 
 the grip which they exert on the imagination, and 
 join in the regret that Brush did not persevere in 
 this line of work until his technical ability had 
 become equivalent to his conceptions. But he 
 abandoned it, anxious, I believe, to paint ideas 
 more close to the experience of everybody, and not 
 uninfluenced, we may suspect, by the claims of 
 family life upon his sympathy. For his theme 
 now became, and has continued to be, his wife and 
 children, painted in the spirit of reverent devotion 
 that characterised the Madonnas of the Old Mas- 
 ters. But with a difference — the interpolation of 
 a modern note of painful seriousness. It is not the 
 happiness of JMotherhood that he represents, but 
 the burthen and responsibility of INIaternity, a rem- 
 nant of the rigid strenuousness of Puritanic ten- 
 dencies. Even in the sweet faces of the children 
 is a foreshadowing of care. Meanwhile the influ- 
 ence of the Madonna motive threw his study back 
 to the old paintings, and his own technique, recall- 
 ing that of the early Flemish masters, obtained a 
 fulness and dignity that befit the theme. When- 
 ever his pictures appear, they create for themselves 
 an atmosphere of grave distinction. 
 
 The same quality, with a superadded note of ten- 
 derness, is to be found in the work of Abbott 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 Thayer. He, too, has left behind the manner of 
 his master, and acquired one of his own, character- 
 ised rather by sincerity than style, for his colour 
 is confused, the brushwork laboured. Nevertheless 
 his pictures move and hold one by the force of their 
 spirituality. They are the expression of very 
 beautiful qualities of personal character, strong, 
 tender, simple. 
 
 The girl-figure that haunts his convases, nobly 
 formed, but free of any cloy of flesh, fronts the 
 world with starlike eyes, serenely fixed beyond the 
 range of common things. She is a vestal virgin, 
 that has in her keeping the spiritual ideal of which 
 she herself is the creation. 
 
 Thayer, in fact, has done for the spiritual ideal 
 of American womanhood what Charles Dana 
 Gibson has done for the physical and mundane — 
 created a type. Gibson’s, through multiplication 
 of copies and because of its aggressive attractive- 
 ness, caught the popular fancy; Thayer’s, for ex- 
 actly opposite reasons, has captivated the imagina- 
 tion only of the few. Gibson’s type is sexless, and 
 self-engrossed; Thayer’s unconscious of her mod- 
 esty, self-contained, but tender and unselfish. She 
 is typical of the pure, frank outlook upon life, 
 prepared to accept its responsibilities and renuncia- 
 tions, to lighten its grossness, and uphold a high 
 ideal. 
 
 In an age and environm.ent, not overgiven to 
 [ 182 ] 
 
VIRGIN ENTHRONED 
 
 Abbott H. Thayer 
 
 BEAUTIFUL example of the artist’s idealized type of girlhood. 
 
CARITAS Akbot H. Thayer 
 
 ‘ ^'~>^IIARITY.''' which in its purest form is Love," represe)ited as o maiden 
 ■ of nohte figure and passionless serenity, stands ng guardian orter the lives 
 of the little ones. In no other picture has Thayer so completely reconciled 
 the Greek abstraction of perfection with the practical sentiment of the modern spirit. 
 
 In the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 spirituality and imagination, these pictures are a 
 notable embodiment of both. 
 
 From them we may pass very naturally to a 
 study of Thomas W. Dewing’s conceptions of 
 woman, as embodied in his pictures. In it also we 
 may find a note distinctly American. For it 
 should be remembered that there are two ways in 
 which a painter may reflect the particularity of his 
 environment. There is, first, the comparatively 
 obvious one of representing the externals; and, 
 secondly, the more subtle one of interpreting 
 the inner nature of the men and women around 
 him. 
 
 From an attempt to record the first, as we have 
 already remarked, the earlier home-comers were 
 discouraged, and it cannot yet be said that they or 
 their successors have made considerable contribu- 
 tion to a record of the appearances of American 
 life. Such genre subjects as those of Eastman 
 Johnson, that depict incidents relating to the Civil 
 War, or Thomas Hovenden’s Last Moments of 
 John Brownj or Winslow Homer’s early pictures 
 of rural scenes in the South, were the product of 
 an earlier influence, that at the period we are dis- 
 cussing was losing its force, even if it had not actu- 
 ally expired. It had been undermined by the influ- 
 ence from abroad; for while the latter had done 
 much to put the student on sure ground as regards 
 
 [ 185 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 technique, it had unsettled his motives. It had held 
 up to him certain motives congenial to the condi- 
 tions abroad, which, however, he could not find at 
 home, and as a consequence he was embarrassed and 
 at a loss. 
 
 We do not forget that some turned resolutely to 
 the theme of Colonial times. But these pictures of 
 Puritan maidens and the life of the early settlers, 
 by men like C. Y. Turner, George H. Boughton, 
 and Douglas Volk, though charming in many re- 
 spects, particularly in that of sentiment, are after 
 all the ^^rodiict of fancy; they are not interpreta- 
 tions of American life, as known and studied by 
 the painter. It was the contemjDorary conditions 
 tliat this new generation of painters avoided, and 
 that their successors have infrequently and inade- 
 quately attempted. Indeed, it is scarcely an exag- 
 geration to say that the only great interpretation 
 of any phase of American conditions is to be found 
 in Winslow Homer’s pictures of the fisherfolk of 
 jMaine. 
 
 On the other hand, in the subtler domain of the 
 spirit the American environment has made itself 
 felt. Its action has been twofold: subjectively af- 
 fecting the mental attitude of the painter, and 
 objectively offering to his scrutiny certain distinct 
 qualities in the object of his study. We have seen 
 how these results are exhibited in the attitude of 
 Brush and Thayer, respectively, toward maternity 
 
 [ 186 ] 
 
THE LOOK-OUT - ALL ’S WELL Winslow Homer 
 
 O NE may find the texture of the hell, sou wester, and the mans face pretty much 
 the same. But such technicalities, that would he detriments to a picture of smaller 
 import, disappear in the prodigious force of this one. It is a chunk out of the 
 rude heroism of the lives of the fishermen that ply their calling off the iron coast of Maine, 
 
 Jn the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 and maidenhood, and may now study another 
 phase of them, in Dewing’s rendering of women. 
 
 ILis also betray the inherited trait of serious- 
 ness, and are all still the daughters of Puritanism, 
 though many times removed from the original 
 strain. Generations of repressed emotion have 
 made them incapable of passion; strenuousness 
 survives only in supersensitive nerves; their sole 
 religion is the worship of self. From narrow con- 
 ditions they have emerged into a vision of the 
 Kingdoms of the World and the Glory of them, 
 but have already tasted of satiety. They are mo- 
 tionless in an atmosphere from which all human 
 warmth has been sucked, in a vacuum drained of 
 intellectual and emotional nourishment. These 
 bodily shapes are not of flesh and blood; they are 
 the essence distilled from the withering of what 
 is womanly, the mere fragrance of dead rose-leaves. 
 
 It was only by degrees that Dewing evolved this 
 conception. His earlier examples, such as the 
 Lady at the Spinet, and some of his small portraits, 
 still have a charm that is physical as weU as spirit- 
 ual. The change may have come about through a 
 change in his technical motive, as he became more 
 and more enamoured of the subtleties of colour and 
 lighting, qualities that, we shall see, began to oc- 
 cupy the attention of students during the ’eighties. 
 It is a phase of our story that belongs to a later 
 chapter. We can only say of it here, that to an 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 artist of Dewing’s sensibility both of feeling and 
 band, it offered a possibility of exquisite refinement 
 of style, such as his has become; and that in the 
 refining of his method his typical conception grew 
 to be more and more rarified ; less and less concerned 
 with form as form, increasingly occupied with its 
 suggestion of abstract expression. 
 
 In this evolution of motive and method he owed 
 as little to his masters, Lefehvre and Boulanger, 
 as Brush and Thayer did to Gerome. In each case 
 the individuality of the man gradually declared 
 itself. It took some colour from its native en- 
 vironment and gave back in return an interpreta- 
 tion of something distinctively American in spirit. 
 In the latter respect they are alone among their 
 contemporaries ; nor do I know where to look 
 among their successors for any who has done a 
 similar thing. These three men have not exhausted 
 the subject of American womanhood; but, as some 
 of the Florentine sculptors and painters did in the 
 case of the women of the Renaissance, they have 
 represented certain distinct types of contemporary 
 femininity. 
 
 We started the chapter with a consideration of 
 the Academic motive, but in following the devel- 
 opment of Dewing, especially, have been compelled 
 to wander from it. We may recover our ground 
 by a reference to Edwin A. Abbey, who, though 
 not Paris-trained, is a conspicuous example, almost 
 
 [ 190 ] 
 
LE JASEUR Thomas W. Dewing 
 
 ~W JT ^’HILE the coloring presents a weh of subtle and S'uhdued harmony, the figures vibrate with a thrill of piquancy. 
 
 is interesting to note with what unerring ease the artist has made the movement of the figures and their several 
 kinds of engrossed attention concentrate toward the chatterbox''' on the table. 
 
 In the Collection of John Gellatly, Esa 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 the only one we have in modern times, of the Aca- 
 demic principle applied to historic painting. 
 
 ararararararararararar 
 
 Born in Philadelphia, in 1852, a pupil of the 
 Pennsylvania Academy, he became a draughtsman 
 in the publishing house of Harper & Brothers. 
 Those were the days of reproduction by wood en- 
 graving, and his duty was to draw the picture on 
 the block. Gradually this method was superseded 
 by the mechanical process of photo-engraving, and 
 with this transition, Abbey’s career as an illustra- 
 tor is closely identified. The newer methods of- 
 fered increased opportunity of originality and skill 
 on the part of the draughtsman, and soon Abbey 
 became known as one of the most original and 
 skilful, especially in the use of pen and ink. His 
 illustrations to “ Herrick’s Poems ” had so much 
 charm of invention and such a sympathy with and 
 insight into the old-time feeling and environment, 
 that he was commissioned by his publishers to go to 
 England and gather material for a series of illustra- 
 tions of She Stoops to Conquer, This visit proved 
 the turning point of his career. He found in Eng- 
 land, not only material for his drawings, but also 
 the mental suggestion and atmosphere that his 
 artistic development craved. He settled in Eng- 
 land, married a New York lady, and has since made 
 his home at Morgan Hall, an old manor house at 
 Fairford in Oxfordshire. The success which his 
 
 [193] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 work achieved enabled him, without abandoning 
 illustration, to devote a eonstantly increasing at- 
 tention to oil painting. In the latter medium he 
 continued the same purposes and characteristics 
 that he had adopted in his illustrations. The basis 
 of the picture is still the subjeet; an old world one, 
 frequently taken from some scene in Shakespeare’s 
 plays. 
 
 Like his series of decorations in the Boston Pub- 
 lie Library, embodying the story of the “ Holy 
 Grail,” they are presented with an archaeological 
 exactness of costume and accessories, and with 
 much dramatic action and regard for individual 
 characterisation. They are rich in colour, showing 
 a preference for blacks, whites, and scarlet; though 
 it is to he noted that Abbey is only in a limited 
 sense a colourist. To borrow a musical simile, he 
 does not compose the colours in a harmony, but 
 introduces separate melodies of eolour, and spots 
 his pictures with these, as a draughtsman with pen 
 and ink spots the blacks and whites in his composi- 
 tion. Indeed, in this respect, as well as because of 
 tlie importance given to subject and his method of 
 building up his effects for the main purpose of 
 telling the story of the scene. Abbey, while work- 
 ing in oil, still remains an illustrator; upon that 
 larger seale wliich is distinguished as “ historieal 
 painting.” He is the most important survivor, in 
 fact, of the vogue of the historical subject; and in 
 
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THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY Ai.exakdeh IL Wvaxt 
 
 J VER Y fne example of what may he called the artwt's middle style, when his yreat skill in renderiny detail heyan 
 / m to he requlated hy an approach to broader yeneralization. At this time, too, the serdimevt represented a more 
 ohjective lore of nature, before it had deepened into the very personal note of feeliny that distinyuished his later v:ork. 
 
 In the Collection of Samuel Unterniyer, flsq. 
 
 i 
 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 consequence was selected to paint the official pic- 
 ture of King Edward’s Coronation. That vogue 
 has given way before the increased attention paid 
 to the manner of representation, rather than to the 
 subject; to the aim of the modern painter to study 
 his subject at close and intimate range, for which 
 jiurpose he chooses a simple one, and makes the ex- 
 pression of his picture grow out of the technical 
 expression. These principles, originally learned 
 from the Barbizon painters, have been perpetuated 
 in the steady development of American landscape 
 painting. We will resume, in the next chapter, the 
 thread of these influences during the ’seventies and 
 early ’eighties, noting at the same time some in- 
 teresting examples of independent growth. 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CONTINUANCE OF BARBIZON INFLUENCE AND 
 SOME EXAMPLES OF. INDEPENDENCE 
 
 I N resuming the story of American landscape, 
 we meet with two men who are usually asso- 
 ciated in our mind with George Inness : Alex- 
 ander H. Wyant and Homer INIartin. These three 
 may be reckoned tlie fathers of modern American 
 landscape. IVIartin, like Inness, was directly influ- 
 enced by the Barbizon painters; Wyant indirectly 
 through the example of Inness and of the Barbizon 
 pictures that had reached this country. His artistic 
 career resembled that of Inness, so far as it de- 
 veloped from analysis to synthesis and from the 
 representation of landscape to the rendering of a 
 mood of nature. Otherwise the two men were very 
 different. Inness was versatile, eager, and impul- 
 sive, a transcendentalist ; Wyant, a lyric poet- 
 painter, in whose mind, as in a still pool, a restricted 
 range of emotions was mirrored, with a suggestion 
 of poignant tenderness and depth. 
 
 Wyant was born, in 1836, at Deflance, Ohio. 
 Although as a boy he had the observing eye and 
 the desire to translate into line the forms of things, 
 and, as he grew older, trained himself in drawings 
 
 [198] 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 he was twenty years old before he saw any pictures. 
 This opportunity came to him when he visited Cin- 
 cinnati, and, among the pictures there, one espe- 
 cially attracted him. It was by Inness. It seemed 
 to the young man that one who could paint like 
 that would be able and willing to advise him as to 
 whether he might dare to hope to be an artist. He 
 found means to visit New York, sought out Inness, 
 was most kindly received, and spread out his studies 
 and sketches to await judgment. The verdict was 
 favourable, and Wyant resolved to be an artist. 
 
 He went abroad and studied for a time under 
 the Norwegian painter, Hans Gude, who had 
 graduated from Diisseldorf and was teaching at 
 Carlsruhe. There seems to have been a mutual 
 attachment between master and pupil; but, when 
 the former urged an imitation of his own method 
 of painting, Wyant rebelled. 
 
 He returned to America, and being in need of 
 funds, joined a Government expedition to explore 
 the West. Hardships overtook the party; his phys- 
 ical strength was unequal to the strain, and, par- 
 tially paralysed, he was put on board an eastward 
 train. The train passed through his native town; 
 but he reasoned that, if he succumbed to his condi- 
 tion, he might never again be able to emerge and 
 push forward to his goal of being an artist. So 
 he lay still and reached New York. In time he 
 recovered the use of his body, but his right arm 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 remained affected, and henceforth he painted with 
 the left. Moreover, during the rest of his life he 
 was subject always to bodily discomfort, not infre- 
 quently to pain, and there hung over him the real- 
 isation that his days were numbered. He worked 
 under the intense concentration of feeling that he 
 had so much he wished to do, so little time in which 
 to do it. The remainder of liis life, which he shared 
 with a devoted wife and a few friends, Inness 
 pre-eminently among them, he gave to the study 
 of nature, finding companionship all along in the 
 nature-poet, Wordsworth. He worked first in the 
 Adirondacks; then, fearing that he might fall into 
 a mannerism by continuing to represent scenes 
 of similar character, moved to the Catskills. His 
 development, influenced by the Barbizon paintings, 
 that were being imported in increasing numbers, 
 and by the example of Inness, was from analysis 
 to synthesis, from the representation of external 
 nature to the interpretation of a mood. His earlier 
 j)ictures are marvels of precise mastery of charac- 
 terisation. By degees they become broader, sim- 
 pler, more single-minded, or shall I call it single- 
 hearted? For their emotional quality increased 
 until they become the intense expression of a mood 
 — the artist’s own feeling, interpreted through 
 nature. And the mood grows to be one of absorb- 
 ing love and lovableness, frequent with sadness, 
 musical lyrics in a minor key. 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
ADIRONDACK VISTA 
 
 Alexander H. Wyaxt 
 
 HE original, like most of Wyant's, very difficult to reproduce, is character- 
 ized by a complete comprehension of the natural forms and exceedingly 
 delicate quality of spiritual suggestion. 
 
 In the Collection of William T. Evans, Esq. 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 Throughout his life he was a student, and when 
 he was conscious that the end was drawing near 
 (it came in 1892) , he would exclaim: “ Had I but 
 five years more in which to paint, even one year, I 
 think I could do the thing I long to.” 
 
 This is the cry of a true artist, one whose soul 
 was set upon that most evanescent, intangible 
 quality — expression, while his hands were ham- 
 pered by a medium comparatively clumsy and hard 
 to manage. To others it will seem that he reached 
 achievement; to himself, conscious of what he 
 longed to do, there remained to the end a royal dis- 
 content. 
 
 ararartrararararararar 
 
 In great contrast to Wyant’s tender, poignant 
 lyricism, and to the brilliant improvisation of In- 
 ness, is the profound seriousness of Homer Mar- 
 tin’s work. To his club-mates he was a “ fellow 
 of infinite jest,” big-natured in his weakness as in 
 his strength; in the seclusion of his art, a painter 
 of grave purposes and serious imaginings. 
 
 He was born at Albany, New York, in 1836, the 
 year also of Wyant’s birth. Except for a few 
 weeks’ instruction from William Hart he was self- 
 taught, and his early work represents a groping of 
 mind and hand, a searching after the thing that 
 was worth doing and some way of doing it. 
 Already, however, it was distinguished by a feel- 
 ing for colour and expression. He had always been 
 
 [203] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 subject to a weakness of the eyes, which debarred 
 him from admission into the army at the opening 
 of the Civil War, and had a marked influence upon 
 the tenor of his art. 
 
 There is no doubt that what we recognise in an 
 artist as a mental idiosyncrasy has frequently orig- 
 inated in some defect or peculiarity of ocular 
 vision; for it is how the artist sees the visible world 
 that will determine how the impression, filtered 
 through his mind, will appear in the picture. Now 
 JVIartin’s imperfection caused him to see nature in 
 mass, not enclosed in sharp outlines; and since 
 crispness and definiteness were a characteristic of 
 such landscape pictures as he had at first the op- 
 portunity of seeing, he distrusted himself. Had 
 he known that Corot, after a long apprenticeship 
 to certainties of form, had deliberately brought 
 himself to see nature as a pattern of masses, soft- 
 ened against the spaces of the sky; that this was a 
 phase of the process which other artists were going 
 through in their passage from the analytical to the 
 synthetical method of representing nature, he 
 would have been saved much distress and delay. 
 He might have realised the fact, so frequently illus- 
 trated in art, and to be exhibited later in his own, 
 that it is out of a man’s weakness that his peculiar 
 strength is evolved. But it was not until after 
 he had been abroad that impressions which he 
 had hesitated to accept became convictions, upon 
 
 [ 204 ] 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 which he could effectually base his self -develop- 
 ment. 
 
 His first visit was in 1876, to Holland, England, 
 and France, with a short stay at Barbizon. Again 
 in 1881 he went to England, renewing a friendship 
 with Whistler that had been commenced five years 
 before; and thence moved across the Channel to 
 Villerville, a little village near Harfleur in Nor- 
 mandy, where nineteen months were spent. It was 
 during this time that he gathered the impressions 
 which later resulted in some of his finest works — 
 Law Tide at Villerville, Honfieur Lights, Cinque- 
 hoeuf Church, known now as Old Church in Nor- 
 mandy; Normandy Trees, Normandy Farm, the 
 Sun Worshippers, and the landscape in the Metro- 
 politan Museum called, erroneously, a View on the 
 Seine, The Mussel Gatherers was completed a 
 little later at Harfleur. 
 
 It is characteristic of Martin’s habit of work 
 that his stay at Villerville, the happiest incident of 
 his career, was a period not of productivity, of 
 giving out, but of taking in impressions, to be real- 
 ised later. It may have been an instinct for saving 
 his eyes that deterred him from making the colour 
 studies or drawings in the open air with which 
 painters usually equip themselves for subsequent 
 work in the studio. One picture, Westchester 
 Hills, which many people consider his masterpiece, 
 was painted from start to finish in the open air; but 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 this was a single exception to his rule of work. His 
 numerous sketches are little more than summary 
 indications of the anatomy of a scene — its lines and 
 masses, jotted down with a pencil or water-colour 
 brush. His real studies of nature w^ere made 
 through half-closed eyes, as he lay or sat smoking, 
 apparently doing nothing. But all the time he 
 was absorbing facts and receiving impressions. 
 These gradually took shape and arrangement in 
 his brain, until he ol)tained a mental vision of his 
 subject; and it was the memory of the latter that 
 occupied his attention when subsequently he came 
 to paint the picture. 
 
 In “ A Reminiscence ” of her husband ^Irs. 
 IVIartin testifies to this, which is of extreme interest 
 in helping one to understand his work. Inciden- 
 tally I may remind the reader that it was in this 
 way that many of Corot’s most beautiful pictures 
 had their beginning. They were painted in Paris 
 from impressions stored up by the artist during 
 the summer time in Ville d’Avray, as he watched 
 the rising of the sun, or saw it to its setting. As 
 with Corot, it was not the landscape but the impres- 
 sion of a mood experienced in himself at nature’s 
 suggestion, that IMartin painted. And we have it 
 on IVIrs. ^Martin’s authority, and may find corrob- 
 oration in the titles of two of liis pictures, that the 
 mood was not only an abstract sensation, but that 
 the concrete image of the mood was present to his 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
VIEW ON THE SEINE Homeh D, Mahtin 
 
 O RIGINALLY named hy the artist “ The Harp of the Winds," the picture dlustrates his extraordinary sensibility to 
 the subtler qualities of nature. For, to a deyree that the reproduction fails to shov), he has succeeded in rendering 
 that cool, pearly atmosqdiere ichich at certain times so peculiarly invests the river-scenes of northern France. 
 
 In the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 imagination. Thus, the View on the Seine was 
 called by himself The Harp of the Winds, The 
 scene had suggested music to him, and the tall pop- 
 lar stems and their reflections seemed like strings 
 vibrating with the quiver of the foliage. But Mar- 
 tin feared that the title might seem to be senti- 
 mental, and, abandoning it, changed also the ap- 
 pearance of the trees, in order, I suppose, that the 
 resemblance to a harp might not be too obvious. 
 For he had a great horror of painting anything 
 that might be suspected of a literary motive, and 
 in the titles of his pictures avoided giving any 
 verbal clue to the mood embodied. The only other 
 exception is The Fire W orshippers ; but I believe 
 it is the exception that proves the rule. 
 
 For the appearance of these trees, stunted and 
 bent over by the rigour of the wind, extending their 
 lean and withered arms toward the glory of the set- 
 ting sun, gives a certain obviousness to the title, 
 when once the humour of the artist’s imagination 
 has started the suggestion. But under the obvi- 
 ousness of the title he may have desired to conceal 
 his deeper mood. In the contrast between the 
 splendour of the sky and the cramped, thwarted 
 conditions upon earth, he may well have felt a sym- 
 bol of the artist’s dream of what he longs to do 
 and of the impotence with which he frequently 
 knows himself to be possessed. 
 
 For Martin could only work when the impulse 
 [ 209 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 was upon him. “ I do not know where the impulse 
 comes from,” he once said, ‘‘ nor why it stays 
 away. All I know is that when it comes I can do 
 nothing but paint ; and when it goes away I can do 
 nothing but dawdle.” “ That was absolutely true; 
 and,” his ^\dfe adds, ‘‘it was also very inconven- 
 ient.” She gives another hint to the understand- 
 ing both of the man and the artist when she says 
 that Martin w^as himself a bit of nature. 
 
 Without early education, and despite a desultory 
 appreciation of good literature and a taste for 
 music, unregulated by any sort of intellectual dis- 
 cipline, he remained in a very special and unusual 
 way a child of nature; subject to variableness of 
 mood, reckless of consequences. This was the 
 man — a child. It was only the artist in him that 
 grew up and matured; knit by bonds of serious 
 tenderness to the mother earth, from whose loins 
 he had come, and at whose breast he fed, under- 
 standing her voice by instinct, while her heart 
 throbbed to the movement of his own. In a word, 
 he did not absorb nature and then pass it through 
 the prism of his own consciousness, as Inness and 
 Wyant did, and most poetic landscape painters 
 do, but himself passed into nature, and became 
 once more conceived in her, afterwards employing 
 the strength of his intellect to express, as it were, 
 the secrets of the womb. Through this rather fan- 
 tastical process of thinking, I believe, we can gain 
 
 [ 210 ] 
 
THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS 
 

 a o 
 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 a perception of what it is in Homer’s finest pictures 
 that moves one so largely and so profoundly. It 
 is the completeness with which he was able to sur- 
 render himself to nature that made him able to 
 recover from her the elemental feeling, and to ren- 
 der it in a manner at once so large, simple, and 
 profound. 
 
