presents in different localities? At the moment I am not thinking of the
variations in construction, forms, and configuration, as, for example,
between the aspects of mountains and of simple pastoral regions, nor
even of the separateness of impress set upon the landscape by man in the
character of his buildings or of his farming occupations, but of that
more subtle difference produced by varying kinds of atmosphere. The
great landscape painters, we may have noticed, all belong to northern
countries, who have lived, comparatively speaking, within the same
degrees of latitude; and yet the landscapes of Holland, France,
Scotland, England, Norway, and America can never be mistaken for one
another. Apart from local conditions of man’s handiwork, each varies in
the local quality of its atmosphere--its degree of clarity or humidity,
of briskness or caressingness.
In a country vast as ours, there must needs be diversity in different
parts, so there cannot be any one character of landscape distinctively
American; but, in their faithful rendering of the local character, all
may be distinguishable from those of other countries. And this
expression on the countenance of nature is not unlike that on the face
of a man or woman; the painter may suggest it perfunctorily, or he may
render it with a completeness of sympathy and understanding, products of
alert sensibility and interested acquaintanceship. It is the evidence of
these qualities that gives enduring charm to Tryon’s landscapes.
No one who knows his work will need to be told that he is a New
Englander. His landscapes show an intimacy of knowledge of that
locality, and an affectionate sympathy with its particular phases of
expression, that could only result from the painter having grown up in
that part, the boy’s associations gradually maturing into the man’s
convictions. His home was in Hartford, Conn., where he was born in 1849.
He entered upon life as a stationer’s assistant, and pursued the
occupation until he had accumulated sufficient means to visit Paris, all
the while spending his leisure time in studying from nature and in
discovering for himself how to represent his ideas in paint. There is
evidence in this of sanity as well as earnestness, of a fine poise of
character, qualities later to appear in his landscapes.
Above all, there is the perfectly natural process of a painter’s
evolution; I mean, the antecedent love of nature, the clear apprehension
of the kind of nature that he aimed to paint, the love of it and the
knowledge preceding the final acquisition of technique; meanwhile, the
gradual upbuilding of personal character by the discipline of
postponing his ideals. So, when he reached Paris, it was not as a raw,
enthusiastic student whose subsequent career spun suspended upon a mere
cobweb of his fancy. He had married, and took his wife with him,
establishing a little home and having clear plans in view, being, in
fact, a man. He painted under Harpignies and Daubigny, an excellent
combination of influences, mutually complementary: the one so sound and
methodical, if a little prosaic; the other so captivating in the
perennial boyishness of his mind, so lovable a student of the simple
loveliness of rural scenes. What a happy antidote was Daubigny to the
excessive earnestness of a typical New England character; how
persuasively suggestive must his landscapes have been to one whose heart
was implanted in the austerer charms of his New England home. The
influence of his two masters served on the one hand to send the roots of
his growth farther down and to stiffen the trunk, and on the other to
encourage a more abundant leafage and the added fragrance of blossom.
From both, also, he must have gained a store of technical principles;
but of direct influence in his manner of painting there is no trace. His
own special problem was one different from theirs, and he had to find
his own way of solving it.
Even in one of his earliest landscapes painted about 1881, after his
return from Paris, from studies made abroad, there is a decisively
individual note. It is a scene of ploughing, owned by Mr. Montross--a
stretch of dark rich soil, with man and horses pushing the furrow toward
a clear, cool horizon. There is a larger feeling than Daubigny would
have portrayed; a sterner one, if you will, certainly one more bracing
in its suggestion of vigorous earth and breezy sky, and more distinctly
inspired than Harpignies could have made it, with the sentiment of the
soil and sky in their relation to the life of man. Still, the motive of
the picture is so far a borrowed one that, although it has the feeling
of a New England scene, it has not its local characteristics of
atmosphