DOI issue:
Nr. 209 (August 1910)
DOI article:Hind, Charles Lewis: American paintings in Germany
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20970#0211
American Paintings in Germany
have developed into a national American art in
George Inness’s spacious, old-fashioned landscapes,
sincere and pedestrian, but lacking the vitality and
the freshness of vision to form a school. Inness
died in 1894, and it is strange to find him de-
scribed in Mr. Caffin’s book on American painting
as “a path-finder whose originality and fiery zeal
for nature blazed a new trail that has led on to the
present notable expansion of American landscape
painting.” His landscapes seem to me to be as
dead as those of the Hudson River School, or as
the buffalo pictures of Bierstadt. Nor do the
landscapes of Alexander Wyant, a pupil of Inness,
although he painted the American land, show signs
of a national art. Indeed one of Wyant’s best
pictures is an Irish scene. Nor is the charming
work of Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt in any
way American, nor the^
cool interiors of Water
Gay, nor the figures in
Benson’s bright pictures.
Certainly there is nothing
American, I imagine,
about the Absinthe
Drinkers of Millar. Miss
Florence Upton’s Yellow
Room is what it looks—
the work of an artist
highly trained in Europe
who has been inspired by
the light, colour^ and sim-
plicity of a Dutch interior.
The talent of John
Henry Twachtman, whose
delicate, dainty land-
scapes were among the
attractions of the collec-
tion, was too personal
ever to found a school.
It is one of the curiosi-
ties of art that a young
and vigorous nation like
America should run into
such fragile and dainty
ways of portraying nature.
Dwight W. Tryon sees
nature even more evanes-
cently than Corot, but he
has not the virility that
always informed Corot’s
dream. Childe Hassam’s
Old Church in Lyme
depicts an American
scene, but the technique “all’s well”
of this exquisitely realised vision is French ; and the
interiors of Thomas Dewing, with their beauty of
empty spaces, although the models are American,
betray his Paris training. There is nothing American
about Leon Dabo except the fact that he finds
his crepuscular effects on the Hudson River.
No wonder Dr. Bode was disappointed. He
hoped to see “ canvases depicting the throbbing
life of New York Harbour or that of San
Francisco, the maelstrom of the hustle and bustle
of your great cities, forests of smoke-stacks
telling of your mighty industrial developments.”
And he found—what shall I say ? The virile cos-
mopolitanism of Melchers, the tender femininity
of Twachtman, the girls of Benson, the pietty
mondaines of Dewing, and a Hudson River
looking as sentimental as the Rhine.
(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
BY WINSLOW HOMER
i87
have developed into a national American art in
George Inness’s spacious, old-fashioned landscapes,
sincere and pedestrian, but lacking the vitality and
the freshness of vision to form a school. Inness
died in 1894, and it is strange to find him de-
scribed in Mr. Caffin’s book on American painting
as “a path-finder whose originality and fiery zeal
for nature blazed a new trail that has led on to the
present notable expansion of American landscape
painting.” His landscapes seem to me to be as
dead as those of the Hudson River School, or as
the buffalo pictures of Bierstadt. Nor do the
landscapes of Alexander Wyant, a pupil of Inness,
although he painted the American land, show signs
of a national art. Indeed one of Wyant’s best
pictures is an Irish scene. Nor is the charming
work of Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt in any
way American, nor the^
cool interiors of Water
Gay, nor the figures in
Benson’s bright pictures.
Certainly there is nothing
American, I imagine,
about the Absinthe
Drinkers of Millar. Miss
Florence Upton’s Yellow
Room is what it looks—
the work of an artist
highly trained in Europe
who has been inspired by
the light, colour^ and sim-
plicity of a Dutch interior.
The talent of John
Henry Twachtman, whose
delicate, dainty land-
scapes were among the
attractions of the collec-
tion, was too personal
ever to found a school.
It is one of the curiosi-
ties of art that a young
and vigorous nation like
America should run into
such fragile and dainty
ways of portraying nature.
Dwight W. Tryon sees
nature even more evanes-
cently than Corot, but he
has not the virility that
always informed Corot’s
dream. Childe Hassam’s
Old Church in Lyme
depicts an American
scene, but the technique “all’s well”
of this exquisitely realised vision is French ; and the
interiors of Thomas Dewing, with their beauty of
empty spaces, although the models are American,
betray his Paris training. There is nothing American
about Leon Dabo except the fact that he finds
his crepuscular effects on the Hudson River.
No wonder Dr. Bode was disappointed. He
hoped to see “ canvases depicting the throbbing
life of New York Harbour or that of San
Francisco, the maelstrom of the hustle and bustle
of your great cities, forests of smoke-stacks
telling of your mighty industrial developments.”
And he found—what shall I say ? The virile cos-
mopolitanism of Melchers, the tender femininity
of Twachtman, the girls of Benson, the pietty
mondaines of Dewing, and a Hudson River
looking as sentimental as the Rhine.
(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
BY WINSLOW HOMER
i87