International studio (15.1901/1902(1902))

American Studio Talk

rocks, but the drawing of the foreground is inade-
quate as compared with that of tire clouds ; the
picture has, however, that charm of intense personal
feeling that distinguishes this painter’s work.

It is a quality that, for my own part, I cannot
find in Louis Paul Dessar’s. In the Evening in
Picardy and Sheep in the Sand Dunes and with
the recollection of other pictures of recent years,
one is conscious of a certain mannerism ; as if the
painter had reduced his view of nature to a formula
of color and form, of which he makes frequent and
easy use. And it is the same with Will S. Robin-
son, as in his Village Street. He has a formula for
villages and another for the seashore; both un-
questionably plausible, perhaps even convincing,
but reappearing with such frequency that one is in-
clined to feel that the formula has become of more
account to the painter than the truth it is designed
to express. And if a painter has not fresh eyes for
nature, he must not be surprised if the freshness of
our interest in his pictures is dulled. Similarly, I
find the Venetian output of W. Gedney Bunce— On
the Lagoon and Off the Lido, for example — a trifle
uninspiring. They represent a point of view that
is certainly subtle, and unquestionably personal,
but with a repetition that divests it of much of its
suggestiveness; replacing the constant freshness of
study with a fixity of outlook that seems lacking in
vitality. So too with J. Francis Murphy’s autumn
landscapes, playing so perpetually on one theme
and in a manner so generally similar. No effort is
needed to enjoy them individually; but this harping
upon a single mood with a refrain so uniform be-
comes a little tedious. It is not the method of the
enthusiast, whose art is vitally a part of his own
personal progress; he may linger in some “ happy
valley ” that he has discovered, but will not persist-
ently take up his abode therein. It is different with
Ben Foster’s moonlight pictures, which are more
evidently parts of a personal evolution. Through
all of them runs the desire to express the mystery
of night and moonlight, the elfin counterpart of the
daylight’s light and shadows, the spiritual refresh-
ment of the hush and moist coolness of the night.
This is at once a large and comprehensive motive,
and the subjects selected for its realization differ in
every picture. A man might spend his whole life
upon such a theme and yet, by the variety of the
manifestations which he studies, avoid all suspicion
of plagiarizing upon himself. In this way there is
the widest difference between Mr. Foster’s All in
a Misty Moonshine and The Lonely Poad, while
to emphasize his breadth of view he sends also a

daylight subject, Among the Litchfield Hills, a
picture of rare distinction, that made itself felt amid
its surroundings at Buffalo in no uncertain way.

Charles H. Davis likewise contributes two beau-
tiful evening studies and one of morning light. The
last is Summer Clouds, a canvas rather large for a
private gallery but which certainly should find a
home in some public one, for it is a fine example
of thorough study and authoritative drawing, more-
over a handspme and exhilarating picture. His
Midsummer Twilight and Summer Moonlight
have a delicious refinement of feeling, all the more
attractive by reason of an underlying virility. By
persistent study and an open-eyed, manly sympathy
with all kinds of moods of nature, this painter has
secured a most enviable position among American
landscapists. W. L. Lathrop, also, with less robust-
ness of expression, but an equally affectionate de-
votion to nature, sets upon his pictures an impress
of distinction that can never escape the notice of
a careful student, though their reticent, almost
modest, manner may not attract the careless. But
the quiet poetry of the New England landscape is
realized by him with so genuine a feeling that the
character, spirit, and significance of the scene are
interpreted with most admirable completeness. A
picture as truly poetical as any in the exhibition is
Leonard Ochtman’s Moonlight on Long Lsland
Sound, with its exquisite luminosity and softly
hovering shadows. It is strange that a picture of
such fine quality has not yet found a purchaser.

The term “ poetical ” is so frequently, and often
so loosely, applied to landscapes, that perhaps I
may be pardoned for mentioning in what sense
I use it here. Briefly, then, I refer to that quality
in a picture which interprets the significance of the
scene as it appealed to the spirit of the painter,
such interpretation awaking in our own spirit a cor-
responding sense of the significance. For this there
need be little or no imagination on the part of the
painter; only a delicate sensibility to what, without
stretching of words, we may call the spiritual sig-
nificance of nature ; that analogy, real or fancied,
between her moods and those of our own minds.
They may be stern, tender, joyous, or melancholy,
but in every case suggesting or responding to some
phase of feeling in ourselves ; and such poetic qual-
ity in a picture will be deep and sincere according
as the painter has studied the material aspect of the
landscape with truth and thoroughness. We shall
have no hesitation in discovering this quality in W.
Elmer Schofield’s beautiful study of Pennsylvania
woods in Winter, but shall scarcely find it in his

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