210 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 L 
 
 Portrait by Win. M. Chase.
 
 AIMS AND IDEALS 
 
 OF 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN 
 PAINTERS. 
 
 WRITTEN AND ARRANGED 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUMMELL, 
 E. M. BERLIN. 
 
 E. M. BERLIN, 
 
 406 Mooney Building, 
 BUFFALO, N. Y.
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 E. M. BERLIN. 
 
 BECKTOLD 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO. 
 ST. LOUIS, MO.
 
 Ail 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Art and the human need for beauty, 15 
 II. Education necessary to the intelli- 
 gent appreciation of art, . . . 19 
 
 III. Art and Nature 21 
 
 IV. The Pre-Raphaelite influence upon 
 
 American painters, 27 
 
 V. The Barbizon influence introduced 
 
 by William M. Hunt 28 
 
 VI. The Genius of Wyant, .... 33 
 VII. Inness, the virile and versatile inter- 
 preter of the American landscape, 36 
 VIII. The originality of Whistler, ... 44 
 IX. Whistler's theory of art as exempli- 
 fied in his "arrangements," 
 "harmonies," and "nocturnes," 48 
 X. Whistler as a portrait painter, . . 58 
 XI. Sargent : his fortunate career and 
 
 brilliant achievements, .... 64 
 XII. Edwin Lord Weeks, an American 
 
 interpreter of Oriental subjects, 73 
 
 XIII. An American painter of French 
 
 peasants, 78 
 
 XIV. The idealism of Ridgway Knight, . 81 
 
 7 
 
 2224235
 
 PAGE. 
 
 XV. An American painter of Dutch sub- 
 jects, 83 
 
 XVI. William M. Chase, the master tech- 
 
 nicist 86 
 
 XVII. John La Farge, the American col- 
 
 orist, 95 
 
 XVIII. The great American genre painter, 
 
 Winslow Homer 106 
 
 XIX. Marine, animal, figure and land- 
 scape painters, 110 
 
 XX. Conclusion 113
 
 INDEX TO PAINTERS, 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Abbey, Edwin A., Ill 
 
 Beaux, Cecilia 112 
 
 Chase, William M., 86 
 
 Copley, John Singleton, 113 
 
 Crane, Bruce, 35 
 
 Dannat, W. T., Ill 
 
 Davis, Charles H., .112 
 
 De Haas, M. F. H., . . . , . . 110 
 
 Dewey, Charles Melville, 112 
 
 Gifford, R. Swain, Ill 
 
 Harrison, Alexander, 110 
 
 Hitchcock, George, Ill 
 
 Homer, Winslow 106 
 
 Hunt, William Morris, 28 
 
 Inness, George, 36 
 
 Inness, George, Jr., Ill 
 
 Knight, D. Ridgway, 81 
 
 La Farge, John, . 95 
 
 McChesney, Clara, 112 
 
 Mcllhenny, C. Morgan Ill 
 
 Melchers, J. Gari, 83 
 
 Millet, F. D., Ill 
 
 Moran, Edward, 110 
 
 9
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Moran, Peter Ill 
 
 Moran, Thomas, 112 
 
 Mosler, Henry Ill 
 
 Murphy, J. Francis, 112 
 
 Nichblls, Rhoda Holmes, 112 
 
 Pearce, Charles Sprague, 78 
 
 Richards, W. T 110 
 
 Sargent, John Singer, 64 
 
 Shannon, J. J., v . Ill 
 
 Sherwood, Rosina, 112 
 
 Stuart, Gilbert 113 
 
 Tryon, D. W., Ill 
 
 Vedder, Elihu Ill 
 
 Weeks, Edwin Lord, 73 
 
 Whistler, James McNeill, 44 
 
 Wiggins, Carleton, Ill 
 
 Wyant, Alexander H., 33 
 
 10
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 |HB constantly growing 
 interest in American art 
 Has been thought a suf- 
 ficient reason for publishing the 
 present essay on the subject. The 
 purpose here, however, has not 
 been to chronicle the lives and 
 works of our American painters, 
 but rather to explain briefly the 
 philosophy of art in general and 
 the peculiar province of painting 
 as a medium for aesthetic enjoy- 
 ment, in order thereby to prepare 
 
 the way for a clearer understanding 
 
 11
 
 of the aims and theories of our 
 leading American painters, and to 
 make possible a fairly correct ap- 
 preciation of their originality, their 
 high ideals and their successful 
 achievements. Special considera- 
 tion has been given to William 
 Morris Hunt, who brought the 
 Barbizon influence to America ; to 
 James McNeill Whistler, the truest 
 apostle of u art for art's sake"; to 
 George Inness, the virile and versa- 
 tile interpreter of the American 
 landscape ; to John La Farge, the 
 preeminent American colorist ; to 
 William M. Chase, the master 
 technicist ; and to Winslow Ho- 
 mer, the most American of all our 
 
 12
 
 painters. Somewhat briefer treat- 
 ment has been given to other dis- 
 tinguished artists, and the essay 
 concludes with an estimate of 
 America's place in the world of 
 art to-day and its prospective rank 
 in the future. 
 
 E. M. BERLIN. 
 
 13
 
 Portrait by Cecilia Beaux.
 
 I. 
 
 ESS than a score of years ago rtad the human 
 
 Matthew Arnold criticised 
 
 our American life as being 
 
 uninteresting. The polit- 
 ical and social problems in our country, 
 he said, we have successfully solved 
 for our political system works smoothly 
 and our social system is quite free from 
 troublesome class distinctions. But 
 the human problem we have not solved. 
 We have not as yet so shaped our life 
 and our institutions as to satisfy the 
 human need for beauty. Our cities 
 and towns are for the most part unat- 
 tractive, even their names being gener- 
 ally inappropriate or ugly. Our artists 
 prefer to live in Europe. While trav- 
 eling in this country, Mr. Arnold met 
 a German portrait painter, who was 
 thriving here, and asked him how he 
 liked America. The German replied, 
 " How can an artist like it ? "
 
 Now, whatever may be thought of* 
 Mr. Arnold's criticism, whether or not 
 it is true that as a nation we are not 
 distinguished for any strong sense of 
 the beautiful, it- is yet equally true that 
 there have arisen among us during the 
 last century many individuals possessed 
 of the most passionate love of beauty, 
 and the genius to give it an original 
 form of expression. American painters 
 and sculptors have for years been famous 
 in Europe, where art is best understood 
 and most appreciated. That their own 
 countrymen have honored them less 
 points, no doubt, to an imperfectly 
 developed state of the artistic sense of 
 the majority of the American people, 
 and would seem to justify the charge 
 made against us by our English critic. 
 On the other hand, there are intelligent 
 Americans who affect to speak slight- 
 ingly of our native artists, and seem to 
 think that our painters have produced, 
 as yet, very little that is original or 
 important. A better understanding of 
 
 16
 
 art in general and a fuller knowledge of" 
 the achievements of our American art- 
 ists would dispel any such opinion. 
 Happily there is now an awakening in 
 America to the need of a better acquaint- 
 ance with art. We are learning to 
 recognize the dignified and significant 
 place that art must always hold in the 
 life of a truly civilized people. The 
 love of art is the love of beauty, and 
 the love of beauty is the love of per- 
 fection. Whoever, therefore, inculcates 
 the love of art inculcates also that love 
 of perfection which insures the steady 
 advancement and uplifting of the 
 human race. 
 
 As a nation we are fortunate, there- 
 fore, to have already so much that is 
 valuable in our own art with which to 
 educate our aesthetic tastes and refine 
 our artistic judgment. It is our duty, 
 too, to know more about what our own 
 artists have done and are doing. It is 
 only when the interest in art has be- 
 come general and the enthusiasm strong 
 17
 
 that there is created an atmosphere in 
 which artists can thrive and exert their 
 beneficent influence on the community 
 in which they live. 
 
 18
 
 II. 
 
 HE term "art," in its broad- education 
 
 , . . necessary to the 
 
 CSt Sense, includes mUSIC, int elUgent appre- 
 
 eloquence, poetry, painting, Cation of art. 
 
 sculpture and architecture. 
 In our language.it often has a restricted 
 application to painting alone. No 
 branch of the Anglo-Saxon race has as 
 yet achieved anything very considerable 
 in the art of music. What our branch 
 of the race has done in poetry and 
 oratory every intelligent American 
 knows. But not every American 
 knows what our artists have produced 
 in painting, sculpture and architecture. 
 We have sculptors and architects of 
 genius, but it is in painting that Amer- 
 ican artistic genius has attained by far the 
 greatest success. In this essay we shall 
 confine ourselves to the study of Ameri- 
 can painters, their aims and their works. 
 Fully to appreciate any form of art, 
 whether it be music, poetry, painting, 
 19
 
 sculpture or architecture, it is necessary 
 to have at least a clear knowledge of 
 the fundamental principles that underlie 
 all the arts, if not also a certain degree 
 of technical training. The vast general 
 public, whose perception of beauty has 
 received little or no education whatever, 
 fails utterly to understand the truly 
 great artist, and delights chiefly in that 
 which is meretricious and commonplace 
 and vulgar. How often do we hear 
 people say, " I don't know anything 
 about painting, but I know what I 
 like." Then, after having disqualified 
 themselves as critics by this confession 
 they proceed arrogantly to pick flaws in 
 the work of some great master, or offer 
 wholly inconsequential reasons for ad- 
 miring the superficial and conventional 
 effort of a mere shallow painter-man. 
 Only a fair amount of instruction in 
 the theory of art would often convert 
 such arrogance into admiring humility 
 and such foolish admiration into intelli- 
 gent distrust.
 
 T is a common conception HI* and 
 that as art is an imitation of 
 Nature, the more perfect the 
 imitation the more perfect 
 
 Let us pause for a moment to 
 
 the art. 
 
 consider this proposition, to see if it be 
 true, and if not true, let us inquire what 
 the purpose of art really is ; it will 
 help us the better to understand the 
 aims and excellencies of the artists of 
 whom we are about to speak. 
 