 His work is characterised by the qualities of the 
 colourist. In the earliest pictures there is more than 
 a little gaudiness of colour ; but this passes with the 
 work of his maturity into a sober harmony of low- 
 toned hues, grave, sonorous, and musically subtle; 
 the earth-parts kneaded into solidity, the skies 
 thrilling with vibration. The sky, however, in the 
 Fire W orshippers is aflame with colour; and again, 
 in the last of all his pictures, Adirondack Scenery^ 
 he indulged in a profusion of bright tints. 
 Though blind of one eye and threatened with 
 cataract in the other, irreparably shattered in health, 
 he nevertheless asserted once more the unfaltering 
 jollity of the man in an artist’s colour scheme of 
 gaiety. He died in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. 
 
 arar«rararara»«rarara» 
 
 While the three men we have been discussing 
 were influenced more or less directly by the Bar- 
 bizon painters, their pictures bear no resemblance 
 to the latters’. Henry W. Ranger, however, 
 painted for a while in a manner that is visibly 
 reminiscent, now of Rousseau, now of Diaz ; Robert 
 
 [213] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 C. Minor, a pupil of the latter, was noticeably 
 representative of Barbizon choice and treatment 
 of subjects. He is dead, and Ranger has dis- 
 covered a style personal to himself. In fact, this 
 early Barbizon influence has run its course, and ^ 
 
 been replaced, as we shall see, by another, in which, 
 through the example of Manet and the other “ Im- 
 pressionists,’' a closer and more scientiflc study of j 
 
 light is the main motive. Meanwhile, the salient • 
 
 features of the influence are perpetuated. Our I 
 
 landscape painters still select a fragment of na- j 
 
 ture, study it intimately, summarise its details t 
 
 into an ense7nhle, and represent it as a portrait 
 of character and expression. * 
 
 It will be convenient to mention here those men 
 of remarkable originality, whose development was ? 
 
 apart from the influence we have been discussing. 
 
 Entirely self-taught and detached from this influ- 
 ence, except in so far as it was in the air, and no one 
 could escape some recognition of it, Ralph A. 
 Blakelock remained a curiously isolated figure. i 
 
 The son of a New York physician, born in 1817, 
 he would not follow in his father’s profession, but 
 determined to divide his studies between music and 
 painting. In neither did he receive any instruction, 
 and prepared himself for painting by a trip to the 
 West, where he lived among the Indians and se- 
 cured material that he afterwards introduced into 
 
 [ ] 
 
 I 
 
THK iiKOOK BY MOONLIGHT 
 
 Ralph A. Blakelock 
 
 rjlHlS finest example of this artist. Nature no doubt inspired him, but he 
 was not a nature painter. The actual appearances of nature he trans- 
 posed into a convention of his own. which he employed for the purpose 
 of emotional expression. The latter was his motive; nature he used only as a 
 
 In the Collection of Catholina Lambert, Esq. 
 
I EG E R 1 1^’, D A LBE UT P . R yderJ 
 
 A X aifmirahlc t xamph of this pnlnftr'a poet ir-<lrama(ir manner, the irhole conception ami render'm^^ 
 
 rm of the scene helm/ the r> ci rse of )iatnra!istic. 1 he patterning f)f the tree-forms, the massing of^ 
 
 ^ light anil shade, and, most of all, tin coloring, have been arhitrarilg assembled for the purpose of/ 
 
 vnressimj the painter s own I motional conct ption. , ^ 
 
 In nf ^\r W ilHnm \ an Horncl 
 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 his pictures. Tie v;as a born colourist, and such 
 men are usually musical, while the musician is 
 conscious of colour-quality in sound. Indeed, the 
 modern mind, in its subtle analysis of sensations, 
 has added to the expressiveness of language by 
 using interchangeably the terminology of these two 
 arts. Thus, having b}^ habit ceased to regard it as 
 an affectation, we find, on the contrary, a useful- 
 ness and propriety in speaking, for example, of 
 harmonies and tones of color, high key and low key 
 of colour, and so on; similarly of shading of ex- 
 pression in music, of richness of colour and the like. 
 Both sensations reach us by wave movements, and 
 we may recognise a certain correspondence in the 
 way in which they affect us. But Blakelock went 
 further than a mere consciousness of correspond- 
 ence, and worked out for his own use a chromatic 
 scale of colour equivalent to that of music. 
 
 Unfortunately he had never learned the manual 
 trick of painting, and in the details, notably the 
 foliage, used his brush as a pencil, without, appar- 
 ently, having acquired the trick of drawing. His 
 trees are as hard, flat, and motionless, and often 
 as dark and opaque in colour, as if cut out of 
 japanned tin. Accordingly, considered as por- 
 traits of nature, they are unsatisfactory. But this 
 is not the proper way to regard them. Bather they 
 are pictorial arrangements founded upon a theme 
 which he has borrowed from nature; as a musical 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 composer may take some simple folk-tune and use 
 it as the slender thread on which to string his har- 
 monious inventions. If we will divest our minds 
 for a moment of the habit of looking in a landscape 
 for an intimate study of nature, and estimate 
 Blakelock’s simply as pictorial convention, a sym- 
 phony of colour based upon nature motif, intended 
 to affect us in a purely abstract way, we shall find 
 the best of them extraordinarily original and 
 inspiring. 
 
 This is also the best way to estimate the work of 
 another isolated figure, Albert P. Ryder, although 
 he himself is apt to confuse the issue by giving his 
 pictures titles that have a literary suggestion. 
 Among his subjects, for example, will be remem- 
 bered Jonah and the Whale, Siegfried, Temple of 
 the Mind, Flying Dutchman. This literary allu- 
 sion is a source of weakness in his pictures. Their 
 real strength consists in the way in which he makes 
 the rendering of the landscape a pattern of colour 
 and form, full of emotional appeal, or the ocean 
 and sky contribute to a symphony of colour; in the 
 Jonah as wild and whirling, as a Hungarian Gipsy 
 dance by torchlight, in the Flying Dutchman as 
 weird as the squealing flight of witches. With no 
 thought of nature in his mind, but intent on making 
 every part of the picture beautiful in colour and 
 texture, he embroiders every inch of the canvas, as 
 
 [ 218 ] 
 
i 
 
 TUMULT of water^ in the trough of which is a small boat with a few shipwrecked sailors. Beyond them passes 
 the phantom ship, her sails confused with the sweep of cloud that hovers over the setting sun. The emotional sug- 
 gestion of the picture is mainly the result of the color-scheme, a turbulence of gold-Jiecked splendor 
 
 In the Collection of John Gellatly, Esq. 
 
EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 if his brush were a needle, threaded with brilliant 
 silks or strands of gold and silver, until the whole 
 gleams like precious stones. All this is beautiful, 
 very beautiful, pregnant with imagination. 
 
 Ryder has been likened to JMonticelli, but scarcely 
 with justice to the latter. For the Frenchman was 
 a master in the rendering of light; his pictures are 
 saturated with it; nay, more, they are constructed 
 in light, creations of light; the figures moving or 
 fixed in lighted atmosphere. Ryder’s pictures are 
 usually opaque, and radiant on their surfaces alone. 
 But there is another fundamental difference — a 
 racial one. Monticelli’s pictures are creations of 
 pure fancy, while Ryder exhibits the Anglo-Saxon 
 tendency to supjDlement the music with ideas, and 
 his literary additions are singularly ineffectual. 
 The little figures, boats, fish, and architecture, ap- 
 pear ill-drawn, ill-placed, and curiously childish 
 in conception, and suggest that their author has 
 nothing of the saving grace of humour. His 
 work, notwithstanding its emotional charm, gives 
 the impression of its author being too much pre- 
 occupied with his own seriousness. 
 
 The third of the independents, George Fuller, 
 belongs to a generation earlier than that of Ryder 
 and Blakelock, having been born in 1822, three 
 years before the birth of Inness. Yet it was not 
 until 1876 that the work by which he is now re- 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 membered was presented to the public gaze. It 
 had been produced under circumstances that render 
 his career a chapter of romance in the story of 
 American painting, and a very unusual variation 
 on the theme of “ art for art’s sake.” 
 
 Up to 1859 it was not unlike the careers of other 
 painters in those days of limited opportunity. 
 Some instruction at home in Deerfield, Massachu- 
 setts, where his father was a farmer, was gained 
 from a half-brother who had skill as a miniature- 
 painter; later, a little instruction in drawing from 
 the sculptor, Henry Kirke Brown, in Albany, and 
 further help from another sculptor, John Ball. 
 Portraits occupied him principally, though he made 
 some efforts to break away from them and indulge 
 himself in imaginative subjects. In 1857 he was 
 elected an associate of the National Academy. The 
 most notable feature of this period of his life was 
 the determination he made, as expressed in a let- 
 ter to his friend Brown: “I have concluded,” he 
 wrote, “to see nature for myself, through the eye 
 of no one else, and put my trust in God, awaiting 
 the result.” 
 
 In 1859 the tenor of his life was changed by the 
 death of his father and elder brother. In the 
 interest of the younger children — his mother had 
 died some years previously — his presence was 
 needed on the farm. But before settling down he 
 realised the long-cherished hope of visiting Europe. 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
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EXAMPLES OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 In London he made the acquaintance of Rossetti 
 and Holman Hunt ; passed on to Paris, and thence 
 travelled from one to another of the principal 
 cities of Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy, 
 making sketches in the galleries, and being at- 
 tracted especially by the works of the Colourists 
 and Rembrandt. 
 
 Then he returned home, and went to work as a 
 farmer; and for nearly sixteen years passed out of 
 the ken of both makers and buyers of pictures. 
 Only a few friends knew that in the intervals of 
 superintending the farm he found time to paint; 
 with no thought of selling or exhibiting his pic- 
 tures, intent simply on trying to express some ideal 
 of his own. It is likely that he would have con- 
 tinued in this voluntary seclusion had not a failure 
 of his tobacco crop brought him to the verge of 
 bankruptcy and compelled him to put some of his 
 pictures on sale in Boston. They were received 
 with acclamation, and during the eight remaining 
 years of his life — he died in 1884 — Fuller resumed 
 his career as a professional painter. 
 
 He had determined to see nature f or himself, and 
 he saw it through the medium of his imagination, 
 veiled with mist. Behind it, the landscape glim- 
 mers with subtle colours ; the outlines of the figures 
 are indistinct, their motionless forms scintillate 
 with suppressed light ; their large eyes gaze fixedly, 
 as if trying to pierce the veil. 
 
 [ 225 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 All these pictures, among the best of which may 
 be reckoned The Turkey Pasture^ Winifred Dy- 
 sart. The liomany Girl, have a quality of distinc- 
 tion, due particularly to the rare quality of the 
 feeling that inspires them. They are expressions 
 of a singularly beautiful condition of soul. Con- 
 sidered, however, purely as painting, they are less 
 satisfactory. In undertaking the technical prob- 
 lem of rendering light and atmosphere he antici- 
 pated what we shall see became a motive of the 
 next generation, but, in comparison with modern 
 2)ictures, his own lack elasticity and clarity of 
 colour. He stood on the threshold of the New 
 IMovement, peering, like one of his own figures, 
 through the veil. 
 
 It is this New Movement that is now to engross 
 our attention. 
 
 [ 226 ] 
 
AVE MARIA 
 
 Copyright, 1906, hy iV, E. Montrosa 
 
 Horatio Walker 
 
 ^ t ^HE regular scene of this artisfs work is the Island of Orleans in the St. Lawrence 
 m River., where the inhabitants., descended from the first French settlers., have preserved 
 the religion, language, habits, and modes of farming of their forefathers. Walker s 
 rendering of these folk, product of an intimate and sympathetic comprehension, is distinguished 
 hy the technical qualities of virile drawing and of color, hy turns splendid and subtle. 
 
 In the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 
 
Dli. GROSS' SniGICAL Cl.IXIC 
 
 MODERX variant >>f R- nibran/Jf's 
 In tlu' C(*llocti<m of 
 
 Thomas Eakixs 
 
 Dr. Tali', and the "Le.^son in A natomy.’' 
 the Jeffer.Non 3Iedical College. Philadelphia 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FRENCH INFLUENCE CONTINUED: REALISM AND 
 IMPRESSIONISM 
 
 the conclusion of the. previous chapter we 
 
 spoke of the New Movement. It led up 
 
 finally to the wedding of art with life, 
 
 which, as we have more than once noted, was to be 
 the characteristic achievement of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 We have seen already what the painters of Bar- 
 bizon did to accomplish this, and how their influ- 
 ence set the coui'se of American landscape on a 
 firm road that has led alike to truth and to spiritual 
 expression. We have now to trace the correspond- 
 ing development in the domain of figure painting. 
 It is true that Millet had already done for the 
 figure, what Rousseau and the other Barbizon 
 painters had done for landscape. He had recon- 
 ciled what the Academicians regarded as contra- 
 dictory — art and nature. But, as yet, he was little 
 known outside of Barbizon. It was necessary that 
 someone of more belligerent spirit should carry 
 the war of realism into the enemy’s stronghold — - 
 into Paris. The man of the hour was Gustave 
 Courbet. 
 
 [aS9] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 The reader may be reminded that in France the 
 realistic movement was represented in literature 
 by Flaubert, Daudet, the brothers Goncourt, and 
 Zola. It was reflected in painting by Courbet. 
 The latter, as early as 1855 , had thrown down the 
 gage of battle to the Academicians, proclaiming 
 himself a realist, asserting that it was a ridiculous 
 presumption for an artist to paint what he had 
 never seen, that liis province is limited to what is 
 visible to the eye, and that it is the familiar facts 
 of life witli which he ought to be concerned. Cour- 
 bet had passed off the stage before the later gen- 
 eration of American students reached Paris, but 
 his turbulent personality had given an impulse to 
 the Realistic movement that was carried forward 
 by others. It even affected the Academy, Gerome, 
 for example, varying subjects of classic motive 
 with the rendering of actual incidents; while Bon- 
 nat, who, as we have seen, had early imbibed the 
 naturalistic tendencies of the old Spanish School, 
 became a cons])icuous instance of exact and ana- 
 lytical study. His ])ortraits of men, by reason of 
 tlieir intense objective rendering of the external 
 characteristics, are also, so far as the latter indi- 
 cate what is below the surface, extraordinary repre- 
 sentations of human personality. Of both these 
 men Thomas Eakins was a pupil, and he stands out 
 among our painters as at once the most analytical 
 in his observation and the most representative of 
 
 [ 230 ] 
 
REALISM 
 
 the influence of the Realistic movement upon the 
 Academic training. 
 
 Born at Philadelphia in 1844 , he passed from the 
 schools of the Pennsylvania Academy to the studios 
 of Gerome and Bonnat, and came back with an eye 
 trained to precise observation, and a hand skilled 
 in precision of drawing. In these particulars he 
 is a master; beyond them he has shown no disposi- 
 tion to travel; he is as coldly and dispassionately 
 analytical as Gerome at his strongest, as unflinch- 
 ingly exact as Bonnat. Under the former’s influ- 
 ence he produced his masterpiece, which is owned 
 by Jefferson College, Philadelphia. As Rem- 
 brandt, in his Lesson in Anatomy, portrayed the 
 celebrated surgeon. Dr. Tulp, so Eakins has com- 
 memorated the personality of Professor Gross in 
 this picture, representing a Surgical Clinic. It 
 involves an effectively artistic composition, as well 
 of lines and masses as of light and shade, and fine 
 characterisation in the individual figures, but the 
 inherent power of the picture is the product of the 
 artist’s own point of view. 
 
 He approached the incident in precisely the same 
 kind of condition of mind as the surgeons engaged 
 in the operation. The patient, for the time being 
 at any rate, is but a ‘‘ subject,” toward which their 
 attitude of mind is absolutely impersonal, but on 
 which they concentrate all their knowledge and 
 
 [231 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 skill, so that their own personality declares itself 
 masterfully in a complete control of the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 Equally objective are the portraits of men by 
 Eakins, which represent a similarly impersonal 
 point of view toward the sitter, and in his best ones 
 an extraordinary display of the artist’s own person- 
 ality in his grip of the technical problems of the 
 picture. One of the most remarkable examples 
 is the Portrait of Louis N. Kenton; a lean, sham- 
 bling figure, with the hands thrust into the waist- 
 pockets of the trousers ; the strong, intellectual head 
 bowed in meditation. It suggests that the man 
 has been pacing up and down the room, thinking 
 out some matter, and has suddenly halted, all alert, 
 as he finds himself near to its solution. It is a 
 picture that in its matter-of-factness and in its 
 disregard of the elegancies of line, and of the per- 
 suasiveness of colour and tone, might be charged 
 with ugliness, but as the record of a human indi- 
 vidual is extraordinarily arresting and satisfactory. 
 Considered from the more general standpoint of a 
 work of art, it might be the better for some of those 
 tricks of grace in which our young students nowa- 
 days are drilled to be proficient. Let us grant it, 
 but with the amendment, that here is an instance 
 where a picture may be superior to a mere work of 
 art; that there is in Eakins a capacity broader and 
 deeper than that of simply being an artist. He has 
 
 [ 23 £] 
 
REALISM 
 
 the qualities of manhood and mentality that are not 
 too conspicuous in American painting. 
 
 ararararardrarararara* 
 
 They appear again in Winslow Homer, the 
 painter of the Ocean. He is our greatest expo- 
 nent of Realism, with nothing, however, of the Aca- 
 demician in his make-up. Rather, one may see 
 in him some traces of the Barbizon influence, and of 
 other later influences yet to be described ; but in the 
 main he is a painter who has worked out for him- 
 self his own development. 
 
 Independence has been the ruling characteristic 
 of his life. He began his career as an assistant in a 
 lithographic shop in Boston, and there acquired a 
 distaste for doing things according to the dictates 
 of other people. The Civil War broke out, and the 
 Harpers offered him a position as their illustrator 
 at the front. He refused to bind himself by any 
 contract, but joined the Army of the Potomac, 
 and thence sent back to the office drawings of such 
 incidents of camp life as caught his eye and in- 
 terest, which appeared regularly in “ Harper’s 
 Weekly.” At the same time he practised oil-paint- 
 ing, and at length produced a picture to which the 
 stirring emotions of the time lent a considerable 
 popularity. In this Prisoners from the Front he 
 represented a batch of Confederate troops passing 
 to the rear through groups of Union soldiers. 
 After the war he remained for a time in the South, 
 
 [ ^SS ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 painting rural scenes, especially of negro life. 
 They reveal a keenness of observation and a certain 
 straightforward method of representation, but are 
 not yet essentially the work of a painter, nor of any 
 considerable artistic merit. To-day they are chiefly 
 interesting as evidence of their author’s resolute 
 intention to see and express things in his own way. 
 
 The turning point in his career was reached when 
 he transferred his studies to the characteristics of 
 the Maine coast. There the big, simple heroism 
 of the fishermen and their womenfolk at once at- 
 tracted him, and prompted a number of pictures, 
 the very titles of which tell their own direct tale. 
 In the Life Line, Undertow, Danger, Eight Bells, 
 AlVs Well, and others he had caught the spirit of 
 the life; the tragedy that underlies its faithful 
 routine of duty; the unconscious bigness of it all, 
 as Kipling did in his word-picture of the Glou- 
 cester fishermen in “ Captains Courageous.” To 
 Homer the study of this life meant the enlargement 
 of his own; a deepening of his motive, the gradual 
 realisation of his own power as an artist. 
 
 Already these pictures are big work ; big in their 
 sympathy with and comprehension of the subject 
 of his study. They were to be succeeded by work 
 that was even bigger, because the interest that im- 
 pelled it and the impression it produces is more 
 abstract, of a more universal kind. For, it was no 
 longer the ocean, mainly as a background to the 
 
 [ 231 ] 
 

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REALISM 
 
 human tragedy, but the might and majesty of the 
 ocean itself, that now attracted him supremely. 
 Figures may be introduced, but only as a musician 
 employs a theme in the composition of his fugue; 
 and oftentimes the sole subject of contemplation is 
 the ocean itself. In daily companionship with it, 
 he has led for many years a solitary life upon a 
 spit of coast near Scarboro. Its wild purple and 
 brown rocks, the grey-green seething sea, and the 
 immense skies, laden with wind and moisture, have 
 been his constant and sole inspiration. Their 
 solemn grandeur has entered into his soul, and the 
 work which it has inspired is without any rival in 
 American art for originality and impressiveness. 
 
 But the Realism for which Courbet contended 
 was only a transitionary phase of the Realistic 
 movement. While it achieved an accuracy of form, 
 it failed to render accurately the colour of form, 
 and its true appearance as affected by light and 
 atmosphere. In this further contribution to real- 
 istic painting Manet was the leader, and he drew his 
 inspiration from Velasquez. It has so profoundly 
 affected the painter’s point of view and method 
 that it must be comprehended by everyone who 
 would understand the general trend of modern 
 painting, and its particular bias in America. 
 For it was enthusiasm for this new teaching that 
 characterised the students who returned home in the 
 
 [ 237 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 late ’eighties and early ’nineties; and while some 
 of them for a time displayed the extravagance of 
 neophytes, the principles for which they stood have 
 prevailed. 
 
 To state the matter as briefly as possible, the re- 
 covery of Velasquez, dating from 1857, gradually 
 brought about the following changes: 
 
 Firstly, it affected the painter’s way of seeing 
 things. It substituted for a realism of observation 
 such as is recorded by the camera, a painter’s way 
 of seeing; for a detailed analysis, a pictorial syn- 
 thesis or summary. It was realised that Velas- 
 quez painted what he could see, not what he knew 
 was present to his eyes. INIeissonier, for example, 
 in painting a charge of cavalry, because he knew 
 that every horse had bit and bridle and buckles, 
 every rider sundry buttons on his uniform, repre- 
 sented all and each with microscopic fidelity. 
 Velasquez, on the contrary, making his eyes the 
 standard, took in the figure, or scene, as a whole, 
 with swift comprehensive glance, and then ren- 
 dered the impression he had received. Following 
 his example, the moderns began to paint “ im- 
 pressions,” to be, as the phrase was coined, 
 “ impressionists.” * 
 
 Secondly, it affected a change in the way 
 painters regarded colour and their manner of lay- 
 
 * This original significance of the term impressionist, we 
 shall find, was subsequently modified. See page 266. 
 
 *[ 238 ] 
 
CojJyrigut, lOOG, by Sergeant Kendall 
 
 AN INTERLUDE 
 
 Sergeaxt Kendall 
 
 ^ M ^ HIS artist sees nature in a waj/ pecidiar to himself, u'ith a sharpness of vision 
 t that seems to take little account of the subduing effects of atmosphere, yet he 
 comprehends the mystery udimh underlies the obvious appearance. The senti- 
 ment in his pictures always rings true. 
 
OXE of the younger artists exhibits a bigger feeling for the elemental grandeur of rocks and ocean. 
 
REALISM 
 
 ing on the paint. Velasquez’s subdued harmonies 
 of blacks and greys, sparingly relieved with yel- 
 lows, blues, and old rose, opened their eyes to 
 the fascination of subtleties, as compared with the 
 brilliance of strongly contrasted tints. The long, 
 sweeping contours of his figures promoted a taste 
 for the dignity of simple lines and massy composi- 
 tions. His manner of relieving the monotony of 
 the large coloured masses — black, grey, or other- 
 wise — by breaking them into several tones, and 
 giving them a character of distinction through the 
 broad and virile handling of a brush, loaded with 
 paint, taught the value at once of subtlety and of 
 effective craftsmanship. It made it clear that the 
 brush and not the crayon was the tool to be relied 
 upon, and gave an impetus to the art of painting, 
 as distinguished from the art of drawing a figure 
 and subsequently tinting it. 
 
 Thirdly, the extraordinarily natural appearance 
 of Velasquez’s figures and scenes, summed up by 
 Gautier when in front of the Maids of Honour 
 he exclaimed, “ Where is the picture? ” set the 
 painters to discovering its secret. It was found to 
 be due to the fact that Velasquez placed his figures, 
 as they appeared in nature, within a surrounding 
 envelope of lighted atmosphere; and that his 
 method of doing so had been the accurate rendering 
 of the exact amount of light given off from every 
 visible part of the figure or object represented. So 
 
 [ ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 now the painters, coining a new word to explain 
 their intentions, began to occupy themselves with 
 “ values.’’ 
 
 To sum up : these discoveries eff ected the emanci- 
 pation of painting from the thraldom of Academic 
 draughtsmanship. It restored the actual crafts- 
 manship of the brush to an honourable standing, 
 and gave the painter thereby an opportunity of de- 
 veloping and exhibiting his individuality. You 
 may recognise a man’s brushwork as you can an- 
 other’s handwriting. Further, it changed the 
 method of painting. For now, instead of making 
 an elaborate drawing of the figure, accurately 
 shaded, and then laying on the paint with a care- 
 ful, almost timorous intention not to lose touch with 
 the original drawing, the painter, satisfied with a 
 preliminary sketch that merely indicates the general 
 form and its position on the canvas, builds up his 
 figure from the start by successive layers of paint, 
 so as to reproduce the successive planes of lighted 
 surface which the figure presents. It is a vigorous 
 method, but yet it admits of the fullest amount of 
 subtlety of observation and representation. It in- 
 volves also a much more realistic as well as vigor- 
 ous rendering of the subject — an immense step in 
 the direction of effecting a union of art and life. 
 
