International studio (15.1901/1902(1902))

American Studio Talk

future. Another picture by a painter whose name
is unfamiliar attracted me at every visit that I paid to
the exhibition. It is The Valley, by Edward Loyal
Field. One looks past some trees to cottages at
the foot of a round-topped hill, that is divided up
by hedges and catches the light, while farther back
is another hill. The sky seems to be ill drawn,
but the foreground and hill are very real, and there
is a sense of bigness, spaciousness, and reality in
the picture that is very stimulating. One has
known just such spots, and this picture brings back
the impressions with which they have affected one
most vividly.

It is just this gratifying suggestion of reality that
is so conspicuous in Charles Davis’s Summer Clouds,
and I would venture to advise Mr. Field to study
it, for it has the same qualities that he is striving
for, but rendered with the sureness of maturer
knowledge and skill. The drawing of the ground
and sky in this picture is extraordinarily good ; as I
observed, on a previous occasion when it was
shown, it ought to be purchased by some academy
which has a school attached to it, that it might be
a perpetual reminder to students of what drawing
and construction in landscape mean. And the tech-
nical accomplishment subserves a very fine senti-
ment. It is of the vigorous sort, involving a
delight in the bracing exhilaration of a sweep of
country beneath a wide expanse of sky in which
the clouds have volume and movement.

Another very earnest observer of sky effects is
George H. Bogert. The study leads him to Hol-
land, where the clouds hang low, take vigorous forms,
and shape themselves into the landscape. But in
the three pictures which he shows here, I wonder
whether the sky is not acting as an obsession to his
judgment; occupying too exclusively his vision and
inducing him to feel after eccentricities of phe-
nomena. The great white cloud in Near Leiden,
Holland, bearing down upon the windmill and ruddy
brown roofs of the houses, has dominated the
painter to this extent that he has had to force the
colors and solidity of the lower part of the picture,
so that the general effect is heavy ; moist and brilliant
as one sees in Holland, but without that delicacy
of atmosphere that is at once so characteristic and
fascinating. Again, his Moonlight, with its sky full
of brownish silver fleecy little clouds, is scarcely
untrue to nature. Indeed, one has often seen just
such an effect, when the sky, to put it bluntly,
seemed dirty; but it is hardly a condition that
lends itself to a fortunate presentment in a picture,
especially when it is the main and almost the sole
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motive. Moreover, a certain grittiness has here
crept into the brush work that interferes with the
luminosity.

I see that Leonard Ochtman’s In Early Spring
has elicited little notice from other writers, and yet
it seems to me a picture of very delicate and per-
suasive charm. It represents a stretch of pale
grass land, sloping down to the edge of a wood;
trees and meadow veiled in tender mist, yet show-
ing stanch and firm. The character of the scene
has been very sturdily rendered, and the envelope
of atmosphere expressed with unusual skill. Again,
in Walter Clark’s rather large picture of Gloucester
Harbor, a fascinating delicacy of color and atmos-
phere has not impaired the brisker qualities of the
subject. One of the best pictures by Charles War-
ren Eaton that I recall is this one of Exmoor; the
upland country of Lorna Doone, rolling in quiet
masses, covered with purple heather, beneath a
delicate green sky with a pale blue moon hanging
among the soft, rosy clouds. The bold tranquillity,
the spacious airfulness, and the tender richness of
the coloring are rendered most observantly. I like
it so much because of the resolute character of the
drawing. Mr. Warren has caught the big and per-
manent qualities of the scene, so that the poetry
with which he invests it is established upon a
sound foundation. Very much the same is true of
A Hillside Pasture, by W. L. Lathrop. It is a little
picture of the New England countryside which he
has studied so lovingly and interprets with such
intimate discrimination of its individual qualities.
He renders the hardy character of the scene, its
quiet reserve of color, and stealing subtlety of at-
mosphere in a manner at once so resolute and yet
reticent that only careful study will reveal the excel-
lent qualities of the picture. But enjoyment can
hardly fail to follow upon the study. I find another
example of delicate discernment in Joseph H. Bos-
ton’s Night, another small picture, and, like the
last one, hung rather too high. The water and its
surrounding wooded hills are bathed in luminosity ;
and the latter is distinctly of moonlight, and of
such as one may see in the short summer night.
The picture, indeed, gives evidence of that close
observation, which is so agreeable a compliment
to the visitor, who, too often, is required to accept
something for what it professes to be, instead of
being convinced of its truth.

With this thought in mind, one may turn from
the landscapes to Elliott Daingerfield’s The Story
of the Madonna, to which the jury have awarded
the Clarke Prize. In a landscape, which mingles