 It cannot be denied that it is the busi- 
 ness of the artist to imitate Nature. If 
 he does not study Nature faithfully, and 
 keep in close touch with her, he is sure 
 to fall into gross exaggerations, eccen- 
 tricities and mannerisms. The history 
 of art shows plainly that whenever art- 
 ists no longer take their inspiration from 
 Nature, their art begins to decline. It 
 is the besetting danger of the artist that, 
 as he becomes master of the technique
 
 of his art, he may formulate a fixed 
 method of doing his work, and fall 
 into a habit of imitating his own early 
 successes ; and, as the imitation is less 
 perfect than the thing imitated, his art 
 becomes stereotyped, mannered and 
 lifeless. Michael Angelo himself, in 
 his old age, fell into this error 
 
 But if the artist's only safety lies in 
 copying Nature, are we to conclude, 
 therefore, that exact imitation is the 
 method whereby he attains the best 
 results ? If so, we might also conclude 
 that the artist's occupation would soon 
 be gone, for it is said to be possible now 
 to photograph not only the forms in 
 Nature but the color as well. We 
 know, however, that a broad sketch 
 executed by some master is a hundred 
 times more precious and more power- 
 ful than any photograph can ever be. 
 That exact imitation is not the true 
 end of art is proved, also, by the fact 
 that many forms of art are purposely in- 
 exact. In sculpture, that seeks to repro- 
 
 22
 
 duce the likeness of men and women, 
 one of the great charms of the work 
 is that there is no attempt to reproduce 
 color. The purity of the white marble 
 or the rich tone of the bronze lends a 
 dignity and a chasteness that would be 
 utterly destroyed by any attempt to 
 color the statue in imitation of the 
 model. The advantage of the drama, 
 which is the highest, or at least one of 
 the highest, forms of poetic art, is that 
 instead of making the characters speak 
 in ordinary prose, it can give them the 
 less natural but more exalted form of 
 speech called verse. The deviation 
 from exact imitation in this art is the 
 source of one of its chief beauties. 
 But in the graphic arts themselves we 
 have abundant proof that exact imitation 
 is neither necessary nor desirable. 
 Meissonier painted with wonderful 
 minuteness and extreme attention to 
 detail, but seldom attempted to repro- 
 duce the exact size of any figure or 
 object. In a pencil or charcoal drawing, 
 23
 
 the artist not only commonly reduces 
 the size of his model but inevitably has 
 to forego the element of color, yet a 
 broad pencil or charcoal sketch may be in 
 every sense highly artistic and effective. 
 
 But since it is necessary to imitate 
 something, to what must the imitation 
 be applied ? To the relationships of 
 the different parts of the model. If, 
 for example, the subject be that of a 
 man in violent action, the artist, 
 although he may reduce the magnitude 
 of the figure, will keep the body in 
 right proportion to the size of the head, 
 the limbs in right proportion to the 
 head and body, and so throughout the 
 entire drawing, keeping each part in 
 proportion to the whole. He will also 
 reproduce the proportionate angles at 
 which the various limbs are set, thus 
 imitating not only the form but the 
 attitude of the figure as well. 
 
 But to produce the truest kind of 
 art, this method of procedure must be 
 somewhat modified. It is the function 
 24
 
 of art to say something more perfectly 
 or more beautifully than Nature herself 
 says it. If, for instance, the subject be 
 that of a man in violent action pro- 
 voked by anger, the artist will select 
 those features which especially express 
 anger, and exaggerate, or, at least, 
 emphasize, them and their characteristic 
 attitudes in such a manner as to inten- 
 sify the expression of that emotion. 
 If the artist be a landscape-painter, he 
 will, of course, seek his inspiration out- 
 of-doors in the presence of Nature. It 
 seldom happens, however, that Nature 
 presents any scene in which there is 
 such a state of harmony as is required 
 in a picture. Let us suppose, however, 
 that the landscape before him is especi- 
 ally expressive of repose. As he 
 sketches, he will give particular promi- 
 nence to the lines and objects that sug- 
 gest repose, and either subordinate, or 
 sacrifice, or omit entirely all lines and 
 objects whose presence tends to weaken 
 or destroy the reposeful effect. Often 
 2 5
 
 a landscape is full of what artists call 
 " good sketching material " without 
 having anywhere the character of a pic- 
 ture. There may be beautiful rocks, 
 noble trees, richly-colored fields, pic- 
 turesque cottages, streams of water, and 
 other interesting objects, but all so dis- 
 posed that from almost no point of view 
 a good pictorial composition can be 
 made by literal imitation. The artist 
 then simply paints the character of the 
 place, introducing such lines, such ob- 
 jects, and such color effects as are sug- 
 gestive of the spot where he is sketch- 
 ing. In other words, he employs the 
 principle of selection, looking for those 
 things that are essential to the expression 
 of the character of what he is seeking 
 to represent, and omitting those that 
 are merely accidental
 
 IV. 
 
 T is precisely this matter of 
 
 i _i ^ Rapbaetite tnflu- 
 
 artistic selection that most ence upon Htmri . 
 
 people fail to understand. " painters. 
 
 No doubt the eloquent, but 
 oftentimes erroneous, teaching of John 
 Ruskin in regard to the study of Nature 
 has misled both artists and laymen. It 
 is certain that in France it was more 
 generally understood that it is the func- 
 tion of the artist to interpret Nature, 
 not, as was a long time thought in 
 England, to make a literal copy of her. 
 During the middle of the nineteenth 
 century many of our American painters 
 were strongly influenced by the Pre- 
 Raphaelite movement in England, and, 
 like the Pre-Raphaelites, made the least 
 possible use of the principle of selec- 
 tion, and painted Nature with literal 
 fidelity to detail, overlooking the fact 
 that the peculiar effect of Nature resides 
 in the whole and not in the parts. 
 27
 
 Che Barbizon 
 influence intro- 
 duced by OlUliatn 
 JV1. Bunt. 
 
 V. 
 
 T was a fortunate day for 
 American art, therefore, 
 when the influence of the 
 great French painters, who 
 interpreted Nature more broadly and 
 more rationally, was brought to our 
 shores by one of the greatest of our 
 native artists, WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT. 
 Born at Brattleboro, Vermont, on the 
 3ist of March, 1824, Hunt became a 
 student at Harvard College at the age of 
 sixteen. At the age of twenty-two he 
 began to study sculpture in Diisseldorf, 
 where he remained nine months. At the 
 end of that time he decided to give up 
 sculpture and devote himself to paint- 
 ing. He accordingly went to Paris, 
 and entered Couture's studio. Cou- 
 ture's method of instruction, however, 
 was not the kind that would enable a 
 pupil to develop a style of his own, nor 
 did Hunt find the atmosphere of Cou- 
 28
 
 ture's atelier altogether congenial. He 
 went to Barbizon, in the Forest of 
 Fontainebleau, and became the reverent 
 disciple and intimate friend of Jean 
 Fra^ois Millet. To him he owed 
 his greatest inspiration, though he was 
 in no sense a mere imitator of his 
 master. 
 
 Hunt was one of the first men to 
 recognize the high order of Millet's 
 art. Long before France herself had 
 acknowledged his greatness, Hunt was 
 buying some of his pictures, and finding 
 purchasers for others. It was largely 
 through his efforts, also, that America 
 was the first country to appreciate and 
 patronize the great painter of French 
 peasants. To have had the rare insight 
 to discern artistic genius where an artis- 
 tic nation had denied its existence or, at 
 least, neglected it, and to have known 
 how to inspire others with an enthusias- 
 tic admiration for that genius, were 
 unmistakable signs that Hunt himself 
 was born to become a leader in the 
 29
 
 world of art. After a ten years' sojourn 
 in Europe he returned to his native 
 country, and in 1855 opened an art 
 school in Boston and introduced the 
 Barbizon methods of painting in Amer- 
 ica. Being possessed of a charming 
 personality and a remarkable gift of im- 
 parting his ideas to others, he soon 
 became the admired master of a large 
 number of disciples, over whom he 
 exerted a powerful influence. 
 
 As an artist, Hunt was a man of 
 great versatility and power. He painted 
 landscapes, portraits, genre subjects, and 
 subjects purely ideal. He was also a 
 mural decorator, his most noted work 
 being the allegorical subjects, " The 
 Flight of Night" and "The Discov- 
 erer," on the walls of the State Capitol 
 at Albany, N. Y. Among his well- 
 known pictures are " The Bugle-call," 
 "The Drummer Boy," and "The 
 Bathers." 
 
 Hunt did not believe, as some peo- 
 ple in this country do, that American 
 3
 
 artists ought to forego the advantages 
 of European study, lest they become 
 imitators of the French or the Ger- 
 mans. He knew that the great genius 
 in any form of art always owes much to 
 the work of his predecessors, and that 
 it is by first assimilating all that others 
 have discovered and learned that an 
 original mind becomes best equipped 
 to develop a new mode of expression 
 or to give utterance to a new concep- 
 tion of life or of art. He knew that 
 to condemn the American artist to the 
 futile task of rediscovering for himself 
 the art principles, and the methods of 
 work gradually evolved by European 
 artists in the course of several centu- 
 ries would merely delay the progress 
 of art in this country. He knew, 
 too, that the young artist who has a 
 strong individuality and who really has 
 something to say to the world, cannot 
 help saying it in his own way, and that 
 his way of saying it will be all the more 
 forceful because of the perfect mastery 
 31
 
 of the technique of his art. He there- 
 fore counseled the most thorough 
 study and the broadest possible culture 
 as the best foundation upon which to 
 build original work. Hunt died in 
 1879. Since his death, our native 
 artists, who formerly went to Germany 
 or to Rome, have, like him, sought their 
 education for the most part in France, 
 where the art-impulse to-day is stronger 
 and the advantages for art-study better 
 than in any other country.
 
 VI. 
 
 HAT a truly original mind cne eenfua of 
 will find out its own method <nyai1t ' 
 of expression, and know 
 how to profit by the study 
 of other artists without imitating them, 
 is shown in the case of ALEXANDER 
 H. WYANT, one of our best landscape- 
 painters. Wyant was born in 1839 at 
 Port Washington, Ohio. His first 
 occupation was that of a sign-painter in 
 his native village. He went to Cincin- 
 nati and painted some pictures which 
 pleased the art patrons of that city and 
 brought him enough money to enable 
 him to go to Europe. He studied at 
 Diisseldorf for some years under Hans 
 Gude, and afterwards went to London, 
 where he studied the works of Turner 
 and Constable. He returned to 
 America and settled in New York. 
 Although his special training as an 
 artist was received at Diisseldorf, 
 33
 
 nothing could be further from the 
 Dusseldorfian method of painting than 
 Wyant's. His style was distinctly his 
 own, the outgrowth of a strong indi- 
 viduality and an earnest and sincere 
 study of Nature. 
 
 After examining a number of his 
 pictures, you are especially struck with 
 Wyant's manner of treating the light. 
 In one picture you will look through a 
 dark wood at a patch of sky in the 
 middle filled with luminous white 
 clouds of almost dazzling brilliancy. 
 In another, your eye travels up a road 
 passing along the edge of a forest and 
 meets a luminous sky at the distant 
 horizon. In still another, the sky is 
 filled with storm-clouds all dark and 
 threatening, except in one spot which 
 glows white with a last gleam of the 
 already hidden sun. Again, instead of 
 this concentration, there is a remarkable 
 diffusion of light throughout the entire 
 picture. And yet Wyant was not a 
 chiaroscurist, getting his effects by 
 34
 
 violent contrasts. On the contrary, he 
 was an excellent colorist, capable of the 
 most delicate as well as the most power- 
 ful effects. Many of his .landscapes 
 are truly idyllic in character and full of 
 tender and poetic sentiment. Others 
 are beautiful interpretations of the more 
 dramatic moods of Nature, or repre- 
 sentations of the wild and rugged 
 scenery of the Adirondacks. In all, 
 even in his ideal compositions, there is 
 great truth to Nature without the 
 slightest suggestion of vulgar realism. 
 Wyant worked both in water-color 
 and in oil, and was a member of the 
 National Academy of Design, and one 
 of the first members of the American 
 Water-Color Society. He died in 
 1892. One of his most distinguished 
 pupils is BRUCE CRANE, who has been 
 very fitly called " a poet in landscape," 
 and who at the early age of twenty had 
 already attained a national reputation. 
 