 From the beginning of the ’sixties this method 
 of painting spread, until it has become a usual 
 practice of painters and the basis of instruction for 
 
 [ 242 ] 
 
CALM BEFORE A STORM Allen B. Talcott 
 
 HIS artist at 'present makes his summer home on the Connecticut River, near Lyme. 
 His landscapes are characterized not less by a feeling for the vigorous aspects of nature 
 than by a sensitiveness toward the varying expressions of her moods of atmospheric change. 
 
MRS. CARL MEYER AND CHILDREN John S. Sargext 
 
 O .VC of the artist's most ravlshinghj dainty conceptions of femininity. The 
 costume of the lady Is a delicate shell-pink, and the whole color-scheme, 
 notwithstanding the size of the canvas, has the exquisiteness of a morsel of 
 Dresden china. 
 
REALISM 
 
 students. While Manet and many others influ- 
 enced the vogue by their example, Carolus-Duran 
 was the first and most distinguished of the regular 
 teachers of it. His most important pupil, at any 
 rate from the point of view of the present story, 
 was John S. Sargent, whose work is in an eminent 
 degree representative of what the most skilful of 
 our modern portrait-painters are doing. 
 
 Of New England stock, the son of a physician 
 who had retired from practice in Philadelphia, 
 John Singer Sargent was born in 1856, in Flor- 
 ence, where his boyhood and youth were spent. 
 Brought up amid the advantages of cultured home- 
 life and of early and constant familiarity with the 
 artistic treasures of that beautiful city, he learned 
 to draw and paint at the local Academy of Fine 
 Arts. He was already skilful beyond the average 
 of students and grounded in knowledge of great 
 art and trained in taste, by the time that he went 
 to Paris to study under Carolus-Duran. Having 
 rapidly assimilated that master’s teaching, he 
 visited Madrid and studied Velasquez in the Prado, 
 and afterwards moved to Holland, where the por- 
 traits of Hals attracted him. Later he was influ- 
 enced by those of the Scottish artist, Raeburn. 
 His style is a brilliant epitome of* these various 
 sources of technical inspiration. 
 
 Instead, however, of trying to trace his particular 
 [ 245 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 obligation to each of these, it may be more prac- 
 tically useful to attempt a summary of what char- 
 acterises his own style. Its charm is a combination 
 of vivid impressions and of extraordinarily vital 
 and elfective technique. 
 
 As becomes a student of Velasquez, what he 
 paints is the impression that the subject produces 
 on liis mind. It would seem as if the impression 
 were generally one that had been immediately regis- 
 tered; but, even if he has had to wait for it, by the 
 time it reaches him, it does so with such vividness 
 that it appears to have all the freshness of immedi- 
 acy. On rare occasions, however, his portraits are 
 laboured and incompletely realised; it is then, we 
 may conjecture, that he has failed to receive a 
 strong impression. 
 
 As a rule, his portraits reveal no psychological 
 analysis, or poetry of feeling, nor, except possibly 
 in some of his portraits of children, any sympathy 
 with the subject. Dispassionate as a mirror, for 
 the most part, with equal fidelity and, at times, 
 relentlessness, his mind reflects the surface charac- 
 teristics of his sitter, the mannerisms of expression, 
 evidence of social or professional caste, the indi- 
 vidualities of dress and gesture, suggestions of tem- 
 perament and of the atmosphere in which the 
 person moves. No painter of the present day can 
 better render the elegance of fashionable feminin- 
 ity. But while he revels in the opportunity of 
 
 [ 246 ] 
 
PORTRAIT OF MISS BEATRICE GOELET Johx S. Sargent 
 
 / JV his child-portraits i of which this is one of the most beautiful^ Sargent 
 exhibits a sympathetic personal feeling that is ordinarily apart from his 
 work. This one suggests a tenderness for the little subject amounting 
 almost to romance ; and yet with what an assurance and virility it is painted^ 
 and with what unerring taste and judgment the quaintness of the costume is 
 echoed in the bizarrerie of the bird-cage and the unusualness of the composition. 
 
Jony S. Sargev: 
 
 PORTRAIT OF HENRY G. MARQUAND 
 
 HIS portrait of the second president of the Metropolitan Museum {1S90-1902), the coUec 
 tion of which his taste and munificence so materially enriched, is one of Sargent s greates 
 successes in dignity and depth of characterization. 
 
 In the Collection of the xMetropolitan Museum of Art, New Yorl 
 
REALISM 
 
 luxurious display, he is never carried away by it. 
 It interests him as a problem for his brush. Con- 
 sciously he never flatters, unconsciously he may 
 sometimes do less than justice; sometimes also he 
 fails to secure a likeness, for it is not as an indi- 
 vidual, but as a type, that the sitter chiefly interests 
 him. 
 
 As a matter of fact, his main interest is in his 
 technique, and in the artistic problem that the 
 subject offers. Because of this he is often, perhaps 
 generally, puzzling to the public, and appreciated 
 best by brother craftsmen, who speak of him as a 
 “ painter’s painter.” Knowing the difflculties of 
 painting, they are alike astonished and enthusiastic 
 at the audacity with which he attacks a problem, 
 and at the masterful ease with which he solves it. 
 Not that this is always the product of a magical 
 facility, but often of exacting self-criticism, in- 
 domitable perseverance, and patient renewal of 
 effort. Again and again, if necessary, he will 
 scrape out, until he has realised his intention, by 
 which time the labour of endeavour will have disap- 
 peared in the triumph of achievement. The latter, 
 to speak of it in untechnical language, is character- 
 ised by a maximum of suggestion and a mini- 
 mum of apparent means, the latter thrilling with 
 animation. 
 
 As to the suggestion. When a painter copies 
 exactly what he sees in front of him, as, for exam- 
 
 [ 249 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAX PAIXTIXG 
 
 ple, AIeissonier did, and our own John G. Brown, 
 you can peer into the canvas at close range and 
 find every detail rendered with minute finish. But 
 that is not how we view people in real life; we do 
 not step close up to them and peer into their faces 
 and scrutinise every particle of their costumes. 
 W^e watch them from a little distance off, and get 
 a general impression of their personality and ap- 
 j)earance. It is this that Sargent strives to give 
 us. W hen you are close to one of his canvases 
 you are confronted with a numher of hold dabs or 
 sweeping strokes of paint that to the inexpert eye 
 convey no meaning: hut step hack, so as to gain, as 
 it were, a ])erspective, and those dabs and patches 
 resolve themselves into modelling of features and 
 hands, and the delineation of draperies and acces- 
 sories. But, admitting it is so, you may ask in 
 what consists the advantage of this method? The 
 answer involves a j)sychological consideration, that 
 this process demands a greater exercise of mentality 
 on the part of both artist and spectator. 
 
 The exact imitation of a button gives you no 
 more mental excitation than the original button 
 would. Skill and patient precision were required 
 to manufacture the original, and the same qualities, 
 carried j)erhaps a little farther, were employed on 
 its imitation; and, while we may exclaim, “How 
 wonderful!” we do so because the wonder is that 
 anyone could liave sucli extraordinary patience. In- 
 
 [ 250 ] 
 
PORTRAIT GROUP Johx S. Sargext 
 
 ^ M ^ HE portraits in order from the spectator's left are of Dr. William II. Welch, 
 t Dr. William S. Halsted (standing), Dr. William Osier, and Dr. Howard A. 
 Kelly. The heads are finely characterized. The background of brown wood- 
 work is not very happily rendered in the original, lacking depth of atmosphere. In 
 the reproduction it is worse than it should be, as the canvas was not properly 
 stretched and the photograph showed wrinkles. 
 
 In the Collection of Johns Hopkins University 
 
A wni rt.-il 1 
 
 
 -ittMAu n. 
 
 thrm^ ''' a spontaneous pose o/tlie i 
 
 .V.A /</., „„^ Ms MUty ,0 render e.prLon ' 
 
REALISM 
 
 stead of stimulating the mind, it makes us tired to 
 think of it; just as we have to disguise our bore- 
 dom when a person insists on telling us every petty 
 detail of some occurrence that to start with was 
 not of much account. On the other hand, to 
 analyse, as Sargent does, a certain effect, so abso- 
 lutely that the essential of it is discovered, and then 
 to determine just how that essential may best be 
 rendered, and out of many possible methods to 
 select unerringly the precise one which will put his 
 mental conception into immediate shape — this rep- 
 resents a keen and vigorous mental exercise, the 
 magnetism of which, if we study his work, will 
 stimulate us. Moreover, since, as a rule, in the 
 finished picture each stroke is there as it came hot 
 and straight from his constructive imagination, the 
 whole subject has the thrill of life. And this, you 
 will observe, is something more than being life-like. 
 
 Sargent’s eminence has had a great influence 
 upon American painting. On the one hand, it has 
 helped to popularise the new method of painting, 
 and, on the other, to foster the idea that masterful- 
 ness of technique may justify a lack of ability or 
 inclination to penetrate the character of the sitter. 
 For, like Carolus-Duran, he is a brilliant exponent 
 of the material and mundane, for the most part 
 engrossed in his impression of externals. 
 
 It is the purpose of this story to summarise re- 
 [ 253 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 suits, and therefore it may be convenient to divide 
 American portraiture into two classes. 
 
 Omitting from our present review a good many 
 portraits which simply represent more or less honest 
 mediocrity, we may sum up the more conspicuously 
 skilful ones as either portraits of esprit or portraits 
 of character. The former with us, as elsewhere, 
 are in the majority. They are distinguished by 
 manifest dexterity of brush work and by animated 
 and piquant rendering of the sitter’s exterior and of 
 such hints of personality as lie near the surface and 
 are expressed by individual mannerisms. The best 
 of such portraits are those of women, which permit 
 the added charm of attractive costumes and of sur- 
 roundings that are pervaded with the atmosphere 
 of refined elegance. We have elsewhere spoken of 
 portraits of this kind by Chase, and may supple- 
 ment them by the examples of Irving R. Wiles, 
 J. J. Shannon, Cecilia Beaux, Adelaide Cole Chase, 
 and Frank W. Benson. The work of each of these 
 admirably represents the qualities above referred 
 to, and in certain instances may seem to indicate a 
 deeper appreciation of character. It is because of 
 a still more marked intention in this direction that 
 I mention separately the work of John W. Alex- 
 ander. Nevertheless, he is perhaps more character- 
 istically represented by what I have chosen to call 
 the portrait of hprit, in his case distinguished by 
 a very decorative composition and a flat manner of 
 
 [ 254 ] 
 
MISS KITTY 
 
 J. J. Shannox 
 
 r # yHIS painter y who lives in London > must not he confused with the 
 # English painter, Charles H. Shannon. The .nmple sincerity, both of 
 feeling and technique, which distinguishes this early example, has 
 scarcely been sustained in his later portraits. 
 
 In the Collection of the Carnegie Art Institute, Pittsburgh 
 
PORTRAIT OF ADELAIDE NUTTING Cecilia Beaux 
 
 J^OR the compute naturalness and simple diffnity of its pose, for the 
 £l n dlmnt d, redness and meanimjfulness of its hruslmork. and'' for its 
 
 bodu '■» fhe head and hands and carriage of the 
 
 body, this portrait represents Miss Beanv at her best. ^ 
 
 III the Collection of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 
 
REALISM 
 
 painting that enhances the decorative suggestion. 
 He has been happily represented also by many 
 purely figure subjects. 
 
 Foremost among the portraitists of character 
 stands Wilton Lockwood, the example of whose 
 work illustrated here exhibits the soundness, sub- 
 tlety and imaginative insight of his present ma- 
 tured style. Another painter whose portraits, 
 too rarely seen, possess the qualities of depth and 
 force, is Joseph de Camp. They both work in 
 Boston, as also does Frederic P. Vinton, whose 
 portraits of men, while less dexterous in tech- 
 nique, are powerful records of the strong breed 
 that is shaping the life of affairs in modern 
 America. 
 
 Indeed, it is worth notice that where psychologi- 
 cal insight appears in an American portrait, the 
 subject will usually be a man. The same is true 
 to-day in France, just as it was in England at 
 the close of the eighteenth century. That the de- 
 cline of the English Portrait School was due in 
 a large measure to the excessive popularity of the 
 portraits of women of fashion, with all its tempta- 
 tion to the artist of pre-occupying himself with fur- 
 belows and finery in lieu of stronger and deeper 
 qualities, can scarcely be doubted; and equally in 
 modern America the same cause is at work, retard- 
 ing the lustier growth of our art. 
 
 Parallel with this tendency to lack of character 
 [^ 57 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 in portraiture runs a poverty of imagination in 
 figure-painting generally. With a few exceptions, 
 it is very apparent in American painting, and for 
 a while was equally characteristic of French art. 
 It has been a perhaps not unnatural result of the 
 attention paid to technique. The new methods 
 were so fascinating that painters became too much 
 enamoured of the skill with which they could render 
 the appearances of things. Many lost sight of the 
 fact that technique is but the means to expres- 
 sion, and extolled it as an end in itself. Hence 
 was started in Paris, and thence imported to 
 America, the confession of faith in “art for art’s 
 sake.” 
 
 It had, as other such rallying cries, a modicum 
 of sanity and much extravagance. It was in its 
 best sense a protest against the dependence of 
 painting upon literature, and against the tendency 
 to consider the subject of more importance than 
 the method of representation. It was an assertion 
 never out of place, that the quality of the artistic 
 form must be the final test of a work of art. But 
 it ran to extravagance in assuming that the artistic 
 form was the only test; that what it might embody 
 was of no account at all; that the method of pre- 
 sentation was the first, last, and only important 
 concern of the artist. It put asunder the twain 
 that should be one fiesh — the form and the expres- 
 sion. The result was for a time, sterility; much 
 
 [258 ] 
 
TRAIT OF .AIRS. THOMAS HASTINGS Joiix AV. Alexander 
 
 X this charminglif vivacious characterization the artist has exhibited to a marked 
 degree the appearance of brilliant improvisation that his particular technique 
 suggests. 
 
PORTRAIT 
 
 WiLTOX Lockwood 
 
 rT^riOrOrf he suhsequentUf studied in Paris, Lockwoods early training uas 
 / under John La Large, bg whose influence his own temperament was con- 
 prmed in its preference for profound and subtle study. It is^ the spiritua 
 rather than the phifsical ego that he tries to compass: and his portraits, envelope • 
 in atmosphere and elaborated into a eery subtle orchestration of color, while tliei 
 suggestion of the figure is sufficiently real, e.rcel as evocations of the inner person- 
 ality of the sitter. His portrait of John La Large is another most distinguished work. 
 
REALISM 
 
 cry and little wool; plenty of good workmanship, 
 but a poverty of emotional or spiritual significance. 
 
 Meanwhile, landscape painting, for the most 
 part unaffected by this tendency, kept steadily on 
 its path of progress. We resume its story in the 
 next chapter. 
 
 [S 61 ] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FURTHER STUDY OF LIGHT AND PROGRESS OF 
 LANDSCAPE 
 
 W E have already seen how American 
 painting has been affected by the in- 
 fluence of Velasquez. By an age that 
 had become enamoured of realism he was discovered 
 to have been the most distinguished of realists ; not 
 only in his way of seeing his subject, but of rep- 
 resenting it. Modern painters imitated his impres- 
 sionistic way of comprehending and summarising 
 the subject, and his method of painting the 
 “values,” or varying quantities and qualities of 
 light given off from every part of the figure and 
 scene. In one respect, however, they carried the 
 realism of painting a step further than Velasquez. 
 He had painted for the most part in the grey light 
 of Philip the Fourth’s palace; they, however, ex- 
 tended their studies of light into the open air and 
 experimented in the representation of all kinds and 
 degrees of light. This has been the special contri- 
 bution of modern times to the art of painting. 
 
 It represents the final emancipation of the 
 painter not only from the restrictions of Academic 
 draughtsmanship, but also from subservience to 
 
 [ 262 ] 
 
Robert Hekri 
 
 LADY IN BLACK 
 
 jA portrait beautiful in feeling and particularly 
 distinguished for the breadth and expressiveness of 
 the brushwork. The influence of Velasquez is notice- 
 able in his work. He is a leader of the younger men, who are 
 bent upon making sound brushwork and virility of vision the 
 basis of their art. An able technician, he is also a man of 
 fine equalities of mind and imagination. 
 
Copyrii^ht, 190T, by X. E. Montrosa 
 
 AGAINST THE SKY 
 
 Frank W. Benson 
 
 O XE of the daintiest conceptions of this Boston artist, who has made a close study of American 
 femininity and effects of pure sunlight. 
 
 
PROGRESS OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 the Old Masters in the picture galleries. He would 
 be free of all conventions and see the world for 
 himself ; no longer through the medium of varnish 
 and the dirt and discoloration of time that dis- 
 figured the old pictures, but in all the freshness of 
 its real colouring. It was, on the one hand, a 
 logical extension of the nature-study of the Bar- 
 bizon men; and, on the other, the painter’s con- 
 formity with the realistic and scientific tendency of 
 the time. 
 
 Manet’s study of sunlight started the vogue of 
 plein air. Men began to paint in the open air. 
 Among the earliest and best of the pictures pro- 
 duced under this condition were those of Alexander 
 Harrison, a native of Philadelphia. In Arcady, 
 for example, represents a fragment of a meadow, 
 interspersed with gnarled trunks and slender tree 
 stems, among which, in easy natural attitudes, are 
 grouped three nude girls. The sunlight filters 
 through the canopy of leaves, dappling the grass 
 and gilding here and there a leaf or blade of grass, 
 glancing over the human forms and touching the 
 delicate flesh tones with shafts of radiance. It 
 was the product at once of keen observation and of 
 sure and dainty craftsmanship, while it breathed a 
 spirit of poetry that lifted the whole scene into an 
 idyl. Even more decisive, however, both in its 
 virtuosity and in its effect upon contemporary 
 painting, was his later picture. The Wave, which is 
 
 [ 265 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 now in the galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy 
 of the Fine Arts. For the first time the true colour- 
 ing of the blue water, curling over a smooth, sandy 
 shore, had been searched into and recorded; the 
 light that glinted on its crest, lay on the shining 
 curve of the swell, or nestled in the hollow of the 
 trough — each aspect had been rendered in its true 
 relation. And the result of this truthful rendering 
 of the passage of light over the wave was to in- 
 crease the suggestion of the latter’s movement. 
 The picture was a beautiful lesson in colour, light, 
 and movement. 
 
 This trinity of qualities became the faith of the 
 moderns. It is literally a three in one: light the 
 source, colour the product, movement the spirit or 
 expression. Let the Academicians be satisfied to 
 keep to a convention in which art is divorced from 
 life. It was the aim of the new men to effect a 
 union of the two, to make art an expression of 
 nature and of human life, and, incidentally, of their 
 own temperaments, or souls. The secret of this 
 they had discovered in the study of that element 
 wherein things live and move and have their being. 
 It was no longer form alone that had to be con- 
 sidered; but form in relation to and as affected 
 by the surrounding, that it has in nature, of lighted 
 atmosphere. And this study gave a more definite 
 meaning to Impressionism. It is realism extended 
 by study of what the French call the milieu — the 
 
 [ 266 ] 
 
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 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
Copyright, 1905. by X. E. Montroii 
 
 F. W. Beksok 
 
 
 CALM 
 
 A 
 
 OKXING 
 
 . J -f h'e 
 
 OOD example of this Boston 
 
 i 
 
PROGRESS OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 surrounding conditions, through which the subject 
 is viewed. And this is the principle that distin- 
 guishes the newer realism from such realistic pic- 
 tures as those, for example, of the Diisseldorfians. 
 The latter represented scenes of peasant life, in 
 which the characters are playing more or less natu- 
 ral parts; but the realism is confined to the forms, 
 and does not embrace a representation of the actual 
 conditions of light and atmosphere in which they 
 would appear in nature. They painted realistic 
 pictures, but they did not represent the real mani- 
 festations of life. 
 
 The latter, in all their infinite degrees from 
 seriousness to triviality, became the study of the 
 moderns. The result has been a general extension 
 of skilful craftsmanship, of a painter-like way of 
 seeing and rendering the subject, which has not 
 always been put to any very interesting purpose. 
 A vast majority of modern pictures, including 
 many American ones, are nothing more than studies 
 of light as it filters through muslin curtains, creeps 
 between the slats of Venetian blinds, or in full sun- 
 shine pours over the lace caps of peasant women or 
 the white gowns of first communicants. These 
 devices, multiplied a thousandfold, have engrossed 
 the attention of the painter. He has been ap- 
 plauded by his brother painters, because they recog- 
 nise the subtlety of his observation, and his manual 
 dexterity, but to the laymen, who regard such ex- 
 
 [ 269 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 cellences as, after all, but a means to an end, these 
 pictures have become more than a little weari- 
 some. It is as if a speaker should utter an inter- 
 minable string of well-turned phrases, with not one 
 idea involved in them to stir either one’s intelli- 
 gence or imagination-vacant chaff. 
 
 The best fruits of this new method of study and 
 practice have been furnished, at any rate in Amer- 
 ica, by the landscape painters. It is to their ad- 
 vantage that they do not have to hunt up or invent 
 subjects for pictures. Nature offers them an in- 
 exhaustible choice, and their own love of nature 
 keeps their sympathies active. The fascination of 
 technical proficiency seldom monopolises their in- 
 terest; they feel constantly the stirring of emotion 
 in themselves, and delight to express it in their pic- 
 tures. The latter are rarely without some quality 
 of idealism. 
 
 The modern landscape, as a rule, is characterised 
 by an absence of strong contrasts. The colours 
 of shadows have been carefully analysed, and 
 found to contain more light and a greater variety 
 of colour than had previously been suspected. The 
 shadow is regarded no longer as a dark spot, but 
 as a spot from which more or less light has been 
 intercepted. Therefore, it varies in density ac- 
 cording to the quality of light that pervades the 
 scene, as well as according to the amount of light 
 that is intercepted. The colours of shadows also 
 
 [ 270 ] 
 
RLS READING 
 
 By Courtesy of N f' Montroaa 
 
 EDiMUND C. Tarjiell 
 
 rN V)hat modern genre consists is admirably shown in the work of this Boston artist. It is the character 
 of the scene as a whole that he represents, the sum total of the impression recorded by the eye. Further, the 
 jiarts are seen in their variety of relations to one another and the ensemble, everything also in its proper 
 ieu of Uqlited atmospheres and with reference to the latter s diverse effects on form, color, and texture. 
 
A GENTLEWOMAN 
 
 J. Alden Weir 
 
 O NE of the artist's delicately expressive interpretatiovs of femininity. Though the Under 
 and sjnritiml feeling culminates in the rendering of the head, it pervades the whole canvas, 
 
 shadowTZ:^ “ 0 / 
 
 In the Collection of the National Gallery, Washington 
 
PROGRESS OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 are not uniform; they depend upon the local colour 
 of the object on which they lie; the shadow on 
 grass, for instance, differing from that on snow. 
 Moreover, the colour may be affected in tone by 
 the reflections from other adjacent objects. For 
 instance, the shadow on a girl’s face, if she is seated 
 in the sunshine upon grass, may receive from the 
 latter a green tone. In this discrimination of the 
 colour and tones of shadows, the quality of the 
 prevailing light, as we have remarked, is a most 
 essential ingredient. 
 
 It is, in fact, in analysing the different kinds and 
 degrees of light that modern painters have made 
 a new and important contribution to art. They 
 have not been satisfied with general distinctions 
 between bright and dull light, or cold and warm, 
 but have pushed their investigations into its vary- 
 ing aspects, under different conditions of weather, 
 seasorl, locality, and, even, time of day. 
 
 In this close analysis of the varying manifesta- 
 tions of light, no one has surpassed the Frenchman, 
 Monet. He carried forward the study begun by 
 Manet; and there are few modern landscapes that 
 do not owe something to his example, although 
 they may not follow his method. The latter rep- 
 resents a manner of laying on the paint to which the 
 French have given the name pointilliste, since it 
 covers the canvas with innumerable little points or 
 dabs. This method was suggested to him and his 
 
 [ 273 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 friends, Seurat and Pissarro, by the writings of the 
 late Professor Rood of Columbia University. For 
 they recognised that in this study of light the dis- 
 coveries of scientists might aid the vision of the 
 artist. Among the experiments described by Rood 
 was the following: 
 
 Two or three pigments having been selected, 
 they were first mixed together, as a painter would 
 mix them on his palette, and applied to a white 
 card. Secondly, each pigment, in the same pro- 
 portion as before, was painted directly on to a white 
 disc, so that the latter was covered with the two or 
 three segments of pure colour. When this disc 
 was revolved rapidly, these blended into one tint, 
 that corresponded in hue with that obtained by 
 mixing the pigments on the palette, but was found 
 to be more intense, for it contained more light. 
 Monet and his friends, whose prime end was to 
 represent light, derived a hint from this experi- 
 ment. Instead of mixing their colours on the pa- 
 lette, they would lay them separately on the canvas, 
 very close together, and rely upon the eye of the 
 spectator, at the requisite distance, to effect the 
 blending. For an actual mingling they substi- 
 tuted a visual impression of it. 
 
 Some eyes, however, seem to be physically unable 
 to effect this blending; many more are offended by 
 the spottiness of the method; moreover, a great 
 many of Monet’s canvases suggest experiment 
 
 [ 274 ] 
 
HE FARM IN WINTER 
 
 By Courtesy of N. E. Montrose 
 
 J. Aldek Weir 
 
 I 
 
 N his landscapes this artist exhibits a virile comprehension of the actualities of the scene, 
 together with a refined appreciation of the subtleties of light and tone. 
 
