International studio (34.1908)

Pennsylvania Academy

the Sargent influence, she has most thoroughly
assimilated and made her own what was good in
it, growing year by year in individual expression.
She, like Sargent, wields the “big stick” in art
as do few other painters to-day, imposing her point
of^view upon us, until, in mere self-defence, we are
compelled to readjust our focus, so to speak, or
run the risk of losing much that is very fine, whole-
some and worthy of serious attention. The failure
to so readjust our focus would surely have resulted
in our missing such an unobtrusive canvas as Girls
Reading, by Edmund C. Tarbell, which was none
the less worthy to rank on equal footing with the
best in the whole show. In the matter of abso-
lutely truthful rendering of light and air it far
excelled almost
everything else
shown.
Landscape
painting as a
means of personal
expression has
steadily advanced
in this country,
until, to-day, it is
the chief glory of
American art.
The work of such
men as W. E.
Elmer Schofield,
whose Old Mill on
the Somme is a
beautiful presen-
tation of what
would be regarded
by many as a com-
monplace subject;
of Edward W.
Redfield, repre-
sented here by a
winter landscape,
called December, a
frankly realistic
rendering of na-
ture, executed with
a fine knowledge of
atmosphere, light
and air; of Willard
L. Metcalf, whose
painting, called
Trembling Leaves,
was a most delight-
ful and straight-
forward interpre-

tation of a sequestered nook in nature; of
Childe Hassam, whose Leda, The Aspens and
his large Aphrodite were all remarkable for
their rendering of sunlight; of Twachtman, whose
two canvases were among the most delicately
poetic interpretations of nature in the exhibition;
of George Elmer Browne, of Jonas Lie, of Charles
Morris Young—the work of all these is so far above
the general average of landscape painting as to
make comparisons seem futile. We miss, how-
ever, Dabo’s poetic adumbrations of nature,
Steichen’s weird and mysterious evocations and
the calm and somewhat somber outlook of Robert-
son Iv. Mygatt. On the whole, this exhibition
was refreshingly sane and progressive.


PORTRAIT OF CADWALLADER WASHBURN BY WM. M. CHASE

XXXVI