 35
 
 Xnness, the virile 
 and versatile 
 interpreter of the 
 Hmerican land- 
 scape. 
 
 VII. 
 
 HE great master among 
 American landscape-painters 
 was the late GEORGE INNESS. 
 To study his career as an 
 artist is to note the successive steps in 
 the growth of an extraordinary and 
 original mind. Many artists, having 
 learned the technics of their art from 
 some master, are content forever after- 
 wards to paint in his manner. Others, 
 again, develop a style of their own, by 
 which they allow themselves to be 
 mastered in turn and from which they 
 never again deviate. Inn'ess, on the 
 contrary, not only owed his art-educa- 
 tion almost entirely to himself, but, not 
 satisfied with what he had yet attained, 
 never relaxed his inquiries into the 
 mysteries of his craft and made con- 
 stant progress to the end of his career. 
 Born at Newburg, N. Y., May i, 
 1825, he took his first drawing lesson 
 36
 
 at the age of fourteen. About two 
 years later he was placed in a store in 
 Newark, N. J., but he had no aptitude 
 for commercial life, and in a month he 
 had driven all the customers away. 
 He was next employed by a firm of 
 map-engravers in New York, where he 
 remained for one year. His health was 
 always delicate, and the confinement 
 here was more than he could endure. 
 Returning to Newark, he began to 
 make sketches from Nature and thus 
 discovered his true vocation. He was 
 now about eighteen years of age. He 
 studied painting for a few months 
 under Gignoux in New York, the only 
 regular instruction he ever received, and 
 then opened a studio of his own. He 
 had the good fortune to sell many of 
 his pictures, and to win the warm 
 friendship of a wealthy gentleman, 
 who offered to send him to Europe. 
 He went to Rome and spent some 
 fifteen months in Italy. About a year 
 and a half later, at the age of twenty-. 
 
 37
 
 five, he went to Europe again, and 
 remained in France for a year. 
 Returning to his native country, he 
 began his long series of interpretations 
 of the American landscape, no less 
 remarkable for the great range of 
 sympathy which they reveal with 
 Nature's various moods than for the 
 power and thoroughly individual style 
 of their execution. 
 
 Notwithstanding his always delicate 
 health, Inness was a prodigious worker. 
 At the beginning of his career, when 
 sketching out-of-doors, he used to draw 
 every stick and stone in the landscape 
 before him. By this means he acquired 
 a most intimate knowledge of all the 
 forms in Nature, the peculiar structure 
 of every kind of tree and shrub, of 
 every flower and weed, of every rock 
 and boulder. In his early paintings, 
 which are frequently large and almost 
 panoramic in character, the effect of 
 this kind of study was an undue 
 attempt to delineate every detail of 
 38
 
 grass and foliage, although his pictures 
 were always perfect in tone and excel- 
 lent in composition. As he advanced 
 in his work, he developed in a fuller 
 degree the art of selection, and grad- 
 ually sacrificed many of the lesser 
 truths of Nature in order more pow- 
 erfully to represent the larger ones. 
 The result was a greater breadth and 
 * simplicity of effect and a more direct 
 appeal to the emotions of the spec- 
 tator. 
 
 In Inness's work we find an interpre- 
 tation of every one of Nature's moods, 
 of every season of the year, of every 
 hour in the day. Bright days, gray 
 days, lowering days, days of storm and 
 tempest ; the first days of spring, with 
 her tender young shoots and delicate 
 lace-like foliage ; June, with her thick- 
 leaved woods and her flowery meadows ; 
 full-grown summer, in all her many 
 glories ; ripe autumn, with her mellow 
 harvest, and her abundance of red and 
 scarlet and yellow and gold; naked 
 
 39
 
 winter woods and snow-clad fields and 
 ice-bound streams ; the tender light of 
 the early morning hours, the midday 
 glare, the warm glow of summer after- 
 noons, the splendors of the sunset, gray 
 twilight, mellow moonlight, sober night 
 all have found their sympathetic in- 
 terpreter in the great poet-painter In- 
 ness, who had the gift to see beauty 
 not only in the stately forests and 
 sweeping meadows but in the humble 
 American village and the prosaic man- 
 ufacturing town as well. Possessing a 
 rich and exalted imagination, he knew 
 how to reconcile ugly factory buildings, 
 smoky chimneys, and the modern 
 utilitarian locomotive with the poetic 
 beauties of an American landscape and 
 an American sunset. During his sev- 
 eral visits to Europe he painted the 
 romantic scenes of Italy and France ; 
 but his greatest glory is that he painted 
 the American landscape in a truly 
 American spirit. He has oftentimes 
 been compared with the French painters 
 40
 
 of the Fontainebleau-Barbizon school ; 
 but, though he doubtless learned much 
 by studying their pictures, his style 
 is entirely his own. He excelled Dau- 
 bigny in the range of his subjects, and 
 was a better draughtsman than he. He 
 painted sunsets with as great a power as 
 Corot and excelled him in the painting 
 of trees. If he did not paint animals 
 with all the power of Troyon, it was 
 because he generally used cows and 
 sheep and domestic fowls in his land- 
 scapes as accessories merely. As a 
 landscapist he is the superior of Troyon, 
 whose painting of the sky is often 
 sadly out of tone. He interpreted the 
 American oaks and pines and birches in 
 a style as truly personal and distinct as 
 that of Theodore Rousseau. If he 
 has not so much emotional power as 
 Millet, it is because he was first of all a 
 painter, while Millet was less a painter 
 than a poet. 
 
 Inness was not only a hard worker, 
 painting sometimes as much as fifteen 
 41
 
 hours a day, but he also worked with 
 great rapidity and often produced a 
 masterpiece in a few hours. He was 
 likely, however, to change a picture at 
 any time, as new inspiration came to 
 him, and he commonly had a number 
 of pictures in progress, turning from 
 one to the other as his emotion changed 
 or the difficulties he encountered made 
 him uncertain of how he ought to pro- 
 ceed. He allowed his emotions often- 
 times to govern him so completely that 
 what he started out to paint would have 
 been utterly unlike the picture he did 
 paint before he finished. When work- 
 ing in his studio, he would perhaps be- 
 gin the day by composing a picture 
 representing a spring morning; by noon 
 it would perhaps have been converted 
 into an autumn scene, and before night 
 into a winter evening. He was a man 
 of so many ideas that he was not con- 
 tent to work forever in one color 
 scheme nor forever on the same subject. 
 He never painted in any medium but 
 42
 
 oil, but he experimented constantly, and 
 if his work was not always of even 
 excellence, it was at least endlessly varied 
 and interesting. He died in Scotland 
 in the summer of 1894. Few painters 
 have thought more deeply on art 
 than he, or illustrated their theories 
 more successfully. He has exerted a 
 strong influence on the present gener- 
 ation of American landscape-painters, 
 who, without imitating him directly, 
 have acquired much of his virility and 
 his breadth of vision. 
 
 43
 
 Che originality of 
 
 OZhistler. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 F the painters living to-day 
 perhaps none other has 
 caused so great a stir in the 
 art world or provoked so 
 much discussion of art principles as 
 JAMES McNniLL WHISTLER. Not 
 only as a painter in oil, in water-color 
 and in pastel, but also as an etcher and 
 a master of the lithograph, he has pro- 
 duced work of such striking original- 
 ity that critics and artists alike have 
 failed to understand and been puzzled 
 to know how to classify him, and he 
 was at first as much condemned as he 
 has since been admired and praised. 
 Twenty years ago, John Ruskin, criti- 
 cising one of Whistler's pictures, de- 
 clared it to be equivalent to flinging a 
 " pot of paint " in the public's face, 
 and was thereupon sued by the artist, 
 who complained that the criticism had 
 damaged his reputation and injured his 
 
 44
 
 business. The verdict was in favor of 
 the plaintiff, although the amount of 
 the damages awarded him was only one 
 farthing; but during the trial no less 
 an artist than Edward Burne-Jones was 
 called in to pass his judgment upon the 
 picture in question. He admitted that 
 it was beautiful in color, but pronounced 
 it utterly lacking in finish, and hence in 
 no true sense a work of art. This in- 
 teresting controversy is now a matter of 
 history, and Whistler's own account of 
 it is given in that unique book of his 
 called "The Gentle Art of Making 
 Enemies." To-day it is not difficult 
 to find, even in the writings of English 
 critics, expressions of amazement that 
 there could have been enough stupidity 
 to deny the superexcellent beauty of 
 the picture which so excited the indig- 
 nation of John Ruskin and the con- 
 tempt of Burne-Jones. Mr. Whist- 
 ler's genius has at last triumphed over 
 the severest critics even in England, and, 
 having won the fullest recognition for 
 
 45
 
 his art in that country, he left London 
 a few years since and moved his studio 
 to Paris. 
 
 Born at Lowell, Mass., in 1 834, the 
 son of a famous American civil engi- 
 neer, Mr. Whistler was taken to Rus- 
 sia at the age of eight, but brought 
 back to America four years later and 
 educated at West Point. At about the 
 age of twenty-two he was studying under 
 Gleyre in Paris, and a few years later 
 began to send his pictures to the Salon. 
 They were steadily rejected for several 
 years, until, in 1 863, the famous " Salon 
 des Refuses " welcomed his work and 
 hung a picture of his, called " The 
 White Girl." This was his first oppor- 
 tunity to show to the public in Paris 
 the quality of his genius, and his work 
 not only made a sensation, but marked 
 him as one of the most original artists 
 of the day. He had now gone to 
 London, and settled there, and in the 
 succeeding years produced many nota- 
 ble works, among them " La Princesse 
 4 6
 
 des Pays de la Porcelaine," exhibited 
 at the Salon ; the " Symphony in White, 
 No. 3"; " The Pacific," called " An Ar- 
 rangement in Gray and Green " ; " The 
 Blue Wave " ; " The Balcony," which 
 he called " A Harmony in Flesh-color 
 and Green " ; and " Old Battersea 
 Bridge." He also painted many por- 
 traits, among them the famous portrait 
 of his mother and a portrait of Thomas 
 Carlyle. Both of these were called 
 " Arrangements in Black and Gray." 
 They were first shown in London 
 (1874), and then, some ten years later, 
 at the Salon in Paris (1883 and 
 1884). 
 
 47
 
 ttlhistter's theory 
 of art, as exempli- 
 fied in his 
 " arrangements," 
 "harmonies" and 
 "nocturnes." 
 
 IX. 
 
 T will be observed that Mr. 
 Whistler is fond of applying 
 musical terms to his pictures, 
 calling them "symphonies," 
 " harmonies," "arrangements." A por- 
 trait by him is always an " arrange- 
 ment," perhaps an arrangement in 
 gray and yellow, or in brown, or in 
 flesh-color and red, in brown and black, 
 or in black alone, like his portraits of 
 Henry Irving as Philip of Spain, and 
 of Seiior Sarasate. He has also named 
 many of his pictures "nocturnes" and 
 others "notes." 
 