Copyright, 1905, by N. E. Montrose 
 
 LISTENING TO THE ORCHARD ORIOLE 
 
 Childe Hassai* 
 
 fnr^HlS well illustrates the artist's method of painting in separate points or dahs of color which 
 ' / even in the black and white reproduction, suggests that the whole scene palpitates with light. 
 
 M . , . 7. „7 r th. nf hl'yic fp.fi.Una that underlies his keen study of tn 
 
 even in one oiauK (iniv I ^ ^ 
 
 M a charming example aho of the strain of lyric feeling tlmt underlies lus keen study of ih 
 natural and artistic aspects of the scene. 
 
PROGRESS OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 rather than realisation, and are embarrassing even 
 to those who admire his best work. Consequently 
 his method has not been popular either with painters 
 or with the public. 
 
 The latter, however, have made the mistake, 
 since Monet is an impressionist, of confounding 
 this method with impressionism, with which it has 
 absolutely nothing to do. It would be just as 
 reasonable to conclude that every impressionist 
 painter wears a sweater, and loose trousers turned 
 up over strong shoes. The one is Monet’s method 
 of dressing, as the other is of painting ; neither has 
 anything to do with the principles which underly 
 his motive as an artist. He is an impressionist be- 
 cause, to quote the definition given above, he has 
 “ extended realism by a study of the milieu . He is 
 a leader among impressionists because he has been 
 foremost in pushing the study, so as to include an 
 extended variety of surrounding conditions, and to 
 discriminate between them with such subtle refine- 
 ment. It is chiefly due to his influence that modern 
 landscapes are so pure and fresh in colour, and ex- 
 hibit such a subtlety of observation and expression. 
 
 Among the very few Americans who have di- 
 rectly followed his method the most distinguished 
 is Childe Hassam. His earlier efforts are marked 
 by the crudity that is inseparable from experimen- 
 tation; but of late years he has mastered the dif- 
 ficulties of the process, and his pictures now present 
 
 [ m ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 a unity of effect, a vibrancy of colour, and a deli- 
 cate esprit both of style and feeling, that render 
 them almost unique in American art. 
 
 Courbet in the early days of realism used to 
 affirm that the main thing for each painter to aim 
 at was the emancipation of the individual; and in 
 modern landscape this has certainly been achieved. 
 The close study of the actual phenomena of nature, 
 seen necessarily through the painter’s own eyes and 
 affected by his own peculiarity of temperament, 
 has produced over the wide field of landscape a 
 great variety, and in the pictures of each man an 
 equally notable individuality. This latter fact 
 makes it impossible to enumerate examples. Any 
 attempt to characterise our landscape painters in 
 batches, according to some assumed similarity of 
 motive or method, would be arbitrary as well as 
 inexact. To single out a few names would work 
 injustice to many others, and be outside the purpose 
 of our story, which has been to note the progress of 
 our painting, in hope that the reader may find in 
 the general statement a clue to the appreciation of 
 particular individuals. 
 
 Nevertheless, I will conclude this summary of 
 modern American landscape with a particular in- 
 stance. It is that of the late John H. Twachtman, 
 whose work revealed a quality of idealism that may 
 be said to represent the most modern note in paint- 
 ing. Earlier in our story we touched upon the 
 
 [ 278 ] 
 
LORELEI 
 
 Copyright, 100.3, hy TV. E. MontrmHi 
 
 Childe HaSSA31 
 
 J PICTURE of exquhitdy contrasted effects: the pure grace of the human form and the 
 rugged outlines and formations of the cliffs ; warm, clear sumhine, respectively, on the blue 
 water, the creamy smoothness of the fesh, and the pinks, violets, and greens of the indented 
 rock; lastly, the air and water, brisk and alert, the figure in pensive repose. 
 

 
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PROGRESS OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 landscape painter’s study of the forms of nature, 
 as a basis for any subsequent expression of senti- 
 ment. It is not the least of the enjoyment to 
 be derived from many pictures that they make 
 one conscious of the strong-ribbed substance of the 
 earth, the force and vigour of the trees and vegeta- 
 tion, the reach of sky, the volume and buoyancy 
 of clouds, and the weight and movement of water. 
 Before such pictures we experience that stir of 
 blood and suggestion to the imagination which we 
 may feel in the presence of nature itself, and often 
 in a heightened form. 
 
 On the other hand, there may be pictures in 
 which the artist has so thoroughly comprehended 
 the facts of nature that for his own need and ours 
 he can lay aside the consideration of them. He 
 has extracted from them their essential abstract 
 significance, so that he interprets that highest kind 
 of sentiment, which is not a product of the indi- 
 vidual and personal, but a whisper from the uni- 
 versal. To anyone who esteems of highest value 
 the abstract expression in a picture, some of John 
 H. Twachtman’s landscapes are of superlative 
 interest. 
 
 Living upon a farm near Greenwich, Connecti- 
 cut, he absorbed the facts of his surroundings so 
 completely that their very spirit entered into him, 
 and it was the spirit that he strove to render on can- 
 vases that are marvels of delicate tonality. In 
 
 [ 281 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 examples like the Brook in Winter (for he seems 
 to have had a partiality for winter scenes), it is 
 the soul, as it were, of the still, cold, dormant 
 world that he has rendered. Never has been bet- 
 ter expressed through the subtle resources of 
 modern methods of painting the suggestion of the 
 abstract. For Twachtman, in technical matters, 
 was a modern of the moderns, and ahead of all but 
 a few of them in what he sought to express. He 
 realised, as Whistler, for example, did, that if 
 painting in the future is to hold its own alongside 
 the developments of modern music, it can only be 
 by finding its motive in the abstract. 
 
 His best work, like Whistler’s, has in it the latest 
 modern note of idealism. It represents the effort 
 of the artist to free himself from the encumbrance 
 of the material, by giving expression to the spirit 
 that abides in matter. 
 
 [ 282 ] 
 
THE HEMLOCK POOL 
 
 John W. Twachtman 
 
 J SPOT amow, the hills near Greenwich, Conn., seen and felt and rendered in the artists most 
 A characteristic way. The snow, faintly blue, fringes tU cold 
 
 sorinkled on the slopes, oner the dead vegetation of which seems to hover the spmt breath of 
 its late autumnal coloring in faintest suggestion of tawny yellow, rose, and violet. In the dp,, whit^ 
 mLl atmosphere the slender tree-stems stand, as if silent. Fecundity is checked; nature is inert; and 
 the soul ofLture is stilled in the grip of Winter. The whole scene is an emanation of nature s spiiit, 
 
 interpreted through the spiritual emotion of the artist. Colleclion of John GeUatly, Esq. 
 
 I 
 
NE half the picture given up) to the hare desolation of snow, the other to the scarce! g less desolate diversity of a frost- 
 hound hrook and a clamp of trees, ivhose inertness in the grip of cold is intensified hy the contrast of a few evergreens. 
 Over all the still, chill hreath of winter, stirless, soundless. The whole, in color, a delicate symphony of lifeless hues. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WHISTLER 
 
 T HE previous chapter concluded with a 
 reference to Whistler. He has been re- 
 served until the close of the story, since his 
 art in a very striking way reflected the various in- 
 fluences of the Impressionistic movement. To 
 those influences which we have already discussed 
 must be added one more — that of Japanese art. 
 
 It was in the early ’sixties that the Japanese 
 prints and paintings began to find their way into 
 Paris studios and attract the interest of certain 
 artists, notably of Manet, Monet, and Whistler. 
 To men who had already learned to appreciate 
 Velasquez’s impressionistic way of seeing his sub- 
 ject, his dignity of line and the subtlety of his 
 colour harmonies, the Japanese work came as a 
 corroboration of the lesson. Here, too, were mira- 
 cles of harmony in blacks and greys, and in addi- 
 tion a range of tonal eifects of an infinite variety 
 and extraordinary subtlety, that opened up to the 
 imagination of the colourist a new world of mo- 
 tives. They offered also a new principle of com- 
 position. The old method of building up and 
 
 [ 285 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 balancing, invented by the great Italians and pre- 
 served by the Academicians, did not suit the pur- 
 pose of the Impressionists who were bent on achiev- 
 ing a union of art and life. In real life people do 
 not dispose themselves in formal groups, and affect 
 set poses; the suggestion is rather of spontaneity, 
 unexpectedness, and movement. How to reconcile 
 these with unity of effect, and grace and dignity 
 of composition? The answer was discovered in 
 the art of the Japanese. 
 
 It appeared that they, too, were Impressionists; 
 not interested in form for its own sake, but in the 
 suggestion that it afforded to the artist’s imagina- 
 tion, and that they had developed a principle of 
 composition suitable to their needs. The aim of 
 the artist was to make his painting or drawing 
 decorative, but instead of arranging his lines and 
 masses in a geometric pattern, suggested by the 
 formality of architecture, he had gone to nature 
 for inspiration. In nature it is not order but ir- 
 regularity that prevails, and yet this disorder pre- 
 sents appearances of unity of effect. The masses 
 of hills against the sky, the contours of coastline 
 as it pushes its way sharply into the sea, or recedes 
 in sw^elling curves, the windings of rivers and 
 streams, the free growth of vines, and the spotting 
 of trees against the hillside, of labourers working 
 in the rice-fields, or fishing boats dotting the dis- 
 tant waters— these and countless other phenomena 
 
 [ 286 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 had gradually taught the Japanese to find a new 
 kind of symmetry. It was the result of careful 
 calculation, and gratified the eye with a sense of 
 unity ; yet it had the appearance of being the result 
 of accident. It was characterised by spontaneity, 
 unexpectedness, and movement. 
 
 The fitness of this to the purpose of investing the 
 appearance of reality with artistic charm was im- 
 mediately apparent to artists like Manet, Degas, 
 Monet, and Whistler. From their hands it passed 
 to others, until now you cannot open an illustrated 
 magazine without finding the evidence of it. 
 
 But, while countless men have adopted this tech- 
 nical principle, some few have discovered the psy- 
 chological motive underlying it. In the best 
 periods of Japanese art, religion and art were in-* 
 separable. The philosophy of religion taught the 
 supremacy of spirit over matter; and the joy and 
 the duty of the artist was to interpret this truth. 
 So by him perishable matter was regarded as only 
 the outward and visible sign of the indwelling, 
 eternal, universal spirit. Form for its own sake 
 did not occupy his attention; as far as possible, he 
 eliminated from it all its grossness, all its sugges- 
 tion of matter, striving to extract its essence and 
 to interpret it in terms of spirit. Like the old 
 Byzantine art, Japanese art was symbolical. 
 
 Now, the growth of realism in Europe cor- 
 responded with a loosening of religious beliefs. 
 
 [ 287 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 The old foundations of spirituality were being 
 swept away by materialism. In art, both the 
 Academic and the Realistic schools were material- 
 istic ; each in its own way magnified the importance 
 of form, and matter, as such, was the object of its 
 worship. But here and there appeared an artist 
 to whom the representation of the material was of 
 less moment than the expression of the spiritual 
 and universal, and such found in the symbolism of 
 Japanese art an inspiration and a clue. One of 
 these was James MacNeill Whistler. 
 
 He was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834. 
 His father. Major George Whistler, an eminent en- 
 gineer, having accepted a commission in Russia to 
 lay out the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railroad, 
 continued to occupy an influential position under 
 Emperor Nicholas. After the father’s death the 
 mother returned to America to educate her son, 
 who in time was entered at West Point. His stay 
 there, however, was short, and his next move was to 
 Paris, where he became the pupil of Gleyre, in 
 whose studio he associated with Degas, Bracque- 
 mond, Fantin-Latour, and Legros. Yet this 
 period of Academic instruction was but an incident 
 in his career. 
 
 His art was a product of most delicate selection: 
 a hybrid derived from the intermingling of many 
 strains — Velasquez, Rossetti, the Impressionists, 
 and Japanese — with his own rarely gifted person- 
 
 [ ^.88 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 ality, itself a curious mingling of aristocratic 
 hauteur and spiritual sensibility. 
 
 From Velasquez he learned the value of the 
 grand line, and of the variously defined and vanish- 
 ing outlines; the placing of the figure in cool, real 
 atmosphere, and the dignity and refinement of 
 tones of black and grey; from Rossetti, the fasci- 
 nation of his woman with “ the star-like sorrows of 
 immortal eyes”; from the Impressionists, the re- 
 nunciation of form, as such by means of lines, and 
 the rendering of its effect by chromatic values of 
 colour, harmonised in the medium of natural light, 
 instead of the golden atmospheres created by the 
 older masters. And by the Japanese he was in- 
 spired to more ravishing harmonies of tone, har- 
 monies of sumptuous sobriety, of tender or 
 sparkling sprightliness, and was taught the secret 
 of their composition, the fanastic balancing of ir- 
 regular forms and spaces, with continual surprise 
 of detail, and the arbitrary choice of a point of 
 view, such as looking at the scene from below or 
 from a point higher up than the spot from which 
 one would normally expect to view it. Lastly, the 
 Japanese helped him to find in form a symbol of 
 the spiritual. 
 
 These various strands of motive he wove into the 
 warp of his own creation, and the result was a 
 fabric which had the faded splendour of old 
 Gobelin tapestry. 
 
 [S89] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 But, after all, it is the character of the warp, the 
 personal expression of himself, that is the element 
 of salient interest in his art. He was par excellence 
 a ‘‘ painter one, that is to say, who did not view 
 nature as a collection of forms to be delineated by 
 lines and filled in afterwards with colour, but as an 
 accord of coloured masses. By means of these 
 coloured masses he rendered the effect of form. 
 He mocked at the uncompromising reproduction of 
 the model, as he did at the idea that nature is 
 always beautiful. 
 
 “Nature indeed,” he wrote, “contains the ele- 
 ments in colour and form of all pictures, as the 
 keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the 
 artist is born to pick and choose and group with 
 science these elements, that the result may be beau- 
 tiful — as the musician gathers his notes and forms 
 chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious 
 harmonies.” Again he WTote: “And when the 
 
 evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as 
 with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves 
 in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become cam- 
 panili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, 
 and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy- 
 land is before us — then the wayfarer hastens home; 
 the workingman and the cultured one, the wise 
 man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, 
 as they have ceased to see; and Nature, who for 
 once has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to 
 
 [ 290 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 the artist alone, her son and her master — her son 
 in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her. 
 To him her secrets are unfolded ; to him her lessons 
 have become gradually clear. He looks at her 
 flower, not with the enlarging lens, that he may 
 gather facts for the botanist, but with the light of 
 the one who sees in her choice selection of brilliant 
 tones and delicate tints, suggestion of future har- 
 monies.” 
 
 In this last sentence he betrays the ultima ratio 
 of his artistic purpose, which was to extract from 
 Nature her abstract appeal to the sense of sight, 
 even as the chemist distils from flowers the fra- 
 grance that will appeal to the sense of smell, or as 
 a musician from the throbbing of his brain brings 
 forth the abstract harmonies of sound. In the 
 pride of his art he claimed for it an independent 
 value that needed no bolstering up with words. 
 He would, if possible, have made it entirely inde- 
 pendent of ideas. For a while he tried the experi- 
 ment of leaving out forms and relying solely on 
 tones of colour, calling his canvases ‘‘nocturnes,” 
 “symphonies,” or “harmonies,” because he was 
 trying by means of colour to emulate the musician’s 
 use of sounds. Of course the public did not under- 
 stand these efforts, and expended much thin witti- 
 cism over the experiment. For it was merely an 
 experiment; re-establishing the truth, very gener- 
 ally disregarded in those days, that colour, when 
 
 [ 291 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 used harmonically, makes an independent, abstract 
 impression on the imagination; but otherwise un- 
 availing, for the painter cannot get away perma- 
 nently from what is at once the strength and the 
 disability of his art — the necessity of represent- 
 ing the appearances of objects. This Whistler 
 realised. 
 
 He did not ignore form — ^very far from it; but 
 it was the effect of form, in its relation to the char- 
 acter of the subject and in its relation to considera- 
 tions of abstract beauty, that alone seemed to him 
 to be worth interpretation. In a material age he 
 made his artistic protest against the accepted axiom 
 that “seeing is believing”; teaching and proving 
 in his works that it is not what the average man sees 
 that counts for much in art, but what, for the 
 most part, he omits to see, since he sees only with 
 the ocular vision and is prone to peer through 
 spectacles. 
 
 So, in that masterpiece, The Portrait of the Ar~ 
 tisfs Mother, he did not picture a lady as she would 
 appear to the indifferent gaze of strangers, but as 
 she was known to the heart of her son in the spirit- 
 ual communion of their mutual love. And the son 
 being a great master, the picture becomes the 
 noblest tribute to motherhood that painting can 
 show, and to everyone who has known the blessing 
 of a good mother the most wonderful interpretation 
 of his own devotion, if he have eyes to see it. 
 
 [ 292 ] 
 
RTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S MOTHER 
 
 James A. McNeill Whistler 
 
 ) RIGINALLY exhibited under the title ‘^An Arrangement in Black and Gray;” for the 
 composition, to use Whistler’ s own phrase, is essentially ‘‘an accord of colored masses.” 
 The black and gray are relieved by tne delicate flesh tints, the white of the cap and 
 dkerchief, and the dull green of the curtain. The suggestion of the color-arrangement mingles 
 yity with tenderness, reticence with austerity, solemnity with graciousness. 
 
 In the Collection of the Luxembourg, Paris 
 
-r^ Tames \ McNeill \Vhistler 
 
 PORTRAIT OF CARL\LE 
 
 A V nrmnm meni hi and flra,). The abrupt angulariths in the poee of the 
 
 zl ehameiristic oOhe impetuoue and uncompromising nature of the great preacher-lnstonan. 
 ^ rntfir hoi Z out of him and the ^ mane of gray lochs shores ireani 
 
 against ^ irall. A ionderfu, example of impressionism, lifted to the high plane of 
 
 spiritual e.cpr,ssion. CoUection of the Corporation Art Galleries, Glasgow 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 In The Portrait of Carlyle the figure is entirely 
 in black, the pallid face and grey hair silhouetted 
 against a grey wall, the whole enveloped in a dull, 
 dreary atmosphere. It is, indeed, a colour arrange- 
 ment of slightly different tones of black and grey, 
 forming a sombre harmony that Richard Miither, 
 the German critic-historian, has likened to a fu- 
 neral march. The prevailing expression is one of 
 weariness of soul and mind. The volcanic fire that 
 used to glow white-hot in this bitter opponent of 
 all world-shams has burned itself to blackness and 
 grey ash. Whether or not this truly represented, 
 at the time the portrait was painted, the personality 
 of Carlyle, work-worn though he was and a chronic 
 sufferer from dyspepsia, may be doubted. The 
 making of a likeness was seldom in Whistler’s 
 thoughts; it was the impression that the subject 
 made upon his imagination that he strove to ren- 
 der; and in this case it is a pathetic one, consistent 
 with itself, and most poetically wrought. It re- 
 veals, moreover, that aloofness so characteristic of 
 this master’s work. The figure dwells apart in an 
 atmosphere of its own, far from the glare and din 
 of the world, wrapt in the calm that follows after 
 passion. In the Sarasate^ however, another study 
 in black and greys only relieved by the whiteness 
 of the shirt, the figure is represented as emerging 
 from darkness, but only into a half light. The 
 magic of his genius is still suspended, only a sug- 
 
 [ 295 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 gestioii of it being hinted at in the nervous delicacy 
 of the hands. 
 
 The value of elusiveness in a work of art was 
 one of the great truths that Whistler’s example 
 teaches. It is this quality which gives it pungency 
 of suggestion and enduring interest; just as a 
 woman, to hold the heart of a man, must preserve 
 some savour of inaccessible mystery. Of what is 
 obviously and fully realised, if it yield no further 
 suggestion, human nature soon tires. 
 
 The Nocturne-Bognor is penetrated with this 
 quality of elusiveness; phantom shapes glimmering 
 in misty, ethereal light, a spirit picture, rendering 
 the impressions which such a scene in nature gently 
 makes upon the imagination. So gently, that, 
 while we are filled with sensations, they are vague, 
 unrealisable ; our spirit is allured to infinite long- 
 ings in the very unattainableness of which there is 
 a poignancy of cleansing sadness. If you have 
 come under the spell of this enchantment in the 
 actual presence of Nature, you recognise it in- 
 stantly in this picture ; if you have not, the picture 
 may lead you to find it. 
 
 What the artist has given us is not the facts of 
 nature, but their effect upon the spirit; interpret- 
 ing the dream or spirit world, of which the actual 
 is the solid basis. ‘‘ The landscapes of Whistler 
 are places of dreamland,” says Miither; “land- 
 scapes of the mind, summoned with closed eyes and 
 
 [ 296 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAX PAINTING 
 
 The old foundations of spirituality were being 
 swept away by materialism. In art, both the 
 Academic and the Realistic schools were material- 
 istic; each in its own way magnified the importance 
 of form, and matter, as such, was the object of its 
 worsliip. Rut here and tliere appeared an artist 
 to whom the representation of the material was of 
 less moment than the expression of the spiritual 
 and universal, and such found in the symbolism of 
 Japanese art an inspiration and a clue. One of 
 these was .lames MacNeill Whistler. 
 
 He was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834. 
 iris father, Major (George Whistler, an eminent en- 
 gineer, having accepted a commission in Russia to 
 lay out the St. Petersburg and ^Moscow Railroad, 
 continued to occupy an influential position under 
 Emperor Nicholas. After the father’s death the 
 mother returned to America to educate her son, 
 who in time was entered at West Point. His stay 
 there, however, was short, and liis next move was to 
 Paris, where he became the ])upil of (Reyre, in 
 whose studio he associated with Degas, Rracque- 
 mond, Fantin-Ijatour, and I.egros. Yet this 
 period of .Vcademic instruction was but an incident 
 in his career. 
 
 His art was a product of most delicate selection: 
 a hybrid derived from the intermingling of many 
 strains — Yelasquez, Rossetti, the Impressionists, 
 and Japanese — with his own rarely gifted person- 
 
 [ 9,88 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 ality, itself a curious mingling of aristocratic 
 hauteur and spiritual sensibility. 
 
 From Velasquez he learned the value of the 
 grand line, and of the variously defined and vanish- 
 ing outlines; the placing of the figure in cool, real 
 atmosphere, and the dignity and refinement of 
 tones of black and grey; from Rossetti, the fasci- 
 nation of his woman with ‘‘ the star-like sorrows of 
 immortal eyes”; from the Impressionists, the re- 
 nunciation of form, as such by means of lines, and 
 the rendering of its effect by chromatic values of 
 colour, harmonised in the medium of natural light, 
 instead of the golden atmospheres created by the 
 older masters. And by the Japanese he was in- 
 spfied to more ravishing harmonies of tone, har- 
 monies of sumptuous sobriety, of tender or 
 sparkling sprightliness, and was taught the secret 
 of their composition, the fanastic balancing of ir- 
 regTilar forms and spaces, with continual surprise 
 of detail, and the arbitrary choice of a point of 
 ^dew, such as looking at the scene from below or 
 from a point higher up than the spot from which 
 one would normally expect to ^dew it. Lastly, the 
 Japanese helped liim to find in form a sjunbol of 
 the spiritual. 
 
 These various strands of motive he wove into the 
 warp of his own creation, and the result was a 
 fabric which had the faded splendour of old 
 Gobehn tapestry. 
 
 [S89] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 ternals; has looked beyond what she was to what 
 she might have l)een, to what indeed she may, in a 
 measure, still have been, and spied a flicker of pure 
 flame within her tarnished soul. There is a pitiful 
 tenderness in the rendering of the girl’s face, as it 
 peers at us from its frame of elf-locks, out of the 
 mystery of the dim, dark background. It is treated 
 also with a touch of irony, with that mingling of 
 pity and mockery with which the gods, themselves 
 not free from Fate, are fabled to have w^atched the 
 lives of fate-distraught mortals; and withal it is 
 full of mystery, pregnant with the cry of why such 
 things must be and the wonder as to whither they 
 tend. 
 
 Nor in Whistler’s paintings, despite the mystery 
 and spirituality, and notwithstanding the elusive- 
 ness of the brushw^ork, is there any lack of virility. 
 Dignity of line and mass and tone proclaims the 
 master; and the actual laying-on of the pigment 
 something greater than the skilful audacity of a 
 magician of the brush. We do not see the stroke 
 of hand which dazzles and bewilders. It is rather 
 as if the presence on the canvas had been invoked 
 by a supreme effort of will, so that, by the side of 
 one of his portraits, the w^ork of the brilliant brush- 
 technist is apt to seem commonplace. Perhaps one 
 reason is that such legerdemain is for the most part 
 associated with a keen fondness for the actual, the 
 artist being enamoured of externals, the coquet- 
 
 [ 300 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 ries of costume, the intrinsic desirableness of fine 
 fabrics. So that it may be due to inferiority of 
 motive, rather than to the difference of technique, 
 that he seems to suffer by comparison. 
 
 Not that Whistler ignored the fascination of 
 textures and fabrics. No artist could. But it was 
 not their mere appearance of valuableness per yard 
 with which he concerned himself, but their senti- 
 ment of aesthetic suggestion. I recall, for example, 
 the curtains in The Music Room, creamy white, 
 with sprigs of flowers. What a sense of freshness 
 and purity they give to the room! And the cos- 
 tume in which he represents some grande dame will 
 offer little comfort to a milliner, nor much to the 
 lady, if it were her gown on which she depended 
 to be attractive. Whistler, indeed, made the dig- 
 nity of the woman superior to and independent 
 of the costume. 
 
