Studio: international art (48.1910)

Contemporary American Landscape Painting

to tradition and lay greater
stress upon the preroga-
tives of art—men to whom
it must seem that the
business of art is to supple-
ment and perfect nature,
to carry out its intention,
and who represent light
by the use of luminous
colour. These are the
tonalists, Henry Golden
Dearth, Ballard Williams,
Sartain, Dessar, Keith and
- . Ranger, whose sense of

the pictorial is very acute,
and whose compositions
display a decorative
motive, appealing first to
the eye and then to the
intellect. These artists
are less fragmentary in
their speech than the for-
mer, and to the masters of
_ ' the Old World they are

^^"if^ lifll more akin. Mr. Dearth

HBBSS^^^^S^SffiSgBB**- and Mr. Williams both

display in their work im-
■j&MBtt^^k aginative power of a

i • £*k delightful order. Mr.

•-- -. Ranger is perhaps nearer

to nature at times and

*........-■- • ^.^^■■^■^^Bl more versatile, fashioning

"THE LAND OK THE HOPI INDIAN" BY ALBERT L. GROLL Compositions llltO

(By permission of Mr. Wm. Schanz) lovely patterns of colour

and yet preserving the

a coverlid of snow and seen under grey clouded feeling of the outdoor world. Mr. Keith, who has

skies, or in the half light of morning or evening— already been the subject of an article in this

and succeeds in combining bigness in effect with magazine, confines his activities chiefly to the

subtlety of suggestion. Granville Smith sets forth picturing of California woodland scenes, which he

outdoor scenes in which there is a mixture of transcribes much after the manner of Inness.

lights, introducing, most often, some such token Between these two groups, which are the anti-

of domesticity as a dwelling, a mill or a roadside thesis one of the other, is yet another group adhering

tavern. Now all of these painters interpret their in part to the tenets of each. Charles H. Davis,

themes more or less in an envelope of mist—not Wm. L. Lathrop, Edward W. Redfield, Walter

a fog, be it understood, but a visible atmosphere— Elmer Scho field and Charles Morris Young can be

and deal almost exclusively with ephemeral effects, classed neither with the impressionists nor with the

using delicate colour. In their pictures they accu- tonalists. They are the men who have dealt most

rately express the several planes of vision without frequently with stubborn facts, daring to interpret

displaying great contrasts of light and shade. nature in the unromantic light of mid-day, without

They are seekers for truth, lovers of nature, accept- the direct glint and glitter of the sun. Both

ing it as they find it; men of independent vision Mr. Davis and Mr. Lathrop use a broad, full brush

and conviction. and apply their colour with apparent directness.

On the other hand, however, there is a group, The former's work has more finish normally than

equally zealous and high-minded, who cling closer the tatter's, but is no more convincing. Mr.
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