 So far from being mere fanciful ap- 
 pellations these titles furnish the key to 
 Mr. Whistler's theory of art. Rightly 
 to understand this theory, it is neces- 
 sary to consider the analogy between 
 painting and music. Both are sensu- 
 ous arts, the one appealing to our sense 
 of beauty, either of form, of light and 
 4 8
 
 shade or of color; the other, to our 
 sense of beauty, either of tone-quality, 
 of melody or of harmony. But paint- 
 ing is also, and, indeed, as generally 
 practiced is, preeminently an articulate 
 art ; that is, it has the power to tell a 
 story clearly, to convey a definite con- 
 ception to the imagination, and thereby 
 to awaken in the spectator the same 
 emotion that the artist himself has ex- 
 perienced. Now, the means whereby a 
 painter is enabled to tell a story are the 
 elements of form, and of light and 
 shade. He may tell a story with form 
 alone, and express the beauty of the 
 various shapes contained in his compo- 
 sition; if he add light and shade, his 
 picture gains in power and definition. 
 The element of color, however, is 
 needed to make the fullest appeal to 
 the emotions, for the aesthetic pleasure 
 excited by color is greater than that im- 
 parted by form. If, on the other hand, 
 the painter confines himself to the use 
 of color alone, he may, indeed, create 
 
 49
 
 a thing of beauty, but it will have 
 a purely sensuous, inarticulate beauty, 
 conveying no definite thought or senti- 
 ment or emotion, and in no sense tell- 
 ing a story. Now, a painting without 
 suggested form of some kind is like a 
 piece of pure music ; for music, until 
 wedded to poetry, is a wholly inarticu- 
 late art, though it may stir the emotions 
 more powerfully than any arrangement, 
 however beautiful, of color without 
 form. What form and light and shade 
 are to painting, namely, the story-telling 
 or literary elements, that is what poetry 
 is to music. Notice, now, how musical 
 art is divided into different departments. 
 There are musical compositions with no 
 literary element whatever, like sonatas, 
 symphonies, nocturnes, etc. ; and there 
 are musical compositions with a very 
 definite literary element, telling a definite 
 story and exciting a definite emotion, like 
 songs, operas and music dramas. Thus 
 music, which is primarily a purely sen- 
 suous, inarticulate art, may be made 
 5
 
 articulate by joining it with poetry ; 
 while painting, which is clearly an articu- 
 late art, may be made almost entirely 
 sensuous by omitting, so far as possible, 
 the articulate element of form. 
 
 Now, in Mr. Whistler's works the 
 charm is preeminently a sensuous one. 
 There is no attempt to tell a story, no 
 desire to express a sentiment. In his 
 paintings the color-interest is para- 
 mount to everything else. He wishes 
 them to hold a place in pictorial art 
 similar to that of symphonies, caprices 
 and nocturnes in musical art, to please 
 by virtue of their sensuous beauty and 
 not because of any literary meaning. 
 Even in his etchings, which have been 
 universally admired, and pronounced 
 by the most competent judges to be as 
 perfect as anything of the kind ever 
 done even by the great Rembrandt, the 
 charm is rather in the exquisitely deli- 
 cate effect of light and atmosphere, the 
 spiritual loveliness of the scenes, and 
 the mysterious simplicity with which 
 51
 
 they are executed. In his paintings, he 
 delights in producing the most delicate 
 visions of color often with the smallest 
 possible substratum of form, as in his 
 nocturnes and notes ; and in his por- 
 traits, into which the element of form 
 must necessarily enter, he is not con- 
 tent with a mere surface representation 
 of the subject, but paints the man as 
 well as his features, and makes of the 
 whole a beautiful arrangement of form 
 and color in luminous air. 
 
 It is because that portion of the 
 public, and especially of the English 
 public, which takes an interest in pic- 
 tures, has failed to grasp this conception 
 of art that it has also failed to under- 
 stand Mr. Whistler's beautiful " har- 
 monies " and " nocturnes/* and pro- 
 nounced them ridiculous and their au- 
 thor eccentric. They expect a picture 
 to tell them a story, and Mr. Whistler 
 will not play the role of minstrel or 
 troubadour, much less preach a sermon 
 or illustrate a fable. He wishes his 
 5 2
 
 paintings to be appreciated as paintings 
 merely, and those who lack the culture 
 or the technical training necessary to 
 comprehend his finer and subtler art 
 have remained insensible to the charm 
 of its exquisite beauties. 
 
 Mr. Whistler himself has said : 
 " Art should be independent of all clap- 
 trap should stand alone, and appeal 
 to the artistic sense of eye or ear, with- 
 out confounding this with emotions 
 entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, 
 love, patriotism, and the like. All 
 these have no kind of concern with 
 it, and that is why I insist on call- 
 ing my works c arrangements ' and 
 f harmonies.' ' 
 
 That Mr. Whistler is correct when 
 he asserts that painting should never 
 seek to awaken any definite emotion, 
 in other words, should never have a 
 literary interest, may well be doubted ; 
 but that he is thoroughly justified in 
 confining his own efforts to the produc- 
 tion of works of purely sensuous beauty, 
 
 53
 
 there can, I think, be no doubt what- 
 ever. To sneer at him, or call him 
 eccentric, because he adheres to this 
 conception of art would be like quarrel- 
 ing with a musician who composed only 
 sonatas, symphonies and the like, 
 instead of oratorios and operas. Con- 
 noisseurs, artists, and unprejudiced 
 critics have begun to discern that Mr. 
 Whistler has worked in a department 
 of the painter's art hitherto undeveloped 
 among the artists of Europe and 
 America. If he owes some of his 
 inspiration to the Japanese, and has 
 chosen for his subjects the same phases 
 of Nature that so long have fascinated 
 them, he has, nevertheless, produced in 
 his many nocturnes a series of works 
 absolutely original and unlike anything 
 that has ever been done before. Mr. 
 Whistler is, above all others, the inter- 
 preter of the tender, illusive beauty of 
 the night. Before his time attempts 
 to paint night effects were usually ugly 
 and meaningless. Burne-Jones, indeed, 
 54
 
 declared one of Mr. Whistler's most 
 beautiful efforts to be simply another 
 failure to paint night; but Mr. Jones, 
 if he were still alive, would probably 
 not dare to utter such a statement now. 
 Mr. Whistler's art has educated the 
 younger generation to a new perception 
 of beauty. In his wonderful nocturnes 
 he has fixed on canvas the blue trans- 
 parent darkness of the night as it 
 envelops the city and is reflected in the 
 gas-lit river the darkness through 
 which you descry the dim forms of tall 
 bridges and phantom boats, of illusive 
 spires and dream-like palaces. Some- 
 times he depicts the strange pallor of a 
 summer night, when the sky is only 
 just obscured by a passing veil of dark- 
 ness ; sometimes the mysterious gloom 
 of a night at sea, with foaming waves, 
 dim lights, distant ships and a vague 
 sense of the infinite ; and sometimes 
 his picture is mere luminous darkness 
 in delicate gradation purple sky 
 above, purple below, a shadow in the 
 55
 
 middle of the picture a little less and 
 there would be nothing. 
 
 His celebrated " Nocturne in Blue 
 and Silver," representing a fragment of 
 old Battersea Bridge in London, is one 
 of the pictures which Mr. Ruskin 
 characterized as works " in which the 
 ill-educated conceit of the artist ap- 
 proached the aspect of willful impos- 
 ture " a most intemperate criticism to 
 have come even from the extravagant 
 and self-contradicting Ruskin. Here, 
 as everywhere, Mr. Whistler has shown 
 that refinement of conception, that ex- 
 quisite sensitiveness to all that is beau- 
 tiful in nature, that delicate, subtle han- 
 dling of light and color that distinguishes 
 his work from the grossness and ma- 
 teriality of so many other painters. 
 Against the cold, deep-blue sky looms 
 up one pier and a part of the arch of 
 the bridge somewhat in the shape of 
 the letter T while beyond it the sky 
 is spangled with the multitudinous 
 silver sparks of a shower of falling fire- 
 56
 
 works. Passing beneath the bridge, a 
 mysterious barge, guided by a phantom- 
 like figure, moves along on the bosom 
 of the luminous river; while on the 
 shore are seen the lights of the watch- 
 ing city, and then the purple illusive 
 distance. The highest notes in this 
 low-toned picture are but delicate atten- 
 uations of light, fading into that which 
 is no longer light, producing the subtle, 
 almost unearthly, charm which is pe- 
 culiarly characteristic of Mr. Whistler's 
 work, and especially of his nocturnes. 
 
 In his " Arrangement in Black and 
 Gold," which he explains as a view in 
 Cremorne Gardens with the fireworks, he 
 has drawn with miraculous skill a shower 
 of falling fire whirling through a black 
 sky ; while in another nocturne, rising 
 and falling rockets are so skillfully drawn 
 that the sparks of the ascending and 
 descending showers of fire really seem 
 to be in motion. 
 
 57
 
 Whistler as a 
 portrait-painter. 
 
 X. 
 
 LTHOUGH it is his noc- 
 turnes that 'distinguish Mr. 
 Whistler as the great artist 
 of the nineteenth century, 
 he is also preeminent in his day and 
 generation as a portrait-painter. If not 
 quite the equal in all respects of the 
 great Spaniard Velasquez, he often excels 
 him in artistic perception and beauty of 
 design. Unlike Velasquez, who some- 
 times copied his model with brutal frank- 
 ness, Mr. Whistler always chooses with 
 the nicest discrimination those character- 
 istics which will best serve his artistic in- 
 tention. In the portrait of his mother, 
 which is now in the Luxembourg in 
 Paris, he has achieved a triumph in the 
 handling of low tones, in the decorative 
 composition of his picture, and in the 
 fidelity with which he has revealed the 
 very soul of his model. It will be re- 
 membered that he calls it " An Arrange- 
 58
 
 ment in Black and Gray," and in the 
 rich deep black of the mother's gown 
 and of the curtain that drops past the 
 engraving on the wall, he has discov- 
 ered possibilities and beauties in the 
 handling of that color never before 
 brought out by any other artist. There 
 is also an extraordinary beauty in the 
 management of the palpitating grays in 
 the background, in the golden gray 
 light that illumines the sober gravity of 
 the portrait, and in the transition from 
 gray to the highest notes in the compo- 
 sition as seen in the white cap, the lace 
 cuffs, and the small white handkerchief. 
 Mr. Whistler says he meant this merely 
 as a decorative arrangement of color, 
 and he has certainly achieved a marvel- 
 ous decorative design in the arabesques 
 on the curtain and in the exquisite grace 
 with which he has balanced the dark, 
 rich tone of the curtain on the left by 
 the black of the dress on the right. It 
 cannot be denied, however, that while 
 painting this portrait the artist must 
 59
 
 have been wholly absorbed in his model. 
 In the marvelous tenderness with which 
 he has treated the delicate hands lying 
 half hid in the little lace handkerchief, 
 and in the subtle outline of the grave, 
 thoughtful face, he has told the story 
 of the beautiful old age of a Puritan 
 lady ; and although he thought the pub- 
 lic ought not to know or care anything 
 about the identity of the portrait, we 
 feel that here his interest in his model 
 has caused him to reveal his own soul 
 more fully than anywhere else, and 
 that here he has produced his greatest 
 work in portraiture. 
 