 Besides enforcing the need of selection in art 
 and that the spiritual and aesthetic significance of 
 things is more worthy of the artist’s study than the 
 mere appearances, Whistler waged war against the 
 preference of the Phihstine for what he calls a 
 “ finished picture.” He had a fine scorn for the 
 tailor-kind of mind which yearns to see each but- 
 ton, tag, and furbelow reproduced precisely, as 
 well as for that furnishing and upholstering pro- 
 pensity which desires a picture to be as crowded 
 with details as the average parlour, and every de- 
 
 [301 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tail highly polished. With him a picture was fin- 
 ished when he had succeeded, as far as might 
 be, in reproducing the impression that he had in 
 mind, and in disguising the means by which he had 
 created it. 
 
 It was in his etchings that he reached the maxi- 
 mum of expression by the smallest expenditure of 
 means ; f or the medium admits a greater possibility 
 of omission and suggestion. In the hands of a 
 master, that is to say, for the ordinary etcher will 
 load his plate with lines. But the mental superior- 
 ity of Whistler, as an artist, was in no way more 
 demonstrated than in his power of forming a con- 
 ception of the scene and then in a few flexible, 
 pregnant lines, executed with apparent ease, giving 
 its character and expressiveness. 
 
 It has been remarked that he created no school. 
 It was neither possible nor necessary. The finest 
 quality of his art was personal to himself, an ema- 
 nation of genius, not transferable; the principles 
 that he adopted were diversely used by others; his 
 tenets too simple and universal to found or need a 
 school for their propagation. He did better than 
 attract a f e w f ollowers and imitators ; he influenced 
 the whole world of art. Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, his presence is felt in countless studios; 
 his genius permeates modern artistic thought. 
 
 It may be equally an inspiration to ourselves. 
 We are overmuch drilled from childhood to catch 
 
 [ 302 ] 
 
WHISTLER 
 
 at the form and miss the substance; to substitute 
 words and phraseologies for thinking and ideas; 
 to estimate life by material standards and to 
 sharpen our wits at the expense of what is spirit- 
 ual; to have little reverence or habit of quiet 
 thoughtfulness, and too soon to lose the fragrance 
 of our natures in the withering heat of worldliness. 
 With Whistler, we may do well to enter at times 
 into the tranquil half-light of the soul, and ponder 
 upon the things of the Spirit. 
 
 [ 303 ] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SOME NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 I N 1817 Congress gave Trumbull a commission 
 for four paintings to adorn the Capitol. The 
 intention of Congress in appropriating $32,000 
 for this work was to commemorate certain impor- 
 tant events in the history of the new Republic, and 
 the artist conceived and treated his subjects in the 
 manner of historical pictures. It was fidelity to 
 the incident rather than any ideas of making his 
 paintings decorative, that influenced him. Though 
 intended for wall spaces, they were not in the true 
 sense mural paintings. Why they were not, may 
 perhaps be understood by a comparison of the first 
 commission in this country, given and accepted as 
 advisedly a work of mural decoration. The date 
 was 1876; the building. Trinity Church, Boston, 
 and the immediate principals in the transaction 
 were H. H. Richardson, the architect, and the 
 painter, John La Large. 
 
 Two points are of importance: first, that it was 
 the architect then, engaged in building the church, 
 who realised that its interior effect would be im- 
 proved by a scheme of painted decoration; sec- 
 ondly, that although the scheme might involve the 
 
 [304] 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 representation of certain persons or incidents of 
 the Bible, its primary and final purpose was to be 
 complementary to the architecture. To these points 
 another may be added, not perhaps essential, but 
 certainly conducive to a successful result, that the 
 whole scheme of interior colouring, its smallest de- 
 tails as well as the important figure compositions, 
 was entrusted to one man. 
 
 Here we get an inkling of what mural painting 
 really is. It is not the affixing of a picture to the 
 walls, as we hang a picture on the wall of a living- 
 room to embellish it, or for the separate interest 
 and value of the picture. It becomes an integral 
 part of an architectural unit. Trinity Church, for 
 example, is in design an adaptation of the Roman- 
 esque style which in addition to vaulted roofs has 
 an excess of wall over window space. These sur- 
 faces in the mediaeval churches were frequently 
 overlaid with marble veneer and mosaic. Richard- 
 son determined to substitute a painted decoration, 
 that should at once relieve the barrenness of the 
 interior and unite all its parts into an ensemble of 
 rich harmoniousness. It is indeed as a whole that 
 the interior affects us. Within, as outside, the cul- 
 mination of the design is the centre tower, crowned 
 with a low spire. To it converge the short nave and 
 side aisles, the transepts and apse-ended chancel. 
 The plan, in fact, is more apparent inside than 
 without, and while the stained-glass windows make 
 
 [ 305 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 intervals of brilliant splendour, the general effect 
 is one of subdued dignity of tone, out of the mys- 
 teiy of which, if you are minded to look for them, 
 the details of the decoration may be discerned. 
 
 But as I have said, the first and chief impression 
 is of an organic unity of colour growing out of the 
 architecture, the very dimness of the effect seem- 
 ing characteristic of this particular architectural 
 style, which in its origin belonged to the South and 
 was designed to exclude rather than to admit the • 
 
 light. I 
 
 Moreover, the Romanesque style of Southern | 
 
 France, which was the particular brand of the Ro- 
 manesque that Richardson had adopted, had been 
 itself an adaptation by comparatively unskilled 
 Western builders of various influences, only partly 
 digested — the Byzantine, the Roman, and the 
 Greek. There Avas a peculiar fitness, that probably 
 presented itself to Richardson’s mind and was cer- 
 tainly present in La F arge’s, in choosing this char- ; 
 
 acter of construction for the first attempt in the I 
 
 New Western World to combine the labours of , 
 
 the architect and decorator in some scheme that 
 might emulate the traditions of the past. In La 
 Farge’s oaaii words: “It Avould permit, as long 
 
 ago it has permitted, a wide range of skill in artistic 
 training; the rough bungling of the native and 
 the ill-digested culture of the foreigner. I could 
 think myself back to a time when I might have 
 
 [ 306 ] I , 
 
 .ill 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 employed some cheap Byzantine of set habits, some 
 ill-equipped Barbarian, some Roman, dwelling 
 near by for a time — perhaps even some artist, keep- 
 ing alive both the tradition and culture of Greece.” 
 And it was under similar conditions of limited ex- 
 perience on the part of the artist, of habits corn- 
 firmed in a wrong direction on the part of available 
 workmen, of low trade ideals and indifferent mate- 
 rials, that the beginnings of a new movement in 
 America were inaugurated. For, although La 
 Farge had been giving some attention to decora- 
 tive problems, especially to those of colour, his 
 opportunities of practical experience had been 
 small indeed as compared with the magnitude of 
 this one. He was at a moment’s notice launched 
 into what was, under the circumstances, a huge 
 experiment; the subordinates on whom he had to 
 rely were inexperienced, and, as a climax to these 
 limitations, he was compelled to work amid the 
 discomfort and confusion of a windowless, un- 
 finished building, under the severe strain of having 
 to conceive, elaborate, and conclude this big scheme 
 in a short space of time. 
 
 This tendency to “ rush ” the artist, which is not 
 infrequently characteristic of decorative commis- 
 sions in our country, was illustrated again two 
 years later in the case of W. M. Hunt. He was 
 requested to paint two decorations of considerable 
 size for the Capitol at Albany, the time allotted 
 
 [ 307 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 him for their inception and completion being thir- 
 teen weeks ! He produced the Flight of Night and 
 The Discoverer^ but at what cost ! The mental and 
 physical strain proved too much for him; the work 
 completed, he noticeably declined, and died the fol- 
 lowing year. The work, too, has perished, for the 
 plaster had not been allowed to dry out ; it was still 
 “ green,” and the paintings have since decayed and 
 crumbled away. 
 
 La Farge, having completed the work in Trin- 
 ity Church, was almost immediately commissioned 
 to decorate the apse of St. Thomas’ in New York. 
 Here he worked in collaboration not only with the 
 architect, but with the sculptor, thus for the first 
 time in this country asserting practically the inter- 
 dependence and kinship of these three arts of 
 construction and decoration. The reredos was 
 modelled by Saint Gaudens, and on each side of it 
 the painter installed a scene from the Resurrection, 
 enshrining all three in a scheme of colour and of 
 moulded and carved Avork, designed and partly exe- 
 cuted by himself, though the design in its entirety 
 was never completed. Nevertheless, as it stood, it 
 was the most completely noble of La Farge’s 
 schemes of decoration, and its destruction in 1904 
 by fire was a national calamity. For there is lost 
 to us, not only a great artistic achievement, but one 
 that in the course of years would have had increas- 
 ing historic interest as a landmark in the progress 
 
 [ 308 ] 
 
rHE ASCENSION John La Faroe 
 
 A Mural Painting in the Church of the Ascension, New York 
 
 C ONSIDERED hy many the noblest example of mural decoration in the country. The 
 student of painting will note with interest how the composition is founded^ with con- 
 siderable variation^ on that of Raphael's Disputa. 
 
s- 
 
 a 
 
 s a 
 2 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 of American art. It might also eventually have 
 had an influence in checking what I venture to 
 call the “ department store tendencies ” that char- 
 acterise so largely the present manifestations of 
 our decorative movement. 
 
 For, as we pursue the study of the latter, we 
 shall find that instead of the mind of a master- 
 decorator, such as La Farge is by instinct and 
 training, being not only permitted but encouraged 
 to control the whole scheme of internal embellish- 
 ment, circumstances bring it about that the archi- 
 tects, whose talent and metier are primarily of the 
 constructive order, have become also the decorative 
 designers of the interiors, deputing the execution 
 of their schemes to a variety of subordinates. It is 
 a highly organised system, capable of turning out 
 an immense quantity of work, creditable in quality, 
 but of little personal distinction. Yet, if we study 
 the matter, we shall find that the system has grown 
 inevitably out of existing conditions. 
 
 Little more than a quarter of a century ago the 
 ground in our development now occupied by archi- 
 tecture and decoration was a prairie wilderness, 
 spotted here and there with beautiful survivals of 
 a past taste, such as the examples of Colonial man- 
 sions and churches, and of later public edifices, like 
 the White House and the Capitol. For the rest 
 it was a waste upon which modern disfigurements 
 had encroached. Then two men appeared as pio- 
 
 [Sll] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 neers : H. H. Richardson,* already mentioned, and 
 Richard Morris Hunt; both architects who, like 
 some of our painters, had studied in Paris at the 
 famous ilcole des Beaux Arts, 
 
 The movement they inaugurated was, from its 
 inception, one of architecture. Hunt representing 
 the constructive, logical phase of the art, Richard- 
 son its more notably aesthetic possibilities. The 
 latter, as we have seen, hastened to secure the co- 
 operation of La Farge. But decorators such as 
 he are not to be found by the wayside. There was 
 no other painter in the country to whom an archi- 
 tect could safely have entrusted an important 
 scheme of decoration in its entirety. Moreover, La 
 Farge has always been too much of an investigator 
 and experimenter to adapt himself to the “ driving 
 hurry ” of American methods, and, furthermore, he 
 very soon turned aside into a special department of 
 decoration, that of decorated windows. How in 
 this direction he proved himself to be an original 
 genius, substituting for the usual stained glass the 
 use of opalescent glass, thereby inventing a new 
 kind of window, distinguished by extreme richness 
 and subtlety of colour, has already occupied our 
 
 * Is it not rather characteristic of American attitude toward 
 artistic genius that the “ Universal Cyclopaedia,” published in 
 New York, 1901, a newly revised and enlarged edition, omits 
 the name of this architect? 
 
 [ 312 ] 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 notice in a previous chapter. It interfered with 
 his continuing the role in which he had already qual- 
 ified, as a painter who could undertake and carry 
 through an ensemble of mural decoration. There 
 was still another reason. When he was in the prime 
 of his vigour, the period of opportunity in the 
 shape of great public buildings had scarcely begun, 
 and, by the time that it was fairly afoot, the archi- 
 tects were from the circumstances of the case, not 
 only the initiators, but the controllers of the 
 movement. 
 
 The event from which this movement has gone 
 on advancing with steadily increasing bulk and mo- 
 mentum was the World’s Fair at Chicago. Pre- 
 viously to this there had been divers instances of 
 mural decoration in the private houses of the rich, 
 and at least one public building, the new Hotel 
 Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, had been elabo- 
 rately decorated, while the Trustees of the Boston 
 Public Library had already given commissions for 
 mural paintings to the French artist, Puvis de 
 Chavannes, and to Sargent and Abbey. But the 
 effect of this and other sporadic efforts was 
 multiplied ad infinitum by the consolidated gran- 
 deur of the “White City.” It was an object 
 lesson, the virtue of which, though it has been 
 frequently described, may well be continually 
 enforced. 
 
 It taught, in the first place, the desirableness, even 
 [ 313 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 the commercial value, of beauty. The shrewd, 
 large-minded citizens of a city that is essentially 
 the product and assertion of commerce discovered 
 that they could give expression to their own local 
 pride and attract business from outside, not only 
 by following the old crude idea of attempting “ the 
 biggest show on earth,” but by trying to make it 
 the most beautiful. They succeeded; for, while 
 millions of tired bodies testified to the former 
 motive, as many hearts were gladdened and as 
 many imaginations stimulated by the presentation 
 of the latter. 
 
 In the second place, it exhibited the mutual inter- 
 dependence of the arts of construction and design; 
 the value of combination. Buildings which might 
 have been constructed solely with a view to sepa- 
 rate utility were treated also as monuments of 
 architectural design, enriched by sculpture and 
 painting, borrowing extra dignity from one an- 
 other, and placed in a worthy setting by the co- 
 operation of the landscape designer. In a word, 
 the natural beauties of the spot had been utilised 
 and increased; formal features, such as terraces, 
 fountains, and bridges, had been added, and the cul- 
 minating motive had been the creation of a series 
 of magnificent or alluring ensembles. The result 
 was a triumph, alike for the architects and land- 
 scape designers, for the various painters and sculp- 
 tors who co-operated in the details of the plan, and 
 
 [3U] 
 
 i 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 for the citizens of Chicago who permitted its in- 
 ception and provided for its completion. 
 
 Scarcely more than a decade has elapsed since 
 the passing of that temporarily realised dream of 
 artistic beauty, yet already in thousands of in- 
 stances throughout the country its influence has 
 borne fruit. It is true that its biggest lesson has 
 scarcely yet been recognised. Municipalities either 
 are not yet aroused to the value of a combination 
 of efforts into an ensemble, or have not had the 
 courage or opportunity to realise it. There have 
 been certain notable exceptions, as in the laying 
 out of the water fronts in Chicago, Philadelphia, 
 and New York, and in attention given to the regu- 
 lation of the sky-line of buildings, as in Boston. 
 Yet, notwithstanding these indications of a civic 
 sense of pride and responsibility, little or nothing 
 has been done toward an organic alleviation of the 
 dire monotony of our gridiron street-plans, or 
 toward a systematic treatment of such open spaces 
 as they niggardly present. In failing to realise the 
 value of ensembles, whether regarded as conven- 
 iences or embellishments, we are still far behind the 
 modern activities of the Old World cities. On the 
 other hand, in respect of the separate building, as- 
 serting itself as an independent unit, the activities 
 in this country during the past ten years have been 
 phenomenal. 
 
 It would be very interesting, if space permitted, 
 [ 315 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 to sketch the story of what our architects have 
 accomplished; how in Federal and State buildings, 
 in City Halls and libraries, in churches, hotels^ 
 office and trade buildings, and in city and country 
 residences, the motives of utility and beauty have 
 jointly inspired the design; how the skill of the 
 architects, trained in the knowledge of the Old 
 World, has displayed itself both in adapting the 
 various styles and principles to the American re- 
 quirement, and in inventing new methods of con- 
 struction to comply with the special conditions that 
 exist here. If adequately told, the story would have 
 the interest and surprise of a romance. But for our 
 present purpose we can only note that the trend of 
 the movement has been toward a superior logic and 
 dignity in the character of the whole building, and 
 toward a more sumptuous and, at the same time, 
 more tactful use of embellishments in the details; 
 and that in these latter the architects have more and 
 more enlisted the co-operation of the painters. 
 
 During the past ten years the practice of mural 
 painting in America has spread rapidly. At first 
 it found the majority of the painters unprepared 
 for the particular requirements of this kind of 
 painting. They had been trained in the principles 
 of the easel-picture, within the frame of which the 
 painter may adopt any method of treatment that 
 he chooses, intent solely upon making his picture; 
 and one, not necessarily decorative. But mural 
 
 [ 316 ] 
 
ropy Ho ’if. 190T. rnj Curtv- BeU 
 
 PITTSBURGH PERSONIFIED John . Alexaxdek 
 
 Part of the Mural Decoration in the Carnegie Institute 
 
 T 
 
 th 
 
 HIS panel Is a part of an elaborate scheme of decoration. The spirit of the Cttif | ; 
 
 of Steel Foundries is represented as a icarrior in mediwcal armor, hut the figure | 
 which crowns him. thosf which announce his triumph, and the others, flying m from / : 
 
 four corm rs of tin earth with rich gifts, are lovely types of modern girlhood. f \ J 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 painting does not fulfil the purposes of its exist- 
 ence unless it be decorative and at the same time 
 subsidiary to the general scheme of its surround- 
 ings, in which it should occupy the position not of 
 a separate unit but of an integral factor. The 
 character of its subject will partake of that of the 
 building: solemn, serious, elegant, or sportive, ac- 
 cording to the spirit in which the architecture, fol- 
 lowing the purpose of the building, has been 
 planned. The character of its composition will be 
 determined by the shape and position of the space 
 that it is intended to adorn ; the choice of its colour 
 regulated to the prevailing colour scheme of the 
 interior. In a word, the mural painting, besides 
 being decorative, should be functional. 
 
 The meaning of this may be readily grasped if 
 one remembers that the various parts of the archi- 
 tectural structure are not used arbitrarily, but that 
 each has its separate function to perform in the 
 complex arrangement of supports and resistances 
 that make up the whole system. For example, in 
 the Rotunda of the Library of Congress the eight 
 ribs of the dome sweep upward until they termi- 
 nate in the broad, smooth surface of the “ collar,” 
 whose function is to clamp them all together and 
 at the same time to form a support for the super- 
 incumbent cupola. Recognising this, the decorator 
 of the ‘‘ collar,” Edwin H. Blashfield, devised a 
 composition which should form a compact and 
 
 [ 319 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 continuous circle of decoration and simultaneously, 
 by the introduction of eight principal figures, recall 
 the eight ribs which the circle terminates. On the 
 other hand, in the Delivery Room of the Boston 
 Public Library, Edwin A. Abbey, commissioned 
 to decorate the frieze and choosing for the subject 
 the Quest of the Holy Grail, has ignored the func- 
 tion of a frieze, which is to counteract the vari- 
 ous interruptions down below, of windows, doors, 
 and fireplaces, by an effect above of continuity. 
 Whereas he might have treated the space as a con- 
 tinuous whole, by dividing it into a series of panels 
 that should succeed one another in a rhythmic 
 sequence, he has chopped it up into a variety of 
 different measurements. 
 
 The more strictly functional treatment of a 
 frieze may be studied in the same building, in the 
 fine example of John S. Sargent’s Prophets, In 
 them there is a collective effect of continuity, a 
 rhythmic sequence of handsome masses and striking 
 lines. INIoreover, the choice of the subject is read- 
 ily comprehensible, which is a considerable virtue, 
 since it offers no interference with one’s immediate 
 appreciation of the painting as a decoration. The 
 panels above them, however, in the lunette and sof- 
 fit of the arch, are not so simple. The pattern of 
 their composition presents an exuberance of inter- 
 'woven forms. It may be quite appropriate to the 
 idea of turmoil involved in the subject of Pohdhe- 
 
 [ 320 ] 
 
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 rij. J'ritiii (I ( '(i/ilt'i/ Print, Coj’i/riiihl , lOn:, 
 
 hi/ C'lirtis ami Cameron 
 .Ion X S. S A KGK XT 
 
 A .Mural Docoration in tlie lloston Pul)lic Lil)rarv 
 
 J REMARK.lBhi: t.i’antph (>t Diodtni rclipioii.'t ,<ttf)tth()U,s)n. in //.s’ feclintf and method 
 a/n/ (‘on rt n f tona lizri/ yvfa//.v the liiizaniiiK tradition: the central rompo.sitlou 
 
 of paintina nnitina fin pre.'((>tt and the pa.'it. The upper portion in it.>t fat tonea 
 iinifafes, thonph in much hiaht r reVu t, the appTad rais(d ornament of the Renaissance. V'hih 
 the loirer p'pnres, holdimi the siimbols of the Ras.'don, are rendered in the modern technique. 
 The inscription . copiid from a mediaeval oripinal. map he t ranslated so as to reproeince the 
 cnrions plat/ upon irords: "Made man. tlwnph mifself the maker of man and Redeemer ofj 
 what I have made, I rethem in mif hodp their bodies and souls, bein<f God.” 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 ism and Apostasy from the Faith in the One God 
 that they are intended to represent, but it is con- 
 fusing to the eye. Moreos^er, the forms are asso- 
 ciated with a great deal of abstruse symbolism, 
 unintelligible to most people, so that all but a few 
 visitors miss the decorative intention of the paint- 
 ings and devote the greater portion of their study 
 to the printed key. 
 
 ' Sargent himself would seem to have realised that 
 he has here overdone the literary allusiveness of his 
 subject, for in his latest work. The Dogma of Re- 
 demption, the symbolism is comparatively simple, 
 and he has reverted also to simplicity of forms, 
 partly basing his composition upon the examples 
 of the Byzantine decorators, in many respects the 
 finest in the Old World. 
 
 For their forms were very simple, and simply 
 handled; not modelled into relief, but kept as a 
 pattern of masses, of coloured masses harmonised 
 into a rich tone, so that the whole painting was 
 very fiat. It clung to the wall, proclaimed the fact 
 of the wall beneath, and was in a very strict sense 
 mural. 
 
 A consciousness of the value of such principles 
 of painting for the purpose of mural decoration 
 is one of the distinguished characteristics of the 
 panels by Puvis de Chavannes in the Boston Li- 
 brary. In the Library of Congress it has also 
 prompted the method of Kenyon Cox, But the 
 
 [ 32a ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 latter, while an excellent draughtsman, is no colour- 
 ist. Flis panels of the Arts and Sciences ^ with 
 their pale tinting not drawn into harmonic rela- 
 tion, give the impression of a good design not yet 
 completed. 
 
 The design itself is a formal arrangement of 
 female figures, each bearing an emblem of the 
 particular art or science which it is intended to 
 symbolise. Were the colour as effective as the 
 drawing, the result would be exceedingly decora- 
 tive; though, in other respects, as impoverished as 
 the present tinting. For the conception displays 
 no imagination and offers little interest to the visi- 
 tor. In this threadbare affectation of classicalism 
 there is evidence neither of American inspiration 
 nor of the painter himself having any participation 
 in the fulness of our modern life. His aim has 
 been solely decorative. 
 
 No doubt the painter himself would admit it, 
 and very likely would defend the position that the 
 whole end of decoration is to be decorative. That, 
 however, was not the characteristic of the great 
 days of Mural Decoration. Many of the finest 
 examples were more or less frankly illustrations, as 
 well as decorations, intended to bring home the 
 truths and doctrines of Christianity to the masses; 
 while those of a more purely decorative character 
 were of a kind not only to appeal to the taste of 
 cultivated people, but to stimulate their imag- 
 
 [ 324 ] 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 ination and their personal and local pride. In 
 either case the decoration was significant of the 
 habit of mind and feeling of its era. So far, how- 
 ever, in American Mural Painting there has been 
 little indication even of the modern spirit, much 
 less of the particular genius of America. It is still 
 an exotic, imperfectly acclimatised, and not yet 
 adapted to our soil. 
 
 Nevertheless, there have been numerous attempts 
 to make the subject interpret our special conditions. 
 C. Y. Turner, for example, in the Manhattan Hotel, 
 New York, has represented the City as a queenly 
 maiden surrounded by other maidens, typifying the 
 arts and sciences; while in attendance are realistic 
 figures of Indians, Colonials, and portrait-groups 
 of scientists and other distinguished persons. A 
 similar mingling of allegory and fact appears in 
 Albert Herter’s panels of Agriculture and Com- 
 meree in a New York bank; and in panels by Ed- 
 win H. Blashfield: at Baltimore of Washington 
 Relinquishing Office; at the Capitol of St. Paul, 
 commemorating the agricultural triumphs of the 
 West, and at Pittsburg, celebrating the steel indus- 
 tries. This last subject has been treated anew, and 
 again with a mingling of allegorical figures and 
 of more or less realistic accessories, in the recent 
 paintings, executed by John W. Alexander, for the 
 Carnegie Institute. 
 
 On the other hand, panels illustrating actual 
 [3S5] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 incidents and treated with regard for historical ac- 
 curacy have been painted for the Boston State 
 House by Robert Reid and Edward Simmons, 
 while a corresponding motive influenced the treat- 
 ment of F. D. Millet’s Treaty of the Traverse des 
 Siouoo, for the Capitol of St. Pauf and C. Y. 
 Turner’s Opening of the Erie Canal, for the De 
 Witt Clinton High School, New York. 
 
