Studio: international art (48.1910)

Contemporary American Landscape Painting

no means imitative. Instead of seeking beauty almost bewildering array of the fruits of an early

he saw it, and on every side. He painted broad season. Between the years 1879 and I9°9 the

stretches of near-by open country lying steeped in pages of history have been turned rapidly, and

summer sunlight—such scenes as were to him records have grown old while they were yet in the

most familiar and appealing, and he made patent making. Within this period the French impres-

their charm. His colour was rich and strong, and sionists have risen and declared a new creed, the

he allowed it to flow freely from his brush. Some plein-air painters have advanced a doctrine, and

of his canvases are over-painted, but they all have the tonalists have strengthened their ramparts; in

definite meaning. Alexander H. Wyant, his con- America the voices have been heard and in some

temporary, was perhaps an evener though a less measure heeded. American landscape painters, like

virile painter, and a better draughtsman. For him American figure painters, of the last quarter century

grey days had more allurement than sunny ones, have quite generally got their schooling in France,

and his works are found to have a lyric quality but they have returned more promptly, and held

which in a measure Inness's lack. Homer Martin, with greater tenacity, it would seem, to native ideals,

of the three, was probably the most emotional but Thus with them the foreign influence has appa-

least conscious of the beauty of his own land— rently filtered through a national individuality, and

least single-hearted. All of these men, it must be been assimilated rather than absorbed. Of course,

understood, developed gradually, and to some extent there are those who lead and those who follow—

groped their way, unconscious of the fact that they imitators and honest investigators—men of little

were creating tradition. Their works stand to-day minds and men of independent conviction ; but the

alone, and represent a chapter which is concluded, latter are in preponderance.

This brings us to present time, to the field of Childe Hassam is the strongest exponent of the

contemporary effort wherein is spread before us an school of Monet in America, but that he is not the

"autumn woodlands"
6

by e. m. shurtleff