 In his portrait of Miss Rose Corder, 
 the chromatic scheme is an arrangement 
 in black and brown. The life-size 
 figure of a young woman stands on a 
 brownish-gray floor against a back- 
 ground of airy obscurity, into which the 
 outlines of her form seem here and 
 there to melt and lose themselves with- 
 out becoming altogether indistinct. 
 Her gown is black, her jacket black, 
 60
 
 trimmed with black fur and lined with 
 white, and in her gloved right hand she 
 holds a brown felt hat with a long 
 feather. Her blond hair is rolled 
 tightly on the top of her head. Only 
 the profile of her face is seen, but 
 it wears a calm and rather lofty expres- 
 sion, and is suffused with the rosy 
 vibration of life. The portrait is an 
 exquisite color-harmony in subdued 
 tones, and the life-likeness of the 
 figure, enveloped as it is by an atmos- 
 phere that seems black without being 
 black, gives it a charm almost unearthly 
 and spectral. So perfect a piece of 
 painting is this that not the slightest 
 trace of effort appears, no hint of the 
 method by which it was accomplished. 
 It reminds one of Mr. Whistler's own 
 sententious statement : " The work of 
 the master reeks not of the sweat of the 
 brow suggests no effort and is 
 finished from its beginning." This 
 picture indeed would seem to have been 
 created by an inspiration, and to have 
 
 61
 
 sprung full-grown and perfect from the 
 artist's mind. 
 
 Mr. Whistler's portraits are almost 
 all painted in subdued colors. Some 
 have thought that he paints flesh 
 lower in tone than it is in nature, but 
 he has met this criticism squarely by 
 explaining that the common fault of the 
 portrait-painter is the foolish attempt 
 to make his man " stand out " from the 
 frame, when, " on the contrary, he 
 should really, and in truth absolutely 
 does, stand within the frame, and at a 
 depth behind it equal to the distance at 
 which the painter see his model. " 
 " The frame," he says, " is the window 
 through which the painter looks at his 
 model, and nothing could be more offen- 
 sively inartistic than his brutal attempt 
 to thrust the model on the hither side 
 of this window ! " 
 
 It was a fortunate day for English 
 
 art when Mr. Whistler took up his 
 
 residence in London and determined to 
 
 remain there in spite of the storm of 
 
 62
 
 criticism and ridicule by which he was 
 at first assailed. The influence of 
 Ruskin and others had led English 
 artists into a pernicious habit of copy- 
 ing Nature with a most inconsequent 
 fidelity. Mr. Whistler has taught them 
 that it is not copying but judicious 
 selection that is needed in art. His 
 method is more learned than that of 
 any of his contemporaries, and is exert- 
 ing a wholesome influence on the artists 
 of to-day who are wise enough to study 
 him as their master.
 
 XL 
 
 Sargent: his MpLif LB| |i M O N G the younger genera- 
 
 fortunate career fJEff^Fg I . . 
 
 and brititant Pf/V^ tlon * American painters 
 achievements. [jg^^j w h o are living abroad 
 
 none is more famous than 
 JOHN S. SARGENT. Honors and 
 fortune came to him earlier in life than 
 to most artists. No doubt he was less 
 of an innovator than Mr. Whistler, and, 
 therefore, more readily understood. 
 He is, nevertheless, an artist in the 
 noble sense of the term, though he is 
 still so young that it is impossible to 
 determine how he will be ultimately 
 classified among the men of his time. 
 The works which he has produced dur- 
 ing the last twenty years, however, show 
 plainly that he possesses genius of a very 
 high, if not quite the highest, order. 
 
 Mr. Sargent was born in Florence, 
 
 Italy, of American parents, in 1856. 
 
 His mother was an accomplished 
 
 painter in water-colors, and from his 
 
 6 4
 
 very infancy Mr. Sargent breathed an 
 atmosphere of culture and art. He 
 was educated partly in Italy and partly 
 in Germany, and to-day he speaks and 
 writes Italian, French, and German as 
 well as English. He is a sincere lover 
 of books and of the drama. He is 
 possessed also of a considerable gift for 
 music and performs on several instru- 
 ments. Unlike most young Americans 
 who set out to become painters or sculp- 
 tors, Mr. Sa'rgent has lived all his life in 
 the world's great art centers, has become 
 familiar with the many interesting and 
 picturesque aspects of the life and cus- 
 toms of different nations and races, and 
 knows thoroughly their distinguishing 
 traits and characteristics. All these 
 facts must be considered in studying 
 Mr. Sargent as an artist, for they have all 
 had an influence in molding his genius 
 and determining the quality of his art. 
 Before he had attained the age of 
 eighteen he had already had several 
 years of art-study, beginning at the 
 65
 
 Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. 
 He drew cleverly with either pencil or 
 charcoal, and worked in water-color and 
 in oil. While he was still in his teens 
 he spent a summer with his mother in 
 the Tyrol. There he met the cele- 
 brated English artist, Frederick Leigh- 
 ton, who commended his sketches and 
 gave him the heartiest encouragement 
 to continue his studies. Not long after, 
 his father took him to Paris and placed 
 him under the guidance of the great 
 French master, Carolus-Duran. His 
 progres's was so rapid that at the early 
 age of twenty-two he received honora- 
 ble mention at the Salon in Paris, where 
 he exhibited a picture entitled " En 
 Route pour la Peche," representing 
 some fisherwomen and children on the 
 seacoast. The following year he sprang 
 into fame by a dashing portrait of Car- 
 olus-Duran, painted in the master's own 
 style. In each of the succeeding years 
 he exhibited portraits and other pic- 
 tures, both in oil and in 'water-color. 
 
 66
 
 Among these was a picture called " El 
 Jaleo," which created a sensation, and 
 is now one of his most famous works. 
 The subject is that of a Spanish girl 
 dancing to the music of a company of 
 singers and time-makers, and illustrates 
 the artist's remarkable grasp of race 
 characteristics. In 1889 he won the 
 grand prize at the Paris Exposition, and 
 was made a " Chevalier of the Legion 
 of Honor." 
 
 Mr. Sargent now settled in London, 
 and still further extended his fame by 
 exhibiting a number of portraits and a 
 charming picture called " Carnation, 
 Lily, Lily, Rose," representing two 
 pretty girls in a flower garden at twi- 
 light in the act of lighting Chinese 
 lanterns for some fete. This picture 
 was so highly esteemed by the members 
 of the Royal Academy that it was pur- 
 chased by them on behalf of the Chan- 
 trey Fund. 
 
 Mr. Sargent is never commonplace 
 and always interesting. There is an in- 
 67
 
 tellfgence, a dash and a brilliancy in his 
 work which at once distinguish it from 
 that of ordinary men. He has an ex- 
 tremely delicate sensitiveness to all that 
 is artistically beautiful, and a marvelous 
 gift for rinding effects that are rare and 
 novel. His style was, of course, formed 
 by his first great teacher, Carolus-Du- 
 ran, and, like him, he lays on his color 
 with a broad, sure stroke, and in a man- 
 ner that would lead you, on close in- 
 spection of any of his works, to say that 
 the subject was merely " blocked out." 
 As you step back, however, and view 
 the work from the proper distance, you 
 find it exquisitely beautiful in tone, and 
 richly suggestive and complete. Mr. 
 Sargent has studied, in turn, the meth- 
 ods and the work of Carolus-Duran, of 
 Edouard Manet, of Vierge, of the great 
 Spaniard Goya, and of Claude Monet, 
 and from each he has wrested some- 
 thing to add to his own artistic resources. 
 Indeed, he has made himself such a 
 master of the technique of his art that 
 
 68
 
 he is often tempted to imitate the style 
 of. other painters, and sometimes to 
 undertake daring and difficult effects, 
 more, it is to be feared, for the sake of 
 overcoming the difficulties of the task 
 than of expressing some particular artis- 
 tic conception. When he imitates, he 
 always adds something of his own that 
 gives a novelty and a distinction to all 
 he produces. When his apparent pur- 
 pose is merely to accomplish some dif- 
 ficult feat, to evolve some startling chro- 
 matic scheme, he incurs the inevitable 
 risk of producing a picture which, while 
 it may excite admiration or astonish- 
 ment, still fails to persuade and to 
 satisfy. For when expression outruns 
 thought it ceases to charm ; or, rather, 
 it is no longer true expression. Mr. 
 Sargent, however, has so rich an imagina- 
 tion, and is so full of resources, that 
 everything he does must necessarily be 
 of a very high order and command the 
 respect, if not always the unqualified 
 praise, of the most critical judges. 
 6 9
 
 Mr. Sargent's career has been a cos- 
 mopolitan one. His early successes 
 were made in France, and he has now 
 for some years been one of the most 
 fashionable and distinguished portrait- 
 painters in London. Some of his very 
 best portraits, however, were painted in 
 the United States. Among these are 
 the celebrated portrait of Beatrice, the 
 little daughter of Mr. Goelet of New 
 York, and the portrait of La Carmen- 
 cita, the tall, slender danseuse, whom he 
 has posed so skillfully with arms 
 akimbo. This latter picture was painted 
 in New York, and first shown publicly 
 at an exhibition of the Society of Ameri- 
 can Artists, of which Mr. Sargent is a 
 member. It was afterwards exhibited 
 in Paris, where it created a sensation, 
 and was bought by the French Govern- 
 ment and placed in the famous gallery 
 of the Luxembourg. 
 
 Perhaps nothing that Mr. Sargent has 
 ever done is more remarkable than the 
 great mural paintings placed a fe vv years 
 70
 
 since in one of the halls of the Boston 
 Public Library. These are allegorical 
 or symbolical in character, consisting of 
 a frieze, a lunette and a ceiling arch. 
 The frieze represents the twelve Jewish 
 prophets. Mr. Sargent's vigorous con- 
 ception of these grand characters has 
 now become well known through pho- 
 tographic reproductions. The lunette 
 represents the Jews in subjection to the 
 Egyptians and Assyrians, typified by 
 figures of Pharaoh and the Assyrian 
 king. In the ceiling arch are repre- 
 sented the heathen gods of the ancient 
 world, with symbolical interpretations 
 of ancient creeds. The whole design 
 is intricate and full of significance, the 
 execution masterly, both in drawing 
 and in color. It is such work as could 
 have been produced only by an artist 
 of exceptional intellectual refinement, 
 and a strongly creative imagination. 
 
 Mr. Sargent is now in the middle of 
 life and in the fullness of his power. 
 His early manhood has been marked 
 7*
 
 by great artistic achievements ; his 
 future gives promise of still greater 
 achievements.
 
 XII. 
 
 MERICAN artists have often 
 been reproached for not 
 confining themselves more ter of oriental 
 
 . , ... , . subjects. 
 
 strictly to American subjects. 
 They are reminded that the landscape 
 of America is as beautiful and as varied 
 as in any other country in the world ; 
 that American history is rich in heroic 
 incidents and intensely dramatic in 
 character ; that, if American life is not 
 at all points so picturesque and roman- 
 tic as life in the old world, it is at least 
 better understood by the American, and 
 hence more likely to be interpreted by 
 him with success. These critics, in 
 their zealous desire to hasten the day 
 when we shall have a distinctively 
 national art, forget that the artist paints 
 what attracts him most, and if he is to 
 express the best that is in him, he must 
 be allowed to follow the bent of his own 
 genius. 
 