 So far, therefore, as the character of the sub- 
 ject is concerned, we And our painters following the 
 example of the old Italians. Sometimes they treat 
 an incident with the fidelity to facts of an illus- 
 tration; sometimes they unite allegorical and real- 
 istic elements. Evidently, then, neither of these 
 methods is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. 
 The character of the subject, in fact, is only a part 
 of the matter. Of even more importance is the 
 manner in which the subject is represented. In the 
 first place, whether the motive is allegorical or 
 realistic, the treatment must be decorative : the 
 painting must be a pattern of colour, adorning the 
 space and harmonising with the form and spirit of 
 the surrounding architecture. But is this all that 
 is desirable? 
 
 Are we to be satisfied merely wdth an agreeable 
 or sumptuous impression? Shall we not look to 
 receive some stir to our imagination, some fresh 
 insight into or encouragement of the principles we 
 believe in, some enlargement of our mental and 
 
 [ 326 ] 
 
A Mural Decoration in the Capitol of Minnesota 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 spiritual horizon? It is futile to say that the times 
 are changed; that now, since the majority of people 
 can read, pictures have ceased to be a necessary or 
 suitable way of reaching the imagination and con- 
 science. It is, on the contrary, extraordinary how 
 little essential conditions are changed. Our present 
 age, it is true, is a reading one, of an insatiable 
 hunger for reading ; yet was there ever a time when 
 there was so much illustration? Those whose busi- 
 ness it is to keep a touch upon the public pulse and 
 diagnose the symptoms of its taste, assert that it 
 craves illustrations and must have them. Cer- 
 tainly it gets them, and one hears no protest. 
 
 No, the fault is not with the public, but with the 
 painters themselves. They are, for the most part, 
 out of touch with the vital forces at work in the 
 community, nor possessed of that vigour and orig- 
 inality which characterises the leaders in other de- 
 partments of life. Too few of them can strike 
 out a truth on the anvil of facts, as Vedder has 
 done in his decorations at Washington, particularly 
 in the one that, with a mingling of allegory and 
 realism, embodies the idea of Corrupt Government, 
 The sleek respectability of the pious-faced briber, 
 the slatternly wantonness of the women whom he 
 prostitutes, the mute protest of the smokeless 
 chimney-stack, the piteous appeal of the destitute, 
 haggard child — at a glance is revealed the hideous 
 loathsomeness of the whole dirty business. It is 
 
 [ 329 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 the work of a man who has a mind to comprehend 
 the fact, and an imagination that can invest it with 
 a new force of meaning, and who, moreover, is a 
 born decorator. 
 
 These are unusual qualities, especially in com- 
 bination, and it is the lack of them that is most con- 
 spicuous in American Mural decoration. Nowhere 
 do conditions, present and past, offer more abun- 
 dant suggestions to the imagination, and nowhere 
 are mural painters receiving so much encourage- 
 ment of opportunity. Yet, with shght exceptions, 
 they have not yet risen to the occasion. If we seek 
 further reasons, we may find them, first of all, in 
 the fact that most of them are not decorators. The 
 latter are born, not made; the gift is primarily one 
 of exuberant inventiveness. Now, American Art, 
 in all its branches, is so far singularly barren of 
 this quality. Its present phase involves a more or 
 less tactful application of eclecticism. Again, the 
 painters have been trained in a good school; but 
 one which did not include any separate considera- 
 tion of mural decoration; nor in this direction is 
 any real provision being made even now for 
 younger students, notwithstanding that this offers 
 them a very large field and a rich one. ^Moreover, 
 our older men have not recovered from the para- 
 lysing effects of the “ art for art’s sake ” formula. 
 Taught in their youth to be afraid of an idea, their 
 ability to conceive or express one has been stunted. 
 
 [ 330 ] 
 
NOTES ON MURAL PAINTING 
 
 They have nothing of the dare-devil in their con- 
 ception. And there is another reason. The best 
 development in our painting has been along the 
 lines of the small canvas, intimately treated. The 
 excessive influence of the Barbizon pictures, the 
 preciosity that Whistler’s example fostered, and the 
 mild domesticity of American fiction, only now 
 just yielding place to the romantic imagining of 
 the red-blooded writers, have helped to confine our 
 painting within very sincere but very limited meth- 
 ods of expression. 
 
 As compared with this propriety, which is the 
 distinguishing feature of American art, both lit- 
 erary and pictorial, the country itself presents a 
 crudity of contrasts. A virility, not without its 
 flavour of brutality, characterises the active life of 
 the community, while its leisure is gilded and bro- 
 caded with a luxuriousness that recalls the splen- 
 dour of Monarchical France or of Imperial Rome. 
 But deep beneath the myriad lights and shadows 
 of the surface is an earnestness of pride in the past 
 and present of the race, and of confidence in the 
 future, that in its reasonableness is without a paral- 
 lel in history. 
 
 Some day, upon the walls of the buildings that 
 embody this grandeur, we may hope that there 
 will be mural decorations which in magnitude of 
 conception and splendour of decorative treatment 
 will adequately represent the theme. 
 
 [ 331 ] 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 H 
 
 AVING traced the various influences 
 
 years, we may reasonably attempt a summary of 
 the results. Since our art has aligned itself with 
 that of other countries, how does it stand in com- 
 parison with theirs? 
 
 Fi’equently one hears the question asked in a 
 somewhat different form. Is there yet a distinctly 
 American school of painting; and, if so, how does 
 it compare with other schools ? But, strictly speak- 
 ing, there are no longer distinct schools anywhere, 
 since the reasons which accounted for their exist- 
 ence in the past no longer exist to-day. As we 
 have seen in the previous pages, the whole trend 
 of modern art has been toward a free-trade in mo- 
 tives and methods, the clearing-house of which for 
 all the world has been Paris. Yet, while the age 
 of close communities of artists, following some dis- 
 tinct tradition or influenced by some one leader, 
 and producing work which bears the stamp of a 
 common sentiment and manner of expression, is 
 past, it is unquestionably true that the local con- 
 
 which have affected the development of 
 American painting during the past fifty 
 
 [ S32 ] 
 
By Courtesy of N. E. Montroaa 
 
 ON THE CANAL W. L. Lathrop 
 
 F'W^HIS artist is pre-eminently an interpreter of nature in her gentlest and least obtrusive moods^ represented 
 m generally by subjects to which it is only sympathetic observation and delicate rendering of tonality that lend 
 interest. 
 
-• 
 
 
 if 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 ditions of race temperament and natural environ- 
 ment do still stamp with a certain general dis- 
 tinction the work of each country. It is not diffi- 
 cult, for example, in the presence of a given picture, 
 to be secure in the conclusion that it is Dutch or 
 German, French or English. Is there, then, any 
 corresponding mark by which we could feel equally 
 sure that such and such a picture was by an Ameri- 
 can painter? I believe there is; but let us try to 
 make this question answer itself. 
 
 The Dutch picture is readily identified; firstly, 
 because the subject in almost every case is drawn 
 from the natural and human life of Holland, the 
 externals of which are so distinctly characteristic; 
 and, secondly, because the spirit as well as the ex- 
 ternal is reproduced. The country, in fact, is 
 small enough to have a spirit that is recognisable 
 as characteristic. Its low-lying land and immense 
 skies, the richness of vegetation due to the preva- 
 lence of moisture, both in rain-laden clouds over- 
 head and in the canals and ditches that interthread 
 the soil, the fitfulness of sunshine, now glinting 
 crisply between the showers or lambent over the 
 polders, now chastened by the silky atmosphere or 
 shrouded in vapour till its light and warmth are 
 chiUed to greyness — all these and many other con- 
 ditions, so frequent and expressive, give a distinc- 
 tion to Holland and form the most affectionate 
 study of her artists. They are all in love with the 
 
 [ 335 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 same mistress, and she shows to each the same 
 changes of moods, so that their various renderings 
 of her spirit bear a likeness to one another. 
 
 Recognising this, we see at once that there can 
 scarcely be a similar unity of feeling in the work 
 of American artists. Even if the devotion to the 
 pictorial aspects of their own countiy were as 
 single-hearted, the country itself presents no such 
 compact synthesis of suggestion. Both in topo- 
 graphical features and in the still more significant 
 matter of atmospheric conditions, wherein reside 
 the moods and changes, the actual expression and 
 spirit of the scene, the country offers a wide range 
 of differences. The intelligent student of pic- 
 tures, especially if he is also, as he should be, a stu- 
 dent of nature, can recognise at once this scene 
 drawn from California, that from the INIiddle West, 
 another from Pennsylvania, and still another from 
 the East. These are broad distinctions; nor are 
 closer ones less recognisable. We use the general 
 term New England, but the landscapes from each 
 State in the group, both in form and feeling, differ 
 from those of the others. When we realise this, 
 and the furtlier fact tliat it is in the subtle differ- 
 entiation of these variations of natural and spirit- 
 ual manifestations that the best art of to-day is 
 displayed, we are admitting the impossibility of 
 there being such family resemblance among Ameri- 
 can pictures as among the Dutch. 
 
 [336 ] 
 
h 
 
 n 
 
 w 
 
 Q 
 
 w 
 
 ►j 
 
 to 
 
 w 
 
 ►J 
 
 6 
 
 MAGINE the foliage of a juicy grayish green, the sky a greenish gray, and you begin to realize the feeling of the picture. It 
 is removed from the warmth of sunlight, withdrawn into a ‘"solitude” of feeling. '' 
 
 In the Collection of John Gellatly, Esq. 
 
THE CLOUD 
 
 Albert L. Groll 
 
 xV ArlzovM hnxhcapp h/ one of the ahlesf of our i/oumfer painters. IBs work is distinguished hg the 
 technical skill with which he suggests the structure as well as the forms of nature, and by ds 
 erf cress ion id qualify. 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 Then, again, there is the general resemblance 
 that may characterise the work of painters of one 
 country through idiosyncrasy of racial tempera- 
 ment. We recognise, for example, in the artists 
 grouped about Munich, a prevalence of exuberant 
 and original imagination, and a direct and often 
 somewhat exaggerated mode of expression; traits 
 of the Teutonic temperament, sufficiently preva- 
 lent to make it almost possible to speak of a Munich 
 school. But you will find no counterpart of this 
 among American painters. If anything they are 
 rather distinguished for the opposite: a certain kind 
 of cosmopolitanism of feeling, and an independ- 
 ence of one another in their methods. 
 
 On the other hand, although it might be impossi- 
 ble to discover any positive indications of uni- 
 formity, certain negative resemblances are notable. 
 It did not escape the notice of careful observers at 
 the Paris Exposition of 1900, when there was ample 
 opportunity of comparing the art of different coun- 
 tries, that that of the United States made a very 
 separate impression. Trying to analyse it, one 
 found one’s self recurring to phrases: capability, 
 moderation, sanity, and perhaps a lack of indi- 
 vidualism. There was a general high standard of 
 craftsmanship, the equivalent of which was to be 
 found perhaps only in the French and Dutch ex- 
 hibits. But, unlike the French, our artists seldom, 
 if ever, seemed to use their technical skill with 
 
 [339] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 ostentation, either to display mere prowess with the 
 brush or to attract attention by the meretricious 
 device of a startling subject; while, on the other 
 hand, unlike the Dutch, they failed, as a group, to 
 suggest a marked individuality. I say as a group ; 
 for, of course, there were particular examples of 
 notable individuality. But the general impression 
 of the ensemble was of a moderation, grateful in 
 comparison with the ostentation and vagaries that 
 abounded elsewhere, but in itself open to the sug- 
 gestion of being too negative a virtue, a little fibre- 
 less and lacking in marrow. To be candid, a similar 
 lack of positive moderation may be charged against 
 our annual exhibitions of native work. For there 
 is all the difi'erence in the world between a strong 
 man, adjusting his output of strength to the work 
 in hand, while holding a portion in reserve, and 
 another whose moderation seems to be the result 
 of not having an abundance of either force or 
 conviction. 
 
 One may find a counterpart of this in American 
 fiction. Publishers are fond of preaching modera- 
 tion. Both in illustration and in writing they dis- 
 courage mucli that is original, vital, and born of 
 convictions, fearing that it may shock the sensi- 
 bilities of their public. Since the latter is over- 
 whelmingly composed of young girls, they may ex- 
 hibit an appropriate canniness, but the result upon 
 a great deal of our literature is to confuse purity 
 
 [ 340 ] 
 
Copyright, 1907 , N. E. Montross 
 
 .Y NIGHT Willard L. Metcalf 
 
 fjHIS rtist was one of the group of men who first brought from Paris the practice of 
 the plein air motive. .The study of light in its effects upon open-air nature has been 
 his constant theme. The present exampile is one of much reverence and spiritual- 
 of feeling. 
 
 In the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art 
 
THE ROAD TO THE OLD FARM 
 
 J. Francis Murphy 
 
 / MPELLED perhaps hy popular demand for his ’‘^characteristic" icork, this artist 
 has confined his observation to a limited phase of nature. The present example, wdh 
 its stretch of meadow, sprinkUny of delicate tree forms, and distant hillside, enveloped 
 in a smoky haze of atmosphere, well represents him. Within this restricted range of 
 expression he is a master. 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 with prudishness and sincerity with dilettanteism 
 — to crush conviction on the part alike of author 
 and of reader. The actual plague spot of this 
 disease centres around the relation of the sexes in 
 literature and the use of the nude in art, but its 
 morbid effects spread through the whole body of 
 fiction and painting, inducing a flacid condition of 
 self-consciousness and insincerity. It has taken 
 such grip of artists and public that to a consider- 
 able extent moderation has been supplanted by 
 repression, and tamely to hold back is esteemed 
 worthier than to put forth with a reserve of power. 
 
 The effect of this condition which has become 
 fluent in the public conscience is to be discovered 
 in our painting. For its prevalence one can 
 scarcely blame the painters. They represent a 
 comparatively small number of men and women, 
 in the midst of a community impregnated with 
 this insincerity. With a few exceptions they are 
 unable to resist the effect of what is in the atmos- 
 phere around them ; and the less ' so because, as 
 illustrators, a majority of the figure-painters, at 
 any rate, have become directly infected with the 
 prevailing pseudo-ethics of the publishers. The 
 necessity of prettiness, of not giving offence to 
 “the most fastidious,” and of exploiting the ob- 
 vious, has been urged upon them, until it is small 
 wonder that a great deal of American painting is 
 characterised, if I may be allowed the expression, 
 
 [ 343 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 by irreproachable table-manners rather than by 
 salient self-expression; by a desire to be amiable 
 rather than convincing. The portrait-painter, for 
 example, if he would make a living, is tempted by 
 the vogue of the pretty face in periodicals to sacri- 
 fice tmth of art and of human character to the glib 
 exploitation of prettiness of face and form and 
 flashiness of costume. The figure-painter vill 
 meet his readiest reward if he confine himself to 
 subjects of trite propriety, represented with insist- 
 ent regard for the obvious; while even the painter 
 of landscape is lured into the pleasant moods of 
 innocuous sentimentality. The taste of our time, 
 in fact, runs to superficial sentimentality, and con- 
 sciously or unconsciously the painter is apt to 
 respond to it. 
 
 Among those who have maintained a vigorously 
 independent course and whose pictures, whenever 
 they appear in exhibitions, create a pronounced 
 interest, none is more conspicuous than Gari 
 IMelchers. To a French cleverness of brush work 
 he has added from his frequent sojourning in Hol- 
 land, a conscientiousness truly Dutch. Yet, al- 
 though he has spent many years in depicting sub- 
 jects of the Dutch peasantry, he has, unlike many 
 others who have been similarly drawn to Holland, 
 avoided all imitation of the modern Dutch tech- 
 nique. His own, indeed, has more kinship with 
 that of the old Flemish painters in its enforcement 
 
 [ 344 ] 
 
EARLY SPRING Leonard Ochtman 
 
 J DIONG the nrtis-fs of this coiuifri/ who have taken the lead in studifimj nature in the lif/ht of the open air, Ochtman 
 y/j has won a foremost position. He is keenUj sensitire to the quiet moods of nature and to the manifestations of subtlest 
 muilitii. (umrases eaual his in refinement of observation and delicate tonalitu. 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 of character, elaboration of detail, and fondness 
 for the qualities of texture. Avoiding alike the 
 summariness of much modern impressionism, and 
 the perfection of finish which in a Bourguereau, 
 for example, is so tame and unlifelike, he recog- 
 nises the importance of detail in the make-up of 
 the whole, and by his frank and resolute rendering 
 of it gives to all his pictures a markedly individual 
 personality. In this respect he might be ranged 
 alongside of Thomas Eakins, for his insight of 
 observation and fidelity of statement are corre- 
 spondingly sure; but he differs from the older 
 painter in having essentially a modern point of 
 view. This leads him to study his figures and ac- 
 cessories under the effect of real light, for the most 
 part a cool, evenly diffused light which admits of 
 little shadow and avoids any spots of heightened 
 piquancy. Again, it draws him into sympathy 
 with his subject. He has put himself in touch 
 with the lives of the people, the young peasant 
 women and men, whom he represents, and recog- 
 nises the sweetness and sadness that underly its 
 ruggedness. His expression of this sentiment is 
 marked by the same comprehension and fidelity to 
 truth that distinguish his method of painting. It 
 is as far as possible from the sentimentality that 
 mars the work of so many painters of the peasant- 
 subject, just as his technique is equally devoid of 
 sloppiness and superficiality. 
 
 [ 347 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 This distinction, one should observe, is a measure 
 of Melchers’ own character. It is the personality 
 of his own mental distinction, investing everything 
 he does with original directness and scrupulous 
 truth. The importance of this fact cannot be over- 
 stated: that character counts in painting as much 
 as in any other department of life. But how few 
 people seem to realise this! Because a painter 
 must be sensitive to certain aspects, such as those 
 of colour and form, beyond the habit of men en- 
 gaged in other pursuits, they take it for granted 
 that he must be an emotionalist at the mercy of 
 his sensibilities, and make allowances accordingly. 
 Yet, if we study the lives and works of artists, not 
 in painting only, but in music, sculpture, and litera- 
 ture, we shall find, perhaps without exception, that 
 the greatest results, those, I mean, that endure and 
 most appeal to the largest number of thoughtful 
 students, are those which are the product of sensi- 
 bility controlled. Not by any means has all strong 
 V'Ork been the output of artists pliysically strong; 
 indeed, the balance, if one carefully reckoned it, 
 might be found on the other side; but whether 
 physically weak or strong, they have been strong in 
 character. They have had a mental poise that 
 sustained them, and set the standard of their en- 
 deavour and accomplishment. And the mental 
 poise is the product of a clear and vigorous mind 
 remaining true to itself and enlarging its scope 
 
 [ 348 ] 
 
THE SLUICE Frederick Ballard Williams 
 
 r m 'yllE landscapes of this artist are distinguished hy largeness of feeling combined with a close observation 
 a of nature. While all the forms are strongly contrasted, he excels in the drawing of turlmlent water. 
 His coloring is full of quality, and the lighting effects are admirably done. 
 
THE SHEPHERDESS Gari Melchers 
 
 'T Jf T^ITH no meretricious appeal in the way of prettiness, the pic- 
 §/§/ ture compels admiration through its downright acceptance 
 ^ ' of the facts and sincerity of sympathetic comprehension. 
 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 by contact with what is sane and true in surround- 
 ing art and life. 
 
 It is on this ground that art and morality really 
 meet; namely, in the person of the artist himself. 
 For I will not admit that view held by many, that 
 art must be moral in its purpose and suggestion; 
 by which, apparently, it is meant that art must di- 
 rectly assist the cause of morality by presenting 
 subjects in which the virtue of morality is explicitly 
 set forth. Although, at one time, art did splendid 
 service for the church in picturing the truth of doc- 
 trine and the beauty of the Bible story and of holy 
 living, that was only one of the glorious incidents 
 in its career. But the real domain of the arts is 
 not that of the preacher, the philosopher, or the 
 moralist. It is to make known, not the beauty of 
 holiness, but the holiness of beauty, to a world 
 overmuch occupied with the material or purely in- 
 tellectual sides of life. It is, if you will, to sanc- 
 tify the senses by drawing them off from merely 
 carnal and material gratification, to a realisation 
 of the abstract essence of beauty that pervades na- 
 ture and human life. Viewed in this light, it is 
 as important a factor in the betterment of the whole 
 man, the body, mind, and soul that are in all of us, 
 as are the labours of the preacher, the philosopher, 
 the moralist, and the purveyors of the material 
 necessaries and embellishments of life. The la- 
 bours of all are necessary to the nurturing of the 
 
 [ 351 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 whole man, of the full life. They work mutually, 
 and often in aim and result impinge upon one an- 
 other’s domains. But each is separate. 
 
 Yet, even if this be so, there is a definite alliance 
 between art and morality, if by the latter we un- 
 derstand the being true to what is best in us and the 
 reaching after the best of which we are capable. 
 And the highest form of this, as I have already 
 hinted, is based upon superior mental qualities, 
 controlled by strength of mind. A man may be 
 faithful unto death, but unless his acts are 
 prompted and controlled by strength of mind, his 
 faithfulness differs in degree, perhaps, but not in 
 quality, from that of a dog. It would be idle to 
 afiirm that mental form is of small account in the 
 qualification of a preacher, a philosopher, or a 
 business man. All our experience is to the con- 
 trary. Yet in an artist we customarily overlook 
 both the need and the lack of it, and are content 
 to regard him as a chartered emotionalist. Ilis 
 training tends to afiirni the emotionalist in himself. 
 Early discovering an aptitude for drawing and a 
 peculiar sensitiveness to beauty, he enters upon a 
 course of instruction, too much limited to the pro- 
 motion of these qualities, and escapes from rough 
 contact with men and things and the discipline 
 which it involves. He learns, not to repress, but to 
 express himself; to take his feelings as a guide to 
 conduct, and to nurse and pamper them as his most 
 
 [ 352 ] 
 
MOTHER AND CHILD 
 
 Gari Melchers 
 
 ^ M ^HE face of the mother recalls that of The Shepherdess, only now it is not heavy 
 m with toily hut alert with the contentment of motherhood. 
 
 In the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 
 
THE ttAILOR AND HIS S^^ EETHEART .Melchers 
 
 E abstract gaze of the fisherman, stolid with much looking on skg and water; the personal, straining gaze of the 
 M woman, accustomed to wait and watch for her man; Ins rough, bluff self-containedness, the action of her hand as her heart 
 
 JL goes out to him — it is a bit of sentiment, elemental in its unaffected simplicity and truth. 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 valuable assets in life. But in art, as in other voca- 
 tions of life, it is the man who is endowed with in- 
 tellectuality and by self-discipline preserves the 
 integrity of this endowment, that accomplishes 
 the vital thing. He is in his treatment of himself a 
 moral man, and his morality is declared in the 
 poise and vigour of his art. 
 
 It would be obviously out of place in a work of 
 this kind to cite all the men who seem to one’s self, 
 as Gari Melchers does, to represent this union of 
 artistic sensibility with intellectual integrity. To 
 attempt such a thing would be to pass a very seri- 
 ous slight upon the names omitted; and it has been 
 my intention to avoid as far as possible all person- 
 alities. Yet, because of the general comment that 
 it suggests, I will cite one other instance, that of a 
 younger painter, whose work so far has not re- 
 ceived the consideration to which it seems to me 
 entitled. He is Robert David Gauley, a pupil of 
 F. W. Benson and Edmund C. Tarbell in Boston, 
 and of Bouguereau and Ferrier in Paris. Subse- 
 quently he studied Velasquez in Madrid, and 
 worked and studied in Holland. This variety of 
 influences and the resolute personality of Gauley 
 himself may account in part for the slowness of 
 his acceptance by the public. 
 
 The latter is more readily attracted to a painter 
 whose style it can identify immediately, whereas 
 this one has been assimilating his impressions with 
 
 [355 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 deliberation, experimenting in various methods of 
 technique, and holding himself back from the ac- 
 quisition of any formula or fixed mode of paint- 
 ing. Thus the public is thwarted in its quite intel- 
 ligible satisfaction of being able to exclaim, as it 
 visits an exhibition: “Look, that is a Gauley!” 
 On the other hand, he may fail to attract general 
 attention because there is nothing of the obvious in 
 his pictures, none of those elegant little irrelevances 
 of costume or pose which so gladden the superfi- 
 cial amateur of art. The ideal toward which he is 
 working is by contrast a severe one. It involves in 
 the matter of composition a search for choiceness 
 as well as dignity of line, and for a movement or 
 pose of the figure that unites subtlety with sim- 
 plicity. A corresponding subtlety and choiceness 
 distinguish the expression of the whole. The jeal- 
 ousy with which he tries to keep his art pure of any 
 meretriciousness determines his attitude toward his 
 sitter. Whether the latter be a man or woman, he 
 approaches his subject with a reverence none too 
 usual in the portrait painter. 
 
 For, in the presence of so many portraits, espe- 
 cially of women, one is conscious of a lack of rev- 
 erence in the mental attitude of the painter. 
 Frequently the subject, for all her finery, or pos- 
 sibly because so much stress has been put upon it, 
 does not even look like a lady. She has been made 
 to flaunt her person and costume upon one’s notice 
 
 [356 ] 
 
PORTRAIT OF A LADY 
 
 PORTRAIT of rarely choice distinction. 
 
