International studio (26.1905)

student in Paris during the initial triumphs of the
piein-airists, Mr. Hitchcock made no immediate
attempt to put their theories to practical test. He
belonged rather to the eloquent, academic circle.
It was not until he had settled in Holland that
he began to evolve the modified, subjective lyricism
which has remained the keynote of his art.
It is not the Holland of convention that Mr.
Hitchcock interprets for the outside world. It is
not the homely and sentimental Holland of Israels,
nor the green and gray Holland of Maris nor the
subdued, silvery Holland of the good shepherd
Mauve. His is a joyous, radiant, flower-bright
Holland, both transient and typical. Oddly
enough, though naturally, it has remained for a
stranger to see and to paint the most characteristic
phase of Dutch landscape, the springtime brilliance
of tulip and hyacinth. Coming to Holland from
America by way of Paris and Diisseldorf, it was
possible for Mr. Hitchcock to look about him with
frank, unprejudiced eye. Dutch art was still to a
certain degree enslaved by the solemnity of Rem-
brandt and the sobriety of Ruisdael and Hobbema.
A lingering touch of tradition made most of the
native painters choose either the mist-wrapped
monotones of eventide or the formal precision of
an interior. The Dutch were intellectual and
phlegmatic, Mr. Hitchcock was sensitive and
emotional. He swung the hands of the clock back

to twelve and stepped out of doors on a clear,
luminous day. Under foot was a variegated carpet
of bloom and on the air was the caressing fragrance
of spring. It was this which appealed to him, and
it was this which he began to record over a score of
years ago. By accident, almost, he drifted to Hol-
land ; by predeliction he became a painter of sun-
light.
In the higher interests of biography, it may not
be amiss to note that George Hitchcock was born
in Providence, R. 1., in 1850. Descended from
Roger Williams, John Smith, Thomas Harris and
other sturdy and distinguished founders of what
was known as "Providence Plantations," he was
graduated from Brown University in 1872, and two
years later took his degree at the Harvard Law
School. He practised both in Providence and in
New York, but the rigid perspective of a lifetime at
the bar or on the bench did not seem alluring, and
at the age of nine-and-twenty he renounced juris-
prudence for the palette, brushes and canvas. It
was a sudden plunge, but one which was quickly
and completely justified. After some months in
London, the young artist-attorney crossed over to
Paris and entered Julians' under Boulanger and
Lefebvre. A winter at the conscientious Diisseldorf
Academy and a couple of summers with Mesdag
on the Dutch coast, completed his apprenticeship.
In Paris he had painted the figure almost exclu-

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