 73
 
 They seem to think, too, that art 
 to be strictly characteristic of the nation 
 by which it is produced must neces- 
 sarily represent only the various aspects 
 of its political or social condition, or the 
 features of the territory which it occu- 
 pies. But are not the intellectual and 
 the spiritual life of a nation to be inter- 
 preted, too ? And does not an Ameri- 
 can artist's impression of a foreign 
 scene or a foreign incident reveal some- 
 thing of the mental life of the nation of 
 which he is a part ? At any rate, some 
 of our most gifted artists are devoting 
 their lives to painting foreign scenes 
 and foreign subjects. 
 
 EDWIN LORD WEEKS has found his 
 field in Northern Africa and the Orient. 
 He is a landscape- and figure-painter, 
 who is particularly famous for his pic- 
 tures of life in Cairo, Jerusalem, Damas- 
 cus, Tangier and India. He was born 
 in Boston in 1 849, and studied in Paris 
 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and after- 
 wards under Leon Bonnat and Gerome. 
 
 74
 
 At the age of twenty-nine he began to 
 exhibit at the Salon and continued to 
 do so for six years ; his subjects being 
 from Tangier and Morocco. The next 
 year he sent to the Salon a picture 
 whose subject was found in India, and 
 which was entitled a " Hindoo Sanctu- 
 ary at Bombay." In the two succeeding 
 years he exhibited a large picture called 
 " Le Dernier Voyage," a souvenir of 
 the Ganges, and " The Return of the 
 Mogul Emperor from the Grand 
 Mosque of Delhi." Others of his 
 famous pictures are called " Jerusalem 
 from the Bethany Road," " Pilgrimage 
 to the Jordan," " Scene in Tangier," 
 "Alhambra Windows," "Arab Story 
 Teller," and "A Moorish Camel Driver." 
 Mr. Weeks is a skillful draughtsman 
 and an excellent colorist. He handles 
 vast and intricate scenes with perfect 
 facility and remarkable effectiveness. 
 No one has excelled him in the unhesi- 
 tating directness with which, in his 
 scenes of Hindoo life, he has treated 
 
 75
 
 the grand architectural backgrounds 
 with their multicolored richness and 
 splendor of detail. In his large picture 
 called " Le Dernier Voyage " he has 
 accomplished a difficult feat with perfect 
 success. In the foreground of the pic- 
 ture there is a small barge crossing the 
 sacred Ganges River, and bearing three 
 figures, an oarsman near the bow and 
 two Hindoo fakirs. Of these, one is 
 lying down at the point of death, and 
 his comrade, who sits by his side, is 
 taking him to the holy city of Benares, 
 that he may there breathe his last on 
 the bank of the river. The background 
 is occupied by the picturesque Oriental 
 city with the intricate forms of temples, 
 pagodas and funeral pyres, and groups 
 of fakirs and men of every class shel- 
 tering themselves from the blazing sun 
 under large white umbrellas ; yet all 
 this detail, though treated with perfect 
 fidelity, does not thrust itself forward 
 nor usurp the interest that should 
 attach to the figures in the fore- 
 .76
 
 ground. The composition shows Mr. 
 Weeks's power to handle a dramatic 
 Oriental scene, and give it the charm 
 of its Oriental color and atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 77
 
 Hn Hmerican 
 painter of frencb 
 peasants. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 HARLES SPRAGUE PEARCE 
 has also been attracted by for- 
 eign subjects, but of a very 
 different kind from those 
 selected by Mr. Weeks. He has 
 painted portraits and figure subjects, but 
 has made his greatest success picturing 
 the rustic landscape and the peasants of 
 northern France. Mr. Pearce was born 
 in Boston in 1851. He studied under 
 Leon Bonnat in Paris, and at the age of 
 twenty-five exhibited a portrait at the 
 Salon. During the next few succeeding 
 years he sent figure subjects to the 
 Salon, all painted more or less in the 
 style of Bonnat. He had not yet 
 fully developed his own individuality ; 
 but when he turned his attention to 
 rustic subjects, he displayed all the tech- 
 nical skill, close observation and simple 
 handling characteristic of the modern 
 French school, but with a touch of sen- 
 7*
 
 timent dominating the general realism. 
 He is perhaps seen at his best in a pic- 
 ture exhibited at the Salon and called 
 " Une Bergere," which is a souvenir of 
 Picardy. The scene is a gently-sloping 
 hill, with an irregular path climbing 
 between stubble fields to the distant 
 horizon. A flock of sheep is scattered 
 about and browsing, while in the fore- 
 ground stands a young shepherdess with 
 both hands resting on her staff. The 
 figure is painted with great skill and not 
 without a touch of pathos in the atti- 
 tude and in the rather weary, listless 
 expression of the face. The picture, as 
 a whole, is pervaded by a feeling of 
 space and open air and a gray, palpitat- 
 ing atmosphere. If Mr. Pearce has 
 not found a new field in which to 
 work, he is at least thoroughly success- 
 ful in painting what attracts him most, 
 and is making valuable additions to 
 American art. His pictures have been 
 awarded prizes and medals at exhibi- 
 tions held in Paris, Berlin, Munich, 
 
 79
 
 Ghent, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta 
 and San Francisco. He has also been 
 made a member of many art societies at 
 home and aboard. 
 
 80
 
 XIV. 
 
 RIDGWAY KNIGHT is another a* idealism of 
 American artist who loves 
 to paint French peasants. 
 His art-training began in 
 Philadelphia, but was continued in 
 Paris under Gleyre, and later under 
 the great Meissonier at Poissy. In his 
 interpretation of French peasant life he 
 is disposed to select and give emphasis 
 to the bright and cheerful characteristics 
 and seeks to charm the spectator rather 
 than to sadden him, like Millet, by por- 
 traying only the hard lot of country 
 folk who toil on in a manner utterly 
 cheerless and resigned. Mr. Knight is 
 an idealist, attracted only by what is 
 beautiful and amiable in his subjects. 
 One of his pictures, called " L'Appel 
 au Passeur," exhibited at the Salon, 
 represents two buxom peasant women 
 on the banks of the Seine calling with 
 voice and gesture to the ferryman on 
 
 81
 
 the opposite side. Both are carrying 
 empty baskets and appear to be* return- 
 ing from the market, whither they had 
 gone to sell the products of the farm. 
 They have a cheerful, prosperous air, 
 and suggest the healthfulness and whole- 
 someness of country life rather than its 
 weary monotony and endless toil. The 
 open-air effect of the picture is excel- 
 lent, and imparts a feeling of the full- 
 ness and joyfulness of a perfect summer 
 day. 
 
 82
 
 XV. 
 NLIKE Mr. Knight, J. GARI Hn Hmerfm 
 
 -. , ... painter of Dutch 
 
 MELCHERS, another Amen- sub j e cts. 
 can artist who spends most 
 of his time abroad, delights 
 in ugliness and realism, painting by pref- 
 erence Dutch subjects and selecting for 
 his models the homely and careworn 
 faces and figures of Dutch peasants and 
 sailors. 
 
 Mr. Melchers was born in Detroit, 
 Mich., and received his artistic training 
 under Boulanger and Lefebvre in Paris. 
 In 1886 he received honorable men- 
 tion at the Salon, where he exhibited a 
 large painting called " Le Preche." Two 
 years later he exhibited at the Salon a 
 picture of " Dutch Pilots," seated about 
 a table in an inn, comfortably smoking 
 and carving models of boats. At the' 
 Universal Exhibition of 1889 he was 
 represented by both these works, and a 
 very large painting called the " Com- 
 83
 
 munion," representing the interior of a 
 Dutch church, with a score of life-size 
 and very ugly figures. 
 
 Mr. Melchers has the modern French 
 painter's way of looking at Nature, and 
 interprets his subjects with all the mod- 
 ern French painter's technical skill. It 
 may even be doubted whether any 
 French artist paints figures with greater 
 realism than he. We may wish, indeed, 
 that since he carries his work to the 
 point of almost complete illusion, he 
 would paint faces and forms that were 
 beautiful and interesting in themselves, 
 rather than the dull, parchment-like 
 features of aged and ignorant peasants. 
 It must nevertheless be said that all his 
 pictures are rich in local color ; that he 
 gives character and significance to the 
 pose and grouping of his figures ; that 
 there is a masterly directness and cer- 
 * tainty in his drawing; a simplicity and 
 strength in his painting, and always a 
 perfect observance of the relative values 
 throughout the composition. 
 8 4
 
 Mr. Melchers has the courage to 
 be independent and individual. His 
 artistic conceptions are never common- 
 place, while his knowledge and his tech- 
 nique are at every point adequate to the 
 perfect carrying out of all he conceives. 
 He holds to-day a distinguished place 
 among the painters on both sides of the 
 Atlantic. His work has won medals 
 and prizes in Amsterdam, Munich, 
 Paris, Berlin, Antwerp and Philadelphia, 
 and he has been made a member of many 
 of the principal art societies in Europe 
 and America. He has also the special dis- 
 tinction of being represented, like Whist- 
 ler and Sargent, in the Luxembourg in 
 Paris. 
 
 85
 
 William M. Cbaae, 
 the master 
 tecbnictst. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 HERE are painters, as there 
 are poets and musicians, 
 whose chief excellence lies in 
 a perfect mastery of the tech- 
 nique of their art. They are men who 
 interest us less by what they say than by 
 their manner of saying it. The pleas- 
 ure derived from their work, though it 
 is of a different kind, need, however, be 
 no less genuine than that excited by the 
 deep thought or strong emotion of 
 more imaginative artists. There are 
 poets who, though possessed of no re- 
 markable creative power, yet have an 
 extraordinary charm because of their 
 exquisite diction, the music of their 
 verse, and the perfect adaptation of form 
 to thought and sentiment; and this 
 charm is not only felt by lovers of 
 poetry in general, but acknowledged by 
 brother poets and fair-minded critics. 
 Much the same is true of musical com- 
 
 - 86
 
 posers and executants. All the arts 
 admit of many styles of expression, and 
 each style is good in itself if rightly 
 understood. Variety, indeed, is one of 
 the principal sources of pleasure in 
 every art, and whoever withholds his 
 sympathy from ail but a few favorite 
 forms of art expression and refuses to 
 learn to recognize what is good in 
 others, simply narrows his artistic judg- 
 ment and limits the range of his aesthetic 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Among our American painters, WIL- 
 LIAM M. CHASE holds the place of the 
 consummate technicist. In him the 
 executive talent is far more prominent 
 than the creative. It is his special forte 
 to interpret by means of pigments the 
 external aspects of Nature, to render the 
 effects of light and color and texture. 
 He cares little for imaginative or sym- 
 bolical subjects. He is not a dreamer 
 who endeavors to fix on canvas the 
 fantastic creations of his brain. His 
 art is almost wholly objective. What- 
 87
 
 ever catches the light or presents an 
 interesting note of color possesses for 
 him a charm which he renders always 
 with unerring skill. He delights in 
 still-life subjects as much as in figures 
 or landscapes, and paints a group of 
 vegetables or an old brass kettle or 
 Monday's wash hung out in the sun to 
 dry with as much enjoyment as the face 
 of a beautiful woman or the cloud- 
 shadows chasing each other across a 
 sunny field. He has never found it 
 possible to limit himself to a specialty, 
 like the artists who paint only cattle or 
 sheep or summer woods. It is his boast 
 that he can paint as well when the mer- 
 cury is down to zero, as in the month 
 of June or August. He is not depend- 
 ent upon any particular time or place 
 for his inspiration. There are interest- 
 ing effects of light around us at almost 
 all times if we have but the eyes to see 
 them, and, like Chase, the skill to fix 
 them on paper or canvas. And with 
 the power to render adequately all that
 
 he sees, Chase is never at a loss for 
 material. He cares little for subject or 
 composition, as those words are under- 
 stood by artists. Like Whistler, he 
 rather disdains the story-telling ele- 
 ment in a picture, and seeks first of all 
 to present the sensuous beauty of what 
 attracts his eye. In a word, he is 
 distinctively a painter, delighting in 
 the tools of his art, and handling his 
 medium of expression with masterly 
 skill. 
 