 Robert David Gauley 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 after the fashion of those who go to market with 
 their personal wares. This blatant form of vulgar- 
 ity, not uncommon in the portraits by foreigners, 
 is, it must be acknowledged, rarely seen in those 
 by Americans. Their tendency in this direction is 
 confined for the most part to a preoccupation with 
 frippery and to an exploitation of skill of painting 
 for its own sake. The result may be not so bla- 
 tantly vulgar, but it none the less indicates irrever- 
 ence. And, mark you, irreverence on the part of a 
 painter toward the manhood or womanhood of his 
 subject is irreverence toward what at least should 
 be sacred to him — his own art. F or peculiarly true 
 of the painter’s case is that old saying of Novalis: 
 “ There is but one temple in the universe, and that 
 is the body of man.” Human nature, its fabric of 
 flesh and its indwelling spirit, is the highest object 
 of the artist’s study, the richest treasury of his ar- 
 tistic ideals. If he hold it in little honour, the price 
 he pays is the prostitution of his art. But for this 
 prostitution, to the existence of which in American 
 painting the thoughtful student cannot shut his 
 eyes, the American public is in part responsible. 
 One could name painters whose ideals were true 
 enough at the start, but who have been driven 
 on to the streets of easy virtue by hard conditions. 
 The public demand for honest art is so small, the 
 reward it otFers to meretriciousness so cordial and 
 handsome. Why not? You cannot make a silk . 
 
 [ 359 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 purse out of a sow’s ear. A society sprawling on 
 materialism and wallowing in ostentatious display 
 — what should it care for, or even know of, choice- 
 ness of taste and reverence for what is true in art? 
 Naturally, since it pays the piper, it calls the kind 
 of tune it likes; and the piper accordingly must 
 debauch his art or step aside and rot. Under such 
 circumstances the artist needs to have a more than 
 commonly stout heart to continue to be true to him- 
 self and to preserve confidence in a saving residue 
 of taste in the public. 
 
 For that there is such a residue one knows. While 
 present American conditions in the gross are not 
 favourable to the highest possibilities of native art, 
 here, there, and everywhere throughout the country 
 knowledge and taste are growing, and the still, 
 small voice of true appreciation is gathering vol- 
 ume. It is on people with knowledge enough to 
 dare to have ojDinions of their own, and with the 
 taste that can distinguish between what is meretri- 
 cious and what is sterling, that the future of Amer- 
 ican art depends. 
 
 [ 360 ] 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SUMMAEY CONTINUED 
 
 I N the previous chapter I touched upon some of 
 the insidious effects of the popular taste for 
 prettiness. These, it is to be anticipated, will 
 pass away as the American public grows in serious 
 appreciation of what is truly beautiful in art. But 
 even then there will remain another phase of the 
 matter which is likely to be of perennial interest, 
 since it strikes at the roots of our conceptions of 
 beauty. Stated bluntly, it involves the question: 
 How far is the conception of beauty in art com- 
 patible with ugliness ? 
 
 At the outset the two ideas seem to be mutually 
 antagonistic, and so they are reckoned by those who 
 narrow their conceptions of beauty to the ideal 
 purity of Greek sculpture of the golden age, and 
 to the subsequent work of Roman, Rennaissance, 
 and later times that tried to emulate it. With all 
 such the ideal is to render form and feeling in the 
 harmony of a perfect poise, to exclude the indi- 
 vidual or irregular, and to imagine and suggest an 
 abstract ideal of perfection. But in actual life 
 absolute perfection of form is not to be found, still 
 less a complete harmony of poise between the phys- 
 ical, the intellectual, and the emotional. Exception 
 
 [ 361 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 both to one and to the other is the rule. So the 
 question eternally cropping up, eternally unsolved, 
 arises out of the artist’s attitude toward life. Does 
 he regard life itself as the end and object of his 
 study, or merely as a rich mine from which he may 
 extract ore to fashion it into creations of his own 
 imagination? In the latter case he will strive to im- 
 prove upon nature, in the former to represent it as 
 it is. These two ideals of art differ so widely that 
 it is difficult for the artists who eml)race the one to 
 have much sympathy with those in the opposite 
 camp. For the layman, however, there need he no 
 such difficulty, because his detachment from any 
 preoccupation with technique enables him to view 
 the matter from outside. Doing so, he may, if he 
 has clear eyes, find truth in both directions. Many 
 a layman will reach his conclusions somewhat in 
 this fashion: 
 
 To him it seems that life is the thing of supreme 
 importance; art being but one of the sources of 
 higher living. He thinks of art as a magic mirror 
 in which life is reflected, and looks to find in it a 
 heightened impression of the things of sight, as a 
 suggestion to the spirit or sense-imagination of the 
 things not seen. If the mirror only gives back a 
 repeated vision of what he can see with his own 
 eyes, he is disappointed, for in this case art has 
 added nothing to nature. There is no heightening 
 of impression, no stimulus to imagination or spirit. 
 
 [ 362 ] 
 
THE SILVER GOWN Howard J. Cushing 
 
 GOOD example of a young painter whose work is char- 
 acterized hy originality of feeling, a refined color sense, 
 and a distinguished quality of line. 
 

 
 SS >- 
 
 
 
 a ?fc 
 
 So' 5 ~ 
 
 5 
 
 
 I 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 He may admire the skill or fidelity with which this 
 vision has been produced, even as he admires the 
 craftsmanship involved in the mechanism of a piece 
 of machinery, but for him in neither case is there 
 any evidence of creation. The mechanic, whether 
 his tool be the brush or turning lathe, is but engaged 
 in reproducing; he is not an inventor. And the 
 painter is only an inventor, a creator, if he has the 
 artist’s vision, by means of which our own may be 
 kindled to a heightened sense of beauty. 
 
 By the time that we have learned to demand this 
 of a painter, and to refuse him the higher title of 
 artist, unless he comply with it, our whole attitude 
 toward pictures is changed. Especially do we 
 cease to concern ourselves much with the subject 
 of the picture. The most exalted subject will not 
 of itself impress us. It is not the subject, but the 
 artist’s vision of it, which affects us. A pumpkin, 
 rendered by that great French master of still-life, 
 Vollon, may move us deeply, where an elaborate 
 figure composition leaves us cold. And why? Be- 
 cause VoUon’s pumpkin becomes, as it were, a 
 symbol through which we receive a heightened im- 
 pression of the sumptuousness and subtlety of 
 nature’s colouring, the vitalising power of light, 
 and the opulence of nature’s productive vigour. 
 Our own sensibility is enriched; for the moment, at 
 least, we live more abundantly. And for this 
 effect upon ourselves we are indebted to the artist’s 
 
 [ 365 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 vision, which he has enabled us to share through his 
 power to give it technical expression. 
 
 But if he is endowed with these qualifications of 
 vision and expression, the artist can look upon na- 
 ture and life and find in them occasions of beauty, 
 overlooked by ordinary eyes. He will even dis- 
 cover beauty lurking in ugliness, or by his treat- 
 ment of the latter will transmute it into a form of 
 beauty. For, in the first place, what do we our- 
 selves understand by ugliness? Have we in mind 
 some such exaggerated type of physical formation 
 as that of a toad or spider-crab, or, to take another 
 extreme instance, that of a man of the slums who 
 is morally as well as physically deteriorated, offen- 
 sive alike to our senses and our conscience? But, 
 as to nature’s form of so-called ugliness, I doubt 
 if there be one, however abnormal in comparison 
 with our ordinary standards of comeliness, but has 
 some quality of colouring or of movement that to 
 the searching eye of the artist’s vision may not be 
 able to yield suggestion of beauty, which his tech- 
 nical skill will evolve into expression. The Japa- 
 nese, in their carvings, lacquers, and prints, have 
 abundantly illustrated this. As to the slum-man, 
 we may turn from him with repugnance, but it is 
 precisely to him that the Salvation Army turns, in 
 its conviction that somewhere latent in him is still 
 a possibility of goodness. Similarly an artist may 
 turn to him as a source of artistic inspiration. If 
 
 [ 366 ] 
 
Copyright, ^9oe, hy Hugo BalUn 
 
 EUROPA SIBYL Hugo Ballix 
 
 Y allegorical subject represented in a spirit that is essentially, even if not too ob- 
 viously, academic, for the idealism scarcely pervades the feeling of the picture. 
 It is, rather, the result of costumes and accessories that are out of the usual. 
 
BOYS wmi I-ISII CI.ABIES W. HA«T.,0RKn 
 
 seem in the r( production a hnifnlifu of eff-ct is alleviated in the oripi- 
 ^^t'S'teritp irith udiirh the colors and slipperp forms of the fish are 
 *'od( r((l. Jhe p-ainter is p( rhaps the last of Cha.sa's pupils, but has pet to 
 p'nd himsflf. That he u'iU tjo ,s*,) probable, throuph his studif in Italp, u'here men discover 
 that brushwork does m>t constitute the whole art of paintinp. 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 he does so, he has the excellent precedent, among 
 others, of Rembrandt and Velasquez. Shall we 
 venture to deny to those artists a sense of beauty, 
 or shall we reconstruct our notion of beauty so as 
 to include their example? I think the latter will 
 seem the wiser plan. The notion, then, of beauty, 
 so extended, involves character; both expression of 
 character and character of expression. Character 
 implies something distinctive, individual, so far 
 abnormal that it is a deviation from the general run, 
 and still more so from the abstract type. It is, for 
 example, the quality conspicuous in a locust tree, 
 so unexpectedly original in its growth, as com- 
 pared with the exquisitely balanced grace of an 
 American elm. Really one might venture to illus- 
 trate the difference between the academic under- 
 standing of beauty, and the extended acceptation 
 of it to include character, by the comparison of 
 these two trees. 
 
 But it must be remembered that the artist com- 
 prehends character as a functional quality. He 
 deals primarily with externals, and, while he may 
 not be unconscious of the psychological import of 
 character, it is primarily its effect upon the phys- 
 ical aspect that he notes and renders. If he is really 
 a nature-student, it is character in a human being, 
 affecting the latter’s form, the functions of the 
 limbs and joints, the disposition and texture of the 
 flesh, the very kind and carrying of the clothes, 
 
 [ 369 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 that form a large portion of his study. Or, if he 
 is a landscape painter, the effect of permanent en- 
 vironment and temporary conditions upon the 
 forms of objects. Always he feels the forces 
 working through nature and declaring themselves 
 in form. It is the beauty of nature’s law of cause 
 and effect, illustrated in a myriad aspects, that at- 
 tracts him, rather than man’s invention of an ab- 
 stract perfection of beauty. And it is because that 
 law is working in the slum-man that he claims the 
 right, if he will, to make him the subject of artistic 
 study. We may shudder at the evidences of func- 
 tional degradation presented in the picture, but do 
 not let us forget that there are the physical and 
 moral counterparts of this in the tragedies of 
 CKdipus and Othello. But, you will say, these are 
 clothed in a splendour of diction that dignifies the 
 theme. Quite so, and it is precisely a correspond- 
 ing splendour of technical presentation that justi- 
 fies the treatment of horrible subjects in pictures. 
 There should be character of expression as well as 
 expression of character. 
 
 The foregoing analysis of the place of so-called 
 ugliness in art has been suggested by the effort 
 of a few of our younger painters to shake them- 
 selves free from the fetters of prettiness and senti- 
 mentality in which much American art is confined. 
 They are men who are interested in life as well as 
 art, and who use the one to interpret the other. 
 
 [370 ] 
 
JoHX Sloan 
 
 EASTER EVE 
 
 , • • Tho <iuh)pcf has been feh as well as seen^ and 
 
 i/,« spectator icith the effect produced on the arUst s men mmd 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 One of these is John Sloan, a native of Philadel- 
 phia, and a pupil of the Pennsylvania Academy of 
 the Fine Arts. He is now a resident of New York, 
 v/hose crowded avenues, especially on the West 
 Side, supply the subjects of his choice. For it is 
 what the Japanese call the “ Ukiyoye ” that attracts 
 him — ^the “ passing show ” of shops and streets, 
 overhead and surface traffic, and the moving 
 throngs of people, smart and squalid, sad and merry 
 — a phantasmagoria of changing colour, form, and 
 action. Out of the multiplied features of the scene, 
 by eliminating some and emphasising others, he 
 produces a synthesis of effect, in which confusion 
 has disappeared, but the suggestion of vivid actu- 
 ality remains. His pictures are excellent examples 
 of modern impressionism; but, while the rendering 
 of the spectacle presented to the eye is his first con- 
 cern, his mind also is busy with the human comedy 
 and tragedy that beats below the surface. It is the 
 humanity of the scene, as well as its pictorial sug- 
 gestions, that interests him. Not, however, in the 
 way of telling a definite story, but by inference and 
 suggestion. It is an impression of the human in- 
 terest that he has received, and he renders it im- 
 pressionistically. A writer, for example, if he 
 were attracted by one of these scenes with its inci- 
 dental suggestion, might make it the subject of a 
 story, inventing a past and present for the person- 
 ages and a sequel to what they are engaged in; in- 
 
 [ S73 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 vesting them and the situation with detailed motive 
 and conduct, and elaborating a denouement. 
 Many a painter also, mostly of the old-fashioned 
 kind, might attempt to force upon your attention 
 a corresponding definition of detailed incident. 
 But he would operate under the serious limitation 
 of being able to represent only one single phase of 
 the story. Sloan, like other impressionists, rec- 
 ognising this limitation, avoids all competition with 
 the verbal artist, and renders exclusively a painter’s 
 impression both of the scene and of its underlying 
 human interest. lie grasps the actual moment of 
 appearance and suggestion. 
 
 In the rendering of these scenes line is super- 
 seded by masses ; the whole is viewed as a collection 
 of coloured patches, differing in hues, in the 
 amount of light which they receive, and in the 
 cpiantity of atmosphere which intervenes between 
 them and the eye of the observer. Is it necessary 
 to add that this impressionistic vision is, after all, 
 the nonnal way in which the eye receives impres- 
 sions of a scene? We are not conscious of hard 
 lines enclosing objects, but of contours more or less 
 blurred and blending; forming masses of light and 
 dark, or of light and less light, of various hues and 
 shapes. But in the actual scene, especially if it be 
 laid in a crowded thoroughfare, flanked by the 
 irregularities of buildings, the masses, both in their 
 variety and shape, will present a good deal of the 
 
 [3TI] 
 
T; 
 
 tiDUMPING SNOW 
 
 George Luks 
 
 ^ m ^11 ERE is a brutal side to life, when the necessities of existence force themselves upon one. It is 
 , m such a scene that is here represented. A lowering sky, a city choked with snow — the only 
 receptacle for it the dark, swirling water of the river. The conditions are monstrous, a modern 
 revival of the fight of the earth-folk with the Titans. In a very remarkable way the young painter has 
 comprehended the significance of what to the average eye might seem a very ordinary scene. 
 
I 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 bizarrerie of a crazy quilt. It is a part of the ar- 
 tist’s vision to draw these conflicting elements into 
 a harmony of colour, lighting, tone, and atmos- 
 phere; so that the impression rendered may be one 
 of artistic ensemble. By the time that the work has 
 gone through the artist’s two processes of receiv- 
 ing and rendering his impressions, it will partake 
 of the unity of his own individuality and tempera- 
 ment. It will still give a suggestion of variety and 
 busy action, but the different features of activity 
 will be busy toward a common end, the modes of 
 variety will be harmonised. The scene itself, com- 
 posed of a great number of independent units, will 
 have become unified into a picture that represents 
 the impression of a single mind. 
 
 Now, our appreciation of the picture will de- 
 pend, not only upon the artist’s ability to create 
 this ensemble of impression, but upon our own 
 willingness to accept it. We may fail of the latter 
 for two reasons: a general dislike of the impres- 
 sionistic method, or a particular one of the kind 
 of subject affected by Sloan and others. With 
 neither is it any use to argue, since likes and dis- 
 likes are largely the product of temperament. Yet, 
 if possible, they should be fortified by judgment, 
 based upon understanding. Especially should this 
 be the case in the matter of impressionism, since it 
 plays so large a part in modern art. 
 
 Our understanding and possible appreciation of 
 [ 377 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 it depends entirely — to go back to the point from 
 which we started — upon our attitude toward the 
 relation between art and life. For some painters 
 the call of life is so urgent and alluring that they 
 are not satisfied to make pictures about life, but 
 try to render life in their pictures. The distinction 
 is an important one. In the one case the scene 
 within the frame, having had its origin in the de- 
 sire to make a picture, continues to affect us as a 
 picture, while in the other case we may be made 
 to forget the canvas, paint, and frame, and find 
 ourselves looking, as through a window, out upon 
 a pageant of real life. Has this a fascination for 
 us, as it had for the painter? We may agree that 
 it has, and yet demur to the kind of life that the 
 painter has chosen to render. If so, we are again 
 brouglit back to tlie attitude of art toward life. 
 Shall the ])ainter confine his study to idealising life, 
 or at least to presenting only its comely aspects, or 
 may he have the whole run of life for his field, as 
 the writer has; trusting to the sincerity of his pur- 
 pose and the beauty of his technique to justify the 
 ugliness of his theme? Whatever may be our indi- 
 vidual answer to this question, let us recognise that 
 the work of Sloan and a few others, such as Robert 
 Henri. C. W. Hawthorne. William G. Glackens, 
 Jerome ]Myers, and George Luks, is a natural and 
 wholesome reaction from the vogue of frippery, 
 tameness, and sentimentality. It has, however, its 
 
 [ 378 ] 
 

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Copuright, 1906, by F.. Monrrott 
 
 TWILIGHT — AUTUMN Dwight W. Tkvov 
 
 ^ CHARACTERISTIC subject — the forecfrouml stroiuf nud ru/id ; shiuler trees^ with f()li(t<je sjtrayed (Kjninst an 
 y m aerial distance of luminous rihrations ; the sentiment exquisiteh/ subtle in its aiqie.al to the spirit. 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 own inherent shortcoming when it reveals a ten- 
 dency to be overoccupied with the appearances of 
 life, and makes little or no appeal to the imagina- 
 tion or spirit. Based practically, if not avowedly, 
 upon the assumjjtion that “ seeing is believing,” 
 that the painter’s domain is that of the eye, it may 
 easily ignore the at least equally important aspect 
 of life which is made up of things not seen. It 
 may take no account of the mystery that is in us 
 and everyw’here about us. It may be in its own 
 superior way an exploitation of the obvious. 
 
 One should understand that its appearance in 
 American painting is rather belated; for it is but 
 repeating what Courbet and Manet did for the re- 
 freshment and invigoration of French art forty 
 years ago. They, however, were the leaders in 
 painting of the theories and practices entertained 
 by the writers of the period; and painters and 
 writers alike were a part of the realistic movement 
 that was affecting the thought of the time. But 
 since then the wheel has revolved; realism is no 
 longer a motive ; it is now only one of other means 
 to an end. People, indeed, have grown a little 
 weary of the diet, discovering that they cannot live 
 by bread alone. Once more the spiritual needs of 
 man are awake and calling to be fed. Abroad, es- 
 pecially in Germany, the more progressive of the 
 painters have realised this reaction from material- 
 ism, and are responding to it. It is for a similar 
 
 [ 381 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 recognition and response on the part of the paint- 
 ers of this country that we are waiting. 
 
 Not that American painting can show no ex- 
 ample of such progress. In a previous chapter we 
 have noted that, while Whistler may be studied 
 under many aspects, the most important and abid- 
 ing one was his habit of evolving from material 
 appearances their essence, the intangible element 
 in them — in fact, the spirituality inherent in mat- 
 ter. The same is true of Thayer, Dewing, Lock- 
 wood, and some others among figure-painters. In 
 their diverse ways these artists have treated the 
 actual appearance as a symbol of moods and 
 apprehensions of the imagination and spirit. A 
 similar tendency may also be detected in a few 
 of our landscaj^e painters, notably in Twachtman, 
 Winslow Homer, Dwight W. Tryon, Edward T. 
 Steichen, and Ben Foster. Broadly speaking, how- 
 ever, the prevailing characteristic of American 
 painting is materialistic rather than spiritual. 
 
 That the latter quality is necessary for the high- 
 est form of expression in modern art seems to me 
 undeniable. For there was a time when spiritual- 
 ity and religion w^ere practically one. The crav- 
 ings of the spirit grew out of and found expres- 
 sion in the religious consciousness; and those were 
 the great days of painting. The common and col- 
 lective need of the people was to have its faith and 
 soul-experiences bodied forth by art in terms of 
 
 [ 382 ] 
 
By Courtesy of N. E. Montross 
 
5 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
 
 religion ; and the artists, whether as men they were 
 religious or not, responded to the need with a no- 
 bility of design and execution, the influence of 
 which extended also to the portrayal of subjects 
 not religious. But in our time religion and spir- 
 ituality, if not exactly divorced, are at least very 
 far from being one. Much religion is mainly a 
 system of doctrine and ethics; a great deal of spir- 
 ituality exists among people not attracted to any 
 specific formula of religion. This general lack of 
 union between spirituality and religion is of itself 
 quite sufficient to account for the absence of noble 
 religious art in these days. There exists no com- 
 mon and collective need demanding it and making 
 it possible. Since, then, modern art is debarred by 
 circumstances from revealing the great art of the 
 past along the latter’s own lines, the question arises : 
 Can it find some new motive growing out of the 
 conditions of the present? Only, I feel assured, 
 if a common and collective recognition of the claims 
 of the spirit results in a need on the part of the 
 public, so strong as to encourage and compel its 
 realisation in art. 
 
 Belief in humanity is the practical religion of 
 to-day, and it works for man’s physical, material, 
 and intellectual uplifting. But, as a motive for 
 art, its influence is almost purely materialistic and 
 sensuous. It is only when this new religion shall 
 become impregnated with a correspondingly prac- 
 
 [385 ] 
 
STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING 
 
 tical belief in the facts of spirit, that the possibili- 
 ties of a great art in modern times will arise. 
 Symptoms of this new movement, as I have said, 
 can already he detected in American painting. 
 Whether they shall multiply and replenish the earth 
 depends in a final analysis upon the public. 
 
 [ 386 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbey, Edwin A., 100 
 His career, 193 
 Mural decoration, 194 
 Trial of Katherine of Aragon, 
 195 
 
 Mural decoration, 320 
 Quest of the Holy Grail, 320 
 Academic characteristics, 165 
 Academic style, 122 
 Academic training, 164 
 Adams, Samuel, 15 
 Adirondack Vista, An, Alexander 
 H. Wyant, 201 
 
 Against the Sky, F. W. Benson, 
 264 
 
 Albany, mural decorations for 
 Capitol of, 307 
 Alexander Cosmo, 35 
 Alexander, Portrait of Miss, James 
 A. McNeill Whistler, 298 
 Alexander, John W., 254 
 Mrs. Hastings, Portrait of, 259 
 Mural decoration, 325 
 Pittsburgh, 318 
 Allen, Thomas, 163 
 Allston, Washington, 56 
 Career, 57 
 
 Analysis of paintings, 60 
 Spanish Girl, 57 
 
 Dead Man Restored to Life, 58 
 All’s Well, Winslow Homer, 187 
 American Glass, 156 
 American School, The, Matthew 
 Pratt, 28 
 
 Arcadia, H. Siddons Mowbray, 176 
 Ariadne, Wyatt Eaton, 169 
 Ariadne, John Vanderlyn, 62 
 Armstrong, D. Maitland, 163 
 Art for Art’s Sake, 123, 258, 330 
 Artist in Museum, C. W. Peale, 34 
 
 Artist’s Mother, The, James A. Mc- 
 Neill Whistler, 293 
 Ascension, The, John La Farge, 
 309 
 
 Atmosphere, 152, 241 
 Autumn, John La Farge, 157 
 Ave Maria, Horatio Walker, 227 
 
 Ballin, Hugo, Europa Sibyl, 367 
 Barbizon School, influence of, 77, 
 124, 139, 144, 198, 200, 204, 
 206, 214, 229 
 Museum of Fine Arts, 160 
 Bathers, The, William Morris 
 Hunt, 132 
 
 Battle of Bunker Hill, John 
 Trumbull, 52 
 Beauty and Ugliness, 366 
 Beaux, Cecilia, 254 
 
 Adelaide Nutting, Portrait of, 
 256 
 
 Beckwith, J, Carroll, 163 
 Belzons, M., 88 
 Benson, Frank W., 254 
 Against the Sky, 264 
 Calm Morning, 268 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 5 
 Bierstadt, Albert, 78 
 Painting analysed, 81 
 Yosemite Valley, 80 
 Blakelock, Ralph A., 214 
 Style analysed, 217 
 Brook by Moonlight, 215 
 Blashfield, Edwin H., 163 
 Mural decoration, 319 
 Minnesota, 321 
 
 WcLshington Relinquishing Office, 
 325 
 
 Blum, Robert F., 163 
 
 [ 387 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Bonnat, 164 
 
 Boston in Colonial Times, 15 
 Decoration of Trinity Church, 
 304 
 
 Public Library, 194, 313, 320, 323 
 Boughton, George H., 186 
 Bouguereau, 164 
 Boulanger, 164 
 
 Boy and Butterfly, William Mor- 
 ris Hunt, 131 
 
 Boys loith Fish, C. W. Hawthorne, 
 368 
 
 Bracquemond, 288 
 Bridgman, Frederick Arthur, 163 
 Brook by Moonlight, The, Ralph 
 A. Blakelock, 215 
 Brown, John G., 97 
 Career, 99 
 
 Analysis of pictures, 99 
 Street boys, 101 
 Heels over Head, 96 
 Brush, George de Forest, 163 
 Analysis of pictures, 177 
 Study of Indians, 177 
 Silence Broken, 178 
 Mourning Her Brave, 178 
 Domestic theme, 181 
 The Sculptor and the King, 179 
 Portrait Group, 180 
 Burning of the Peggy Stewart, C. 
 Y. Turner, 317 
 
