The favorite subject of Robert Reid’s study is the gracefully clad figure
of woman, enveloped in the soft atmosphere of the studio or out of doors.
His treatment is purely decorative, and his color contrasts slight. He
poses his model quietly, engaged in unpurposeful occupations such as
gazing at a bowl of goldfish, dreaming before a bit of bright porcelain,
or seated placidly in a meadow, as in The Yellow Flower. In this pleasing
painting, the filmy blouse, the yellow skirt, the golden skin and hair
almost melt into the yellowish green of the grass in which the figure is
Placed.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.
A psychologist has pointed out somewhere that if it were not for the
artists among us pointing out the beauties of landscape, very few of us
would ever appreciate them. One finds no landscapes painted on Greek
vases. The early European painters used landscapes only as backgrounds
for portraits or religious subjects. Certainly there exist in nature
charms of color in shadow, rich varieties of pure tone in sunlight which
none of us suspected until the Impressionist painters insisted upon them.
[Midsummer. R. Sloan Bredin, 1881-]