 Mr. Chase was born in Franklin 
 County,, Indiana, in 1849. I* 1 n ^ s 
 twentieth year he determined to become 
 an artist, and went to New York, where 
 for two years he studied in the schools 
 of the National Academy and in the 
 studio of J. Q. Eaton. He then re- 
 moved to St. Louis^ and there practiced 
 his art, painting still-life subjects and 
 some portraits. His work sold readily, 
 and he prospered so well that in another 
 year he was able to secure enough com- 
 missions to warrant his going to Europe
 
 for further study. At the age of twenty- 
 three, therefore, he entered the Academy 
 in Munich, and, with characteristic 
 earnestness, began again at the very 
 foundation, working himself up from 
 the antique class. During the next six 
 years he not only absorbed all that his 
 teacher, the celebrated Piloty, had to 
 impart, but he constantly studied the 
 Dutch and Flemish masterpieces pre- 
 served in the Munich galleries. Under 
 these influences he could not fail to be- 
 come a good technicist. The great aim 
 in the Munich studios is to acquire a 
 free and vigorous handling of the brush, 
 and the paintings in the public galleries 
 are for the most part the works of men 
 like Rubens, Hals, and Rembrandt. 
 who were all supreme technicists. Dur- 
 ing this time, Mr. Chase painted such 
 pictures as " The Court Jester," " The 
 Turkish Page," " Ready for the Ride," 
 and " The Dowager," all of them excel- 
 lent examples of his early style as influ- 
 enced by his Munich training. 
 9
 
 His later style shows that he has 
 gained much from other sources. He 
 has never ceased to study the work of 
 the world's great masters. He has 
 visited all the most important galleries 
 in Europe, has copied the pictures in 
 the museums in Venice, studied Velas- 
 quez in Madrid, and visited, year after 
 year, the Salon in Paris. He has 
 learned much from the modern French 
 artists, and his style is now more French 
 than Bavarian ; so that, while his early 
 work was all painted in sombre tones 
 approaching blackness, his later work is 
 generally in a high key and always full 
 of light and color. 
 
 Mr. Chase's versatility is seen both in 
 the variety of subjects he handles and 
 in the different media in which he 
 works. He paints still-life, genre, por- 
 traits, and landscapes with equal skill 
 and with equal delight ; and whether it 
 be oil, water-color, gouache, or pastel 
 that he employs, whether a canvas six 
 by ten inches or a canvas six by ten 
 91
 
 feet, whether the surface be smooth as 
 ivory or rough as coffee sacking, he 
 always shows that each has its own 
 special advantages and that something 
 can be done with each that cannot be 
 done so well with any of the others. 
 
 One of Mr. Chase's special delights 
 is to paint a picture placed within a 
 picture. Many of his own landscapes 
 and figure pictures reappear as adorning 
 the wall of an " interior with figures " 
 forming the subject of another picture. 
 In these the painted gold of the frame 
 of the pictured picture is brought close 
 to the real gold of the frame of the 
 actual picture. The artist's representa- 
 tion of gold is thus made at once to 
 challenge comparison with the real gold, 
 and any shortcomings on the part of 
 the artist would be strikingly apparent. 
 In one of these compositions he has 
 painted his own wife as seated before 
 one of his own landscapes, but in the 
 attitude of having just turned her eyes 
 from the picture to reply to a remark 
 92
 
 made by some one behind her. Here 
 Mr. Chase has not only overcome the 
 technical difficulty of painting the gold 
 frame with sufficient skill to stand com- 
 parison with the real frame but he has 
 also kept a definite sense of distance 
 between the figure in the foreground 
 and the picture in the background. 
 There is, also, in the figure a suggested 
 action combined with a feeling of re- 
 pose ; while the face and the attitude tell 
 plainly the simple story of the picture. 
 It has been objected by some intel- 
 ligent critics that such pictures as this 
 are mere devices of the artist to show 
 his cleverness ; that, instead of express- 
 ing some sentiment or emotion to the 
 observer, they simply fill him with a 
 consciousness of the painter's technique. 
 I have already hinted, however, that 
 Mr. Chase has his limitations. Who- 
 ever wishes to enjoy his work must not 
 seek in it what he does not pretend to 
 give ; but accepting the artist as he is, 
 and understanding his aim, one will find 
 
 93
 
 in Mr. Chase, as one of his brother 
 artists says, " A master painter, who does 
 well all that he tries to do, and some 
 things as well as any man living." 
 
 94
 
 XVII. 
 
 HEN we come to study JOHN ^obniufa 
 
 the Hme 
 colortst. 
 
 TP> 7 the Hmertcan 
 
 LA b ARGE, who is par excel- 
 
 lence the American colorist, 
 we find a striking contrast 
 to Mr. Chase. Mr. La Farge does 
 not, like Mr. Chase, see merely the 
 surface beauty of things, he has the 
 finer insight that enables him to per- 
 ceive the more hidden beauty of their 
 spiritual significance. He is preemi- 
 nently a creative artist, in the presence 
 of whose glowing color harmonies the 
 feelings are stirred and exalted, the 
 sordid and the commonplace being for- 
 gotten in the contemplation of celestial 
 beauty. 
 
 Mr. La Farge was born in New York 
 in 1835. The environment in which 
 he lived from his earliest youth was 
 fortunately such as to foster and develop 
 to the utmost the strong sense of color 
 with which Nature had endowed him. 
 
 95
 
 His boyhood was spent in "Newport, 
 R. I., where he stored his visual 
 memory with vivid impressions of the 
 rich beauty of the landscape and the 
 ever-changing aspect of the sky and 
 the sea. With flowers he formed an 
 intimate and loving companionship, and 
 from them he learned the secret of deli- 
 cate gradation and harmony of color. 
 At the age of twenty-one he went 
 to Paris and entered the studio of 
 Couture. After a few weeks' time, his 
 master recognized in him a young man of 
 original genius and advised him to free 
 himself from all studio influences and 
 study alone by himself. La Farge re- 
 turned to America. Here he formed a 
 life-long friendship with William M. 
 Hunt, who was, perhaps, the most 
 original and spiritual artistic genius this 
 country had yet produced. The influ- 
 ence of Hunt was to deepen and fix in 
 La Farge his already strong natural 
 tendency t<5 seek for the religious aspect 
 of life and nature. It must not be 
 9 6
 
 supposed, however, that La Farge in 
 any sense imitated his friend. He was 
 too original and too independent to fol- 
 low any other man, and belongs to no 
 special school of art. He is, indeed, 
 exceedingly difficult to classify as an 
 artist, for he is neither the disciple of 
 any school nor yet the founder of one. 
 Most men of great originality and 
 strong convictions seek to express their 
 theories in a connected series of works, 
 which are sure to bear a striking family 
 resemblance to one another, and which 
 other men, admiring the master, learn 
 at last to imitate. The artistic perform- 
 ances of Mr. La Farge, however, are 
 of an extent and variety seldom found 
 in the works of any modern artist. He 
 is at once a painter of landscapes, of 
 flowers, of portraits, of genre subjects, 
 and of subjects religious, and purely 
 ideal and imaginative ; he has worked 
 in oil, in water-color and on wood ; 
 he is a mural decorator, a painter in 
 stained glass, and a sculptor. In all of 
 
 97
 
 these forms of art he has shown his 
 individuality and power of thought. 
 In none has he so persistently followed 
 out any one theme as to make it easy 
 for others to discover his mode of think- 
 ing or to copy his manner. His great- 
 ness lies not so much in any startling 
 innovations that he has made in art as 
 in the earnestness and loftiness of his 
 purpose, his remarkable creative power, 
 the spirituality of his conceptions, his 
 depth and sincerity of feeling, and in 
 his marvelous richness and beauty of 
 color. 
 
 Among the earliest works with which 
 Mr. La Farge came before the public 
 were a number of notable landscapes. 
 These are admirable examples of the 
 painter's peculiar skill in the treatment 
 of light and color-values through all 
 their subtle gradations. One of these 
 is a view from a hill near Paradise, 
 Newport, a most daring and difficult 
 composition, representing land stretch- 
 ing out into unending distance, flooded 
 9 8
 
 with a strong midday light. Others 
 are winter scenes, in which he has pre- 
 sented all the subtle and delicate grada- 
 tions of the color of snow while, at the 
 same time, preserving its apparent 
 whiteness and purity. Beginning in 
 the foreground with a faint tinting of 
 pink, he gradates the color into green,' 
 putting here and there a touch of 
 deepest blue in the depressions of the 
 ground, and towards the edge of the 
 horizon a slight hint of yellow ; yet all 
 these he keeps so carefully subdued as 
 to make an ensemble of almost imper- 
 ceptible color and to give the snow a 
 look of interesting reality. 
 
 In none of these landscapes has he 
 carried his work to a state of high 
 finish. He has given breadth and a 
 sense of largeness in brush work, but 
 no hint of elaboration. In the work 
 of Mr. La Farge the details are always 
 subordinated and almost disdained. It 
 is through color rather than by means 
 of the drawing that Mr. La Farge seeks 
 
 99
 
 to give his interpretation of any aspect 
 of life or nature. It is one of his 
 strongest convictions that color sym- 
 bolizes character and can be made to 
 express the hidden meaning of things. 
 He has, therefore, reinforced his 
 naturally quick perception of color by 
 a careful study of its scientific use. To 
 this he owes much of his originality in 
 coloring, " the most striking features of 
 which are his frequent use of a crescendo 
 in his scale of tones, his constant habit 
 of shading by most delicate gradations, 
 and his delight in sharp juxtaposition 
 of primaries." In the use of this 
 last device he was probably influenced 
 by the Orientalists, for he was at one 
 time a close student of Japanese art and 
 its laws of color. 
 
 In his flower pictures, Mr. La Farge 
 has given us interpretations of the rose, 
 the hollyhock, the water lily, the lotus 
 and other blossoms, which are remark- 
 able for their purity and charm of 
 color, the flowers forming a theme for
 
 a most delicate and refined harmony 
 that addresses the eye with occult 
 power. 
 