 Cabanel, 164 
 
 Calm before a Storm, Allen B. 
 Talcott, 243 
 
 Calm Morning, A, Frank W. Ben- 
 son, 268 
 
 Camp, Joseph de, 257 
 
 Caritas, Abbott H. Thayer, 184 
 
 Carlyle, Portrait of Thomas. James 
 A. McNeill Whistler, 29 1 
 
 Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 
 decoration, 325 
 
 Castaway, The, Winslow Homer, 
 236 
 
 Centennial Exposition, 159 
 
 Central Park, 160 
 
 Chase, Adelaide Cole, 254 
 Chase, William M., 114 
 Method of teaching, 117 
 Lady loith White Shawl, 116 
 Member of Society of American 
 Artists, 163 
 Portraits, 254 
 Chicago World’s Fair, 313 
 Christ and Nicodemus, John La 
 Farge, 148 
 Church, F. E., 78 
 Cotopawi, 83 
 Classic figures, 173 
 Classic landscape, 123 
 Cloud, The, A. L. Groll, 338 
 Cole, Thomas, 66 
 Early life, 69 
 
 Paintings analysed, 70, 75 
 Expulsion from Paradise, 68 
 Destruction, 67 
 Colonial Times, 2 
 
 Moral atmosphere of, 6 
 Painters of, 10 
 
 Connecticut Valley, Alexander H. 
 Wyant, 196 
 
 Cooper, Colin Campbell, Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa., 334 
 Copley, John Singleton, 10 
 Early life, 11 
 
 Character of portraits, 16, 21 
 Marriage, 21 
 
 Departure for Europe, 21 
 Historical pictures, 22 
 Work compared with Stuart’s, 
 U 
 
 Lady Wentworth, Portrait of, 14 
 Mr. and Mrs. Izzard, Portrait 
 of, 19 
 
 Col. Epes Sargent, Portrait of, 
 20 
 
 Copley, Richard, 12 
 Cotopawi, F. E. Church, 83 
 Courbet, Gustave, 229, 278, 381 
 Couture, French Academician, 126 
 Cox, Kenyon, 163 
 Mural decoration, 323 
 Arts and Sciences, 324 
 Crane, Bruce, 163 
 
 [ 388 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Cushing, Howard G., The Silver 
 Qown, 363 
 
 Daniel Webster, Portrait of, C. 
 Harding, 92 
 
 Dead Man Restored to Life, 
 Washington Allston, 58 
 Degas, 288 
 
 DeLancy, Miss Alice, 21 
 Destruction, Thomas Cole, 67 
 Dewey, Charles Melville, Solitude, 
 337 
 
 Dewing, Thomas W., 185, 382 
 Types analysed, 189 
 The Spinet, 188 
 Le Jaseur, 191 
 La PSche, 192 
 Dielman, Frederick, 113 
 Diez, professor at Munich, 113 
 Dr. Fothergill, Portrait of, Gilbert 
 Stuart, 40 
 
 Dogma of Redemption, John S. 
 Sargent, 322 
 
 Dougherty, Paul A., Sea and 
 Rocks, 240 
 
 Doughty, Thomas, 66 
 On the Hudson, 74 
 Dumping Snow, G. Luks, 375 
 Duran, Carolus, 117 
 His method, 164 
 Durand, Asher B., 71 
 Paintings analysed, 71 
 Landscape, 73 
 
 DUsseldorf, 76, 87, 103, 109 
 Dutch Picture, The, 335 
 Duveneck, Frank, 114 
 Career, 114 
 
 Method of painting, 114 
 Well and Water Tank, 112 
 Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, 115 
 Member of Society of American 
 Artists, 163 
 
 Duveneck, Portrait of Elizabeth 
 Boott, F. Duveneck, 115 
 
 Eakins, Thomas, 230, 347 
 Career, 231 
 
 Surgical Clinic, 228, 231 
 Style analysed, 232 
 Eaton, Wyatt, 171 
 Ariadne, 169 
 
 Early Moonrise, George Inness, 138 
 Early Spring, Leonard Ochtman, 
 345 
 
 East Side Picture, Jerome Myers, 
 376 
 
 Easter Eve, J. Sloan, 372 
 ficole des Beaux Arts, 123, 312 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 6 
 
 Influence on moral atmosphere, 
 6 
 
 Elliott, Charles Loring, 88 
 Career, 94 
 
 Portrait of the Artist, 95 
 English Influence, 85, 87, 97 
 Europa Sibyl, H. Ballin, 367 
 Expulsion from Paradise, Thomas 
 Cole, 68 
 
 Fantin-Latour, 288 
 Farm in Winter, The, J. Alden 
 Weir, 275 
 
 February, J. H. Twachtman, 284 
 Feet Washers, The, W. B. Van 
 Ingen, 310 
 
 Fire Worshippers, Homer Martin, 
 211 
 
 Fitz, B. R., 171 
 Analysis of picture, 171 
 The Reflection, 170 
 Flying Dutchman, The, Albert P. 
 
 Ryder, 219 
 Foster, Ben, 382 
 Fothergill, Portrait of Dr., Gil- 
 bert Stuart, 40 
 Fowler, Frank, 163 
 French Influence, 121, 159 
 French Vogue, 167 
 Fuller, George, 163 
 Career, 221 
 Pictures analysed, 226 
 
 Gauley, Robert David, 355 
 Portrait of a Lady, 357 
 
 [ 389 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Lady with Muf, 358 
 Genre picture, 77, 94, 97 
 Gentlewoman, Portrait of a, J. 
 
 Alden Weir, 272 
 G^rome, 164, 176 
 Gibson, Charles Dana, 182 
 Gifford, Robert Swain, 163 
 Girl and Pets, Eastman Johnson, 
 108 
 
 Girls Reading, Edmund C. Tar- 
 bell, 271 
 
 Glackens, William G., 378 
 G ley re, 288 
 
 Goelet, Portrait of Beatrice, John 
 S. Sargent, 247 
 
 Golden Age, The, John La Farge, 
 142 
 
 Grand Style, 21, 60, 65 
 Groll, Albert L., The Cloud, 338 
 Gross, Portrait of Dr., Thomas 
 Eakins, 228 
 
 Haaar and Ishmael, Beniamin 
 West, 8 
 
 Hamilton, Portrait of, John Trum- 
 bull, 51 
 
 Harding, Chester, 88 
 Career, 93 
 
 Portrait of Daniel Webster, 92 
 Harrison, Alexander, 265 
 Analysis of pictures, 265 
 The Wave, 267 
 Harrison, Birge, 163 
 Hart, William and James Mc- 
 Dougal, 76 
 Early life, 76 
 Scene at Xaponach, 79 
 Hassam, Childe, 277 
 Rainy Night, 280 
 Lorelei, 279 
 Orchard Oriole, 276 
 Hastings, Portrait of Mrs., John 
 Alexander, 259 
 Hawthorne, C. W., 378 
 Boys with Fish, 368 
 Heels over Head, J. G. Browm, 96 
 Hemlock Pool, J. H. Twachtman, 
 283 
 
 Henri, Robert, 378 
 Lady in Black, 263 
 Herter, Albert, mural decorations, 
 325 
 
 Agriculture and Commerce, 325 
 Hesselius, Gustavus, 5 
 Teacher of Peale, 30 
 Hogarth’s picture dramas, 97 
 Homer, Winslow, 185 
 All’s Well, 187 
 Career, 233 
 Analysis of style, 234 
 West Wind, 235 
 The Castaway, 236 
 Hovenden, Thomas, 163 
 Last Moments of John Brown, 
 185 
 
 Hudson, On the, Thomas Doughty, 
 74 
 
 Hudson River School, 66 
 Its place in history, 75 
 Hunt, Richard Morris, 312 
 Hunt, William Morris, 123 
 Career, 125 
 
 Influenced by Millet, 128 
 His many pupils, 129 
 Mother and Child, 120 
 Boy and Butterfly, 131 
 The Bathers, 139 
 Mural decorations, 134, 307 
 Teacher of La Farge, 150 
 The Flight of Night, 308 
 The Discoverer, 308 
 Hunter, Dr. William, 35 
 
 Ice Cutters, Horatio Walker, 220 
 Ideal, 128, 173, 282 
 
 Spiritual and Physical, 182 
 Impressionism, 266, 277, 286, 289, 
 377 
 
 Impressionists, 152, 238 
 Inman, Henry, 88 
 Style of painting, 89 
 Career, 90 
 
 Inness, George, 123, 198 
 Career, 134 
 
 Influence of Barbizon, 135 
 
 [ 390 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Painting analysed, 145 
 Midsummer, 137 
 Early Moonrise, 138 
 Peace and Plenty, 141 
 Inness, George, Jr., 163 
 Interlude, An, Sargent Kendall, 
 239 
 
 Izzard, Portrait of Mr. and Mrs., 
 J. S. Copley, 19 
 
 Japanese Art, 285, 289 
 Jaseur, Le, T. W. Dewing, 191 
 Johnson, Eastman, 103 
 Career, 106 
 Pictures analysed, 109 
 Oirl and Pets, 108 
 Two Men, 111 
 
 Member of Society of American 
 Artists, 163 
 
 Johnston, J. Humphreys, Mysteries 
 of Night, 364 
 Jones, Francis C., 163 
 Jones, H. Bolton, 163 
 
 Keeper of the Threshold, The, 
 Elihu Vedder, 175 
 Kendall, Sargent, An Interlude, 
 239 
 
 Kensett, J. F., 71, 72 
 Kitty, Portrait of Miss, J. J. 
 Shannon, 255 
 
 Lady in Black, R. Henri, 263 
 Lady Wentworth, Portrait of, 
 John S. Copley, 14 
 Lady with White Shawl, W. M. 
 Chase, 116 
 
 Lady with Muf, R. D. Gauley, 358 
 La Farge, John, 123 
 Career, 144 
 Study of Light, 151 
 Study of Glass, 154 
 The Battle Window, 155 
 The Wolf Charmer, 153 
 The Golden Age, 142 
 
 Pomona, 147 
 
 Christ and Nicodemtts, 148 
 Autumn, 157 
 
 Elected President of Society of 
 American Artists, 163 
 Mural decoration in Church of 
 St. Thomas, 308 
 The Ascension, 309 
 General decoration, 312 
 Lake George, Edward J. Steichen, 
 384 
 
 Landscape, A. B. Durand, 73 
 Landscape, H. W. Ranger, 212 
 Lathrop, Francis, 163 
 On the Canal, 333 
 Lefebvre, 164 
 Legros, 288 
 Lenox, James, 90 
 Leslie, Portrait of Eliza, T. Sully, 
 91 
 
 Lessing, 105 
 
 Leutze, Emanuel, 76, 103 
 Career, 105 
 
 Washington Crossing the Dela- 
 ware, 107 
 
 Library of Congress, decoration of 
 the dome of, 319 
 Light, 151, 270 
 Limner, 2 
 Local Color, 151 
 Lockwood, Wilton, 257, 382 
 Portrait, 260 
 Lorelei, C. Hassam, 279 
 Lovell, Portrait of John, John 
 Simbert, 7 
 Low, Will H., 163 
 The Portrait, 158 
 Luks, George, 378 
 Dumping Snow, 375 
 
 Malbone, Edward S., 59 
 Manet, 152, 237, 265, 381 
 Marquand, Portrait of Mr. Henry 
 G., John S. Sargent, 248 
 Martin, Homer D., 198 
 Career, 203 
 
 Analysis of method, 204 
 
 [ 391 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Old Church in Normandy, 202 
 Westchester Hills, 207 
 View on the Seine, 208 
 Fire Worshippers, 211 
 Sentiment of landscape, 209 
 May Night, W. L. Metcalf, 341 
 Maynard, George W., 163 
 Study at Antwerp, 164 
 Melchers, Gari, 344 
 Paintings analysed, 347 
 Shepherdess, 350 
 Mother and Child, 353 
 Sailor and Sweetheart, 354 
 Metcalf, W. L., May Night, 341 
 Metropolitan Museum, 140, 160 
 Meyer, Portrait of Mrs. Carl, 
 John S. Sargent, 244 
 Midsummer, George Inness, 137 
 Millet, Frank D., 163 
 Study at Antwerp, 164 
 Mural decorations, 326 
 Treaty of the Traverse des 
 Sioux, 327 
 
 Millet, Jean Fran9ois, 127 
 Milieu, 266, 277 
 
 Minnesota, Edwin H. Blashfteld, 
 321 
 
 Minor, C., 214 
 Monet, 273 
 Monticelli, 221 
 
 Moonlight, Dwight Tryon, 383 
 Mora, F. Luis, Spanish Fete, 371 
 Morality and Art, 351 
 Moran, Thomas, 78 
 Shoshone Falls, 84 
 Moreland, 98 
 
 Mother and Child, Gari Melchers, 
 353 
 
 Mother and Child, William Mor- 
 ris Hunt, 120 
 
 Mowbray, H. Siddons, 'Arcadia, 
 176 * 
 
 Munich, 103, 110, 117, 339 
 Mural Painting, 304 
 Characteristics of, 319 
 Murphy J. Francis, Road to the 
 Old Farm, 342 
 
 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 160 
 
 Music Room, The, James A. Mc- 
 Neill Whistler, Frontispiece, 
 301 
 
 Myers, Jerome, 378 
 East Side Picture, 376 
 Mysteries of the Night, J. Hum- 
 phreys Johnston, 364 
 
 Naponach, Scene at, 'W. Hart, 79 
 National Academy of Design, 
 founded, 32 
 
 Dissensions of revolutionaries, 
 H)2 
 
 New England Farm in Winter, 
 Dwight Tryon, 379 
 New York, DcWitt Clinton High 
 School, 326 
 Manhattan Hotel, 325 
 Nicodemus, Visit of, J. La Farge, 
 148 
 
 Niemeyer, John H., 163 
 Normandy, Old Church in, H. 
 Martin, 202 
 
 Nutting, Portrait of Adelaide, 
 Cecilia Beaux, 256 
 
 Ochtman, Leonard, Early Spring, 
 345 
 
 Old Church in Normandy, H. Mar- 
 tin, 202 
 
 On the Canal, F. Lathrop, 333 
 Opalescent Glass, 154, 312 
 Orchard Oriole, Childe Hassam, 
 276 
 Otis, 15 
 
 Palmer, Walter L., 163 
 Paul, St., Capitol, 325 
 Paris Exposition, 339 
 Paysage Intime, 71 
 Peace and Plenty, G. Inness, 141 
 Peale, C. IP., Portrait of, Benja- 
 min West, 13 
 
 Peale, Charles Wilson, 10 
 Career, 29 
 Joins the array, 30 
 Analysis of portraits, 31 
 
 [ 392 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Co-operates in founding Penn- 
 sylvania Academy, 32 
 Work compared with Stuart’s, 
 42 
 
 Portrait of Washington, 33 
 Artist in Museum, 34 
 Packer La, T. W. Dewing, 19:2 
 P^goy Stewart, Burning of the, 
 C. Y. Turner, 317 
 Pelham, Peter, 2 
 Marries mother of John S. Cop- 
 ley, 15 
 
 Pennington, Mr., teacher of West, 
 10 
 
 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine 
 Arts, founded, 32 
 Philadelphia, 23 
 Ascendancy of, 24 
 Academy of Fine Arts, 32 
 Centennial Exposition, 159 
 Piano, At the, James A. McNeill 
 Whistler, 297 
 Picknell, William L., 163 
 Piloty, professor at Munich, 110 
 Pine, Robert Edge, 23 
 Paints the Hon. Francis Hop- 
 kinson, 24 
 Early life, 25 
 
 Studies of distinguished heads, 
 25 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Reid, 27 
 Pissarro 274 
 
 Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 325 
 Pittsburgh, John Alexander, 318 
 Pittsburgh, Pa., Colin Campbell 
 Cooper, 334 
 Plein Air, 123, 265 
 Pointilliste, 273 
 Pomona, John La Farge, 147 
 Portrait, Wilton Lockwood, 260 
 Portrait, A, Irving R. Wiles, 252 
 Portrait, The, WiU H. Low, 158 
 Portrait Orouy, G. de F. Brush, 
 180 
 
 Portrait Group, John S. Sargent, 
 251 
 
 Portrait of a Lady, R. D. Grauley, 
 357 
 
 Portrait of the Artist, John Van- 
 derlyn, 61 
 
 Portrait of the Artist, C. L. Elliot, 
 95 
 
 Pratt, Matthew, 23 
 Paint Shop Signs, 26 
 Visits West in London, 29 
 The American School, 28 
 Puritanic Influence, 6, 166 
 Puvis de Chavannes, 323 
 
 Quartley, Arthur, 163 
 Quidor, teacher of Charles L. El- 
 liott, 94 
 
 Quincey, Portrait of Mrs. Nor^ 
 ton. Unknown, 4 
 
 Rainy Night, A, C. Hassam, 280 
 Ranger, Henry W., 213 
 Landscape, 212 
 Realism, 101, 288, 381 
 Coloristic, 110 
 In literature, 230 
 Painting, 233, 237 
 Newer, 269 
 
 Redemption, Dogma of The, J. S. 
 Sargent, 322 
 
 Redfield, The Valley, 346 
 Reflection, The, B. R. Fitz, 170 
 Reid, Portrait of Mrs., R. E. Pine, 
 27 
 
 Reid, Robert, mural decorations 
 in Boston State House, 326 
 Rheinhart, Charles S., 163 
 Richardson, H. H., 304, 312 
 Road to the Old Farm, J. F. 
 
 Murphy, 342 
 Robinson, Theodore, 163 
 Romanticism, 104, 109 
 Rome, Elihu Vedder, 328 
 Rome, goal of artists, 48 
 Influence of, 60 
 Rood, Professor, 274 
 Ryder, Albert P., 218 
 Style analysed, 221 
 Siegfried, 216 
 Flying Dutchman, 219 
 
 [ 393 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Sailor and Sweetheart, Gari Melch- 
 ers, 354f 
 
 Sargent, John S., 245 
 Career, 245 
 Analysis of style, 246 
 Brush work, 250 
 Beatrice Ooelet, 247 
 Marquand, Henry O., 248 
 Portrait Group, 251 
 Mrs, Carl Meyer, 244 
 Mural decoration, 320 
 Prophets, 320 
 
 Dogma of Redemption, 322 
 Sargent, Portrait of Col. Epes, 
 John S. Copley, 20 
 Sartain, William, 163 
 Schadow, director at Dusseldorf, 
 103 
 
 Scientific study of light, 151, 152 
 Scirmer, teacher at Dusseldorf, 
 76 
 
 Sculptor and the King, The, 
 George de Forest Brush, 179 
 Sea and Rocks, Paul A. Dough- 
 erty, 240 
 Seurat, 274 
 Shannon, J. J., 254 
 
 Miss Kitty, Portrait of, 255 
 Sheep lFoj?Ain^, Horatio Walker, 
 224 
 
 Shepherdess, Gari Melchers, 350 
 Shirlaw, Walter, 114 
 Summer Idyll, 119 
 Training, 171 
 Shop-signs, 26 
 
 Shoshone Falls, Thomas Moran, 
 84 
 
 Siegfried, Albert P. Ryder, 216 
 Silver Gown, The, H. J. Cushing, 
 363 
 
 Simmons, Edward, mural decora- 
 tions in Boston State House, 
 326 
 
 Singleton, John, 15 
 Sloan, John, 373 
 Easter Eve, 372 
 Sluice, The, F. B. Williams, 349 
 Smedley, William T., 163 
 
 Smibert, John, 2 
 His life, 5 
 His sitters, 5 
 Portrait of John Lovell, 7 
 Society of American Artists, 162 
 Solitude, Charles Melville Dewey, 
 337 
 
 South, moral atmosphere con- 
 trasted with North, 9 
 Trade with England after Rev- 
 olution, 47 
 
 Spanish FSte, F. Luis Mora, 371 
 Spanish Girl, W. Allston, 57 
 Spinet, The, Thomas W. Dewing, 
 188 
 
 Stained Glass, 154, 305 
 Steichen, Edward T., 382 
 Lake George, 384 
 Stuart, Gilbert, 10 
 Early Life, 35 
 Departure for London, 36 
 Analysis of portraits, 36 
 Portraits of Washington, 38 
 Settles in Boston, 42 
 Work compared with Peale and 
 Copley, 43, 44 
 
 Portrait of Dr. Fothergill, 40 
 Portrait of Washington, 39 
 Sully, Thomas, 88 
 Early life, 88 
 Analysis of painting, 89 
 Portrait of Eliza Leslie, 91 
 Summer Idyll, W. Shirlaw, 119 
 Surgical Clinic, T. Eakins, 228, 231 
 Symbolism, 172, 287 
 Synthesis, 72 
 
 Talcott, Allen B., Calm before a 
 Storm, 243 
 
 Tarbell, Edmund C., Girls Read- 
 ing, 271 
 
 Thayer, Abbot H., 163, 382 
 Analysis of pictures, 382 
 Virgin Enthroned, 183 
 Caritas, 184 
 
 Theatre in Colonial Times, 9 
 
 [ 394 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 In Philadelphia, 24 
 Influence in Diisseldorf, 104 
 Thomas, Church of Saint, mural 
 decoration, 308 
 Tiffany, Louis C., 163 
 Treaty of the Traverse des 
 Sioux, Frank D. Millet, 327 
 Trial of Katherine of Aragon, 
 Edwin A. Abbey, 195 
 Trinity Church, Boston, mural 
 decoration, 305 
 
 Trumbull, John, early life, 49 
 Studies with West, 50 
 Estimate as painter, 50 
 Portrait of Hamilton, 51 
 Battle of Bunker Hill, 52 
 Mural Decoration, 304 
 Tryon, Dwight W., 382 
 New England Farm in Winter, 
 
 379 
 
 Twilight — Autumn, 380 
 Moonlight, 383 
 Turner, C. Y., 186 
 Burning of the Peggy Stewart, 
 317 
 
 Mural decoration, 325 
 Opening of the Erie Canal, 326 
 Twachtman, J. H., 163, 382 
 Characteristics analysed, 278 
 Career, 281 
 Hemlock Pool, 283 
 February, 284 
 
 Twilight — Autumn, Dwight Tryon, 
 
 380 
 
 Two Men, Eastman Johnson, 111 
 
 Universal Geometry, 149 
 
 Valley, The, Edward W. Redfield, 
 346 
 
 Values, 242, 262 
 Vanderlyn, John, 64 
 
 Estimate of paintings, 65 
 Portrait of the Artist, 61 
 Ariadne, 63 
 
 Van Ingen, The Feet Washers, 310 
 Vedder, Elihu, 163 
 Analysis of method, 171 
 
 Illustrations, 171 
 Symbolism, 172 
 Rome, 328 
 
 Corrupt Government, 329 
 Keeper of the Threshold, 175 
 Velasquez, 238, 262, 285, 289 
 View of the Seine, Homer Mar- 
 tin, 208 
 
 Vinton, Frederick P., 163, 257 
 Virgin Enthroned, Abbot H. 
 Thayer, 183 
 
 Volk, Douglas, 163, 186 
 Vollon, 365 
 
 Wagner, professor at Munich, 113 
 Walker, Horatio, Ice Cutters, 220 
 Wood Cutters, 223 
 Sheep Washing, 224 
 Ave Maria, 227 
 
 Washington, Crossing the Delcu- 
 ware, E. Leutze, 107 
 Washington, Portrait of, Charles 
 Wilson Peale, 33 
 
 Washington, Portrait of, Gilbert 
 Stuart, 39 
 
 Washington, D. C., Library of 
 Congress, 319, 323, 329 
 Wave, The, A. Harrison, 267 ” 
 Webster, Daniel, Portrait of, 
 Chester Harding, 92 
 Weir, J. Alden, 163 
 A Gentlewoman, 272 
 ~The Farm in Winter, 275 
 Weir, Portrait of Mrs. Robert, 
 Unknown, 3 
 
 Well and Water Tank, F. Duve- 
 neck, 112 
 
 Wentworth, Lady, 17 
 West, Benjamin, 10 
 Birth and early training, 10 
 Earliest portraits, 11 
 Residence in England, 11 
 Visited by Copley, 21 
 Visited by Stuart, 36 
 Teacher of Trumbull, 50 
 Hagar and Ishmael, 8 
 Portrait of C. W. Peale, 13 
 Teacher of Sully, 89 
 
 [ 396 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 West Wind, Winslow Homer, 235 
 Westchester Hills, Homer Martin, 
 207 
 
 Whistler, J. A. McNeill, 285 
 Career, 288 
 Theories, 290 
 Pictures analysed, 292 
 Influence, 302 
 Sarasate, 295 
 Nocturne-Bognor, 296 
 The White Girl, 299 
 Symphony in White, 299 
 Little Lady Sophie of Soho, 299 
 Etchings, 302 
 At the Piano, 297 
 Portrait of the ArtisTs Mother, 
 292, 293 
 
 Portrait of Carlyle, 291, 295 
 
 The Music Room, Frontispiece, 
 301 
 
 Miss Alexander, 298 
 Whitman, Sarah C., 163 
 Wiles, Irving R., Portrait, 252 
 Williams, Frederick Ballard, The 
 Sluice, 349 
 
 Wood Cutters, Horatio Walker, 
 223 
 
 Wright, Joseph, 23 
 Wyant, Alexander H., 163 
 Career, 198 
 
 Pictures analysed, 200 
 Connecticut Valley, 196 
 Adirondack Vista, 201 
 
 Yosemite Valley, A. Bierstadt, 80 
 
 [ 396 ] 
 

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