 As a painter of purely imaginative 
 work, he has drawn some of his subjects 
 from the realm of fairyland and witch- 
 craft. " The Pied Piper of Hamelin," 
 "The Wolf Charmer," "The Sor- 
 ceress," " The Fisherman and the 
 Genii," " The Siren's Song," are all 
 works of the purest fantasy, yet each 
 has a significance of its own and reveals 
 an almost divine insight into the nature 
 of things. 
 
 Before he had concluded his thirty- 
 third year, Mr. La Farge's life had 
 already been extraordinarily productive. 
 Besides landscapes and flowers, he had 
 made many drawings on wood and in 
 water-color, in illustration of the 
 poems of Browning and of an edition of 
 Tennyson's " Enoch Arden," and of 
 the " Songs of the Old Dramatists." 
 He had also produced numerous por- 
 traits and studies of heads and figures, 
 
 101
 
 in which there is the same depth and 
 sincerity of feeling as in the landscapes, 
 the same breadth of treatment. His 
 portraits are generally painted in low 
 tones, but the tones are rich and 
 strong. The details are barely sug- 
 gested, all power being focussed on the 
 expression of character rather than on 
 the features. 
 
 At this period he had already pro- 
 duced many important religious pictures 
 also. Among these are a spirited head 
 of " St. John the Baptist," and, as 
 frescoes, pictures of " The Madonna," 
 " The Crucifixion," and " The Ascen- 
 sion," besides other cathedral paintings. 
 His highest note of power at this time 
 was reached in a large picture called 
 " St. Paul," painted as the altarpiece of 
 a church.' This is such a masterpiece 
 as could have been produced only by 
 a fervent believer. It is painted in the 
 spirit of the great renaissance models, 
 with all their breadth and largeness of 
 treatment, their union of strength and
 
 simplicity, but it in no wise suggests 
 imitation, being original both in idea 
 and in execution. 
 
 In this short discourse we could 
 not trace the full history of this won- 
 derful man's life and achievements. He 
 has visited Europe many times ; has 
 sketched and painted in France, in 
 Japan, in the islands of the Pacific, as 
 well as in America. His growth as an 
 artist has never yet suggested any limi- 
 tations. He goes to Nature in the 
 spirit of the investigator and discoverer, 
 and is constantly finding new truth and 
 beauty. 
 
 In 1876, he made the mural deco- 
 rations for Trinity Church, Boston. 
 Later, he made the decorations of St. 
 Thomas's Church in New York, aided 
 by his friend, the celebrated American 
 sculptor, St. Gaudens. 
 
 During the last fifteen years he has 
 
 painted comparatively few easel pictures, 
 
 giving almost his entire time to mural 
 
 decorations and stained-glass painting. 
 
 103
 
 His two most noted public windows are 
 the so-called " Blue Window " in Trini- 
 ty Church, Boston, and the Harvard 
 Memorial, or " Battle Window." In 
 the magnificent residence of the late 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt there are decora- 
 tions by La Farge said to form as 
 original and beautiful an ensemble as 
 perhaps has been executed since the 
 Renaissance. The stained glass used 
 in the windows are from Mr. La Farge's 
 own designs and factory. 
 
 In turning to glass as a medium of 
 expression, Mr. La Farge was attracted 
 by the unequaled opportunities it 
 offered to a colorist. Actuated always 
 by the highest art ideals, and looking to 
 the betterment of his fellow men, Mr. 
 La Farge believes that the standard of 
 public taste in this country can be more 
 quickly raised to a higher level by 
 means of beautiful designs in colored 
 glass windows, placed in the large 
 churches and other buildings through- 
 out the country, than by any other form 
 104
 
 of art. In State buildings and in pri- 
 vate mansions he has free play for the 
 exercise of his pictorial and poetical 
 fancy, while church windows offer a 
 field for the religious subjects to which 
 his own taste most strongly inclines 
 him. Glass also offers to the colorist 
 an opportunity for endless experiments 
 in combinations, and Mr. La Farge was 
 tempted by the hope of making some 
 new discoveries of lasting worth and 
 beauty. The splendid color-mosaics 
 that he has produced display the same 
 originality that distinguishes his earlier 
 efforts with 'pigments, and to-day no 
 other living artist has so perfect a com- 
 mand and comprehension of this brittle 
 vehicle of opalescent glory.
 
 Che Great Hmcri- 
 eati genre painter, 
 CHinslow Bonier. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 MONG our representative 
 American painters we have 
 not only a great, probably the 
 greatest, living interpreter, 
 of pure sensuous beauty in Whistler, a 
 great landscapist in Inness, a great tech- 
 nicist in Chase, and a great colorist in 
 La Farge, we have also a great genre 
 painter in WINSLOW HOMER, who is 
 the most truly national of all our 
 painters, and one of the few men living 
 in the world to-day who can be called 
 great artists. A profound original 
 genius and wholly devoted to his art, 
 Homer lives the life of a recluse in a 
 lonely spot on the coast of Maine, his 
 only companions being the rude toilers 
 on land and sea, hunters, farmers, 
 fishermen and sailors. It is the lives of 
 these humble people that Homer inter- 
 prets ; and his works all testify to his 
 power of close observation, his firm 
 1 06
 
 grasp upon essential points of character, 
 and his thoroughly individual manner 
 of handling his subject. Indeed, his 
 work never betrays the influence of any 
 school of art or the method of any 
 other artist. 
 
 Born in Boston, February 24, 1836, 
 Homer began to develop his gift for 
 art in early childhood, obtained employ- 
 ment at the age of nineteen in a litho- 
 graphing establishment in Boston, where 
 he remained for two years, and at the 
 age of twenty-three began to study at 
 the National Academy of Design in 
 New York, and under F. Rondel. Some 
 eight years later he made a short trip to 
 Europe, but it was after he had already 
 fully developed his own method of 
 painting. The style that he instinct- 
 ively formed in his youth he has not 
 since altered, never having been swayed 
 or affected by any passing fad or 
 fashion. 
 
 During the Civil War, Homer paint- 
 ed, from personal observation, many 
 107
 
 stirring scenes of the camps, the marches 
 and the battlefields, and one of these, 
 called " Prisoners from the Front," has 
 long been celebrated as a unique work 
 in American art. He has also given us 
 faithful interpretations of the pictur- 
 esque episodes of the negro life in those 
 days ; has portrayed the rough exist- 
 ence of the American frontiersman, the 
 rude exploits of the brave woodsman 
 and hunter ; he has told on canvas many 
 stories of the hard, and often heroic, 
 lives of American fishermen and sailors ; 
 and he has painted sympathetically and 
 appreciatively many phases in the life 
 of the farmer, so full of toil and strug- 
 gle. He has depicted the peaceful 
 scenes of American village life and of 
 the country school. In short, whatever 
 is idyllic or heroic in the lives of the 
 common people of this great democ- 
 racy, Homer has closely observed and 
 painted as he has seen it, never soften- 
 ing a line or modifying a feature for the 
 sake of producing a pleasing effect, but 
 
 icS
 
 always telling the essential truth of his 
 subject in a style at once broad and 
 masterful, sincere and noble. 
 
 109
 
 Marine, animal, 
 figure, and land- 
 scape painters. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 N this essay we can speak of 
 only a very few of the note- 
 worthy American artists. 
 We must not fail to observe, 
 however, that we have also many excel- 
 lent marine painters., chief of whom is 
 Alexander Harrison, famous for the 
 splendor and mystery of his pictures of 
 surf and sea by moonlight. The key- 
 note of Mr. Harrison's art is truth to 
 Nature. No other living painter knows 
 so well as he how to reproduce the in- 
 stantaneous phases of cloud and sky, 
 the subtle lines of the curling wave, and 
 the appearance of the wash sliding over 
 the smooth sand with a mirror-like 
 surface that reflects the sky. Others of 
 our distinguished marine painters are 
 W. T. Richards, Edward Moran, and 
 M. F. H. De Haas. Among animal 
 painters, if we have none of front rank, 
 we have, at least, men like George
 
 Inness, Jr., Peter Moran, Carleton Wig- 
 gins, and C. Morgan Mcllhenny. In 
 Edwin A. Abbey we have one of the 
 four greatest draughtsmen of the nine- 
 teenth century, though we must admit 
 that he has not as yet become a first- 
 rate colorist. F. D. Millet and Henry 
 Mosler are both accomplished story- 
 tellers on canvas, and Mosler has the dis- 
 tinction of being represented in the Lux- 
 embourg in Paris. W. T. Dannat and 
 J. J. Shannon are famous portrait-paint- 
 ers. Elihu Vedder is noted for the 
 imaginative and poetic character of his 
 compositions ; George Hitchcock for 
 his paintings of Dutch subjects, in which 
 the color scheme is largely governed by 
 a mass of flowers a gardenplot of 
 white lilies, or tulips, or a hedge of lilac 
 bushes in full bloom. Among our best 
 landscape painters we need to mention 
 D. W. Tryon, in whose work there- is 
 a note of sadness and touching poetic 
 sentiment ; R. Swain Giffbrd, who has 
 painted the mountain scenery of Califor-
 
 nia, the plains and meadows of New 
 England, the landscape of old England, 
 of France, Italy and Spain, and the desert 
 wastes and tropical beauties of Africa ; 
 Thomas Moran, famous for his large 
 canvases representing scenes in the 
 Rocky Mountains and the Yellowstone 
 Park ; J. Francis Murphy, distin- 
 guished for the mellow, rich tones of 
 his pictures ; Charles Melville Dewey, 
 in whose moonlight pictures there is 
 exquisite delicacy of tone and tender- 
 ness of feeling; and Charles H. Davis, 
 who is one of the great landscapists -of 
 the day. Some of our distinguished 
 women painters are Cecilia Beaux, a 
 portraitist famous on two continents ; 
 Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, Rosina Sher- 
 wood, and Clara McChesney.
 
 XX. 
 
 |HE history of American art 
 extends over two centuries ; 
 but, although we have had 
 distinguished painters since 
 the days of Gilbert Stuart and of Cop- 
 ley, it was not until within the last 
 thirty-five years that American artists 
 have won the fullest recognition in 
 the principal art centers of Europe. 
 To-day, many of the greatest and most 
 famous living painters are Americans, 
 and nowhere are they held in such 
 high esteem as in Europe and especially 
 in France. Indeed, the French to-day 
 ungrudgingly expect the Americans to 
 supersede them before the end of 
 another century. Our native painters 
 have proved themselves possessed of 
 the highest ambition and capable of the 
 severe application characteristic always 
 of true genius. What may they not 
 hope to accomplish when there shall at 
 "3
 
 last have been made for them in their 
 own country an artistic milieu, such as 
 they are now obliged to seek in 
 Europe? When in this work-a-day 
 country of ours we have come at last to 
 accept the dictum of Emerson, that 
 " one ray of beauty outvalues all the 
 utilities in the world," then, perhaps, our 
 American life will be no longer 
 " uninteresting," and Matthew Arnold's 
 arraignment of our civilization no 
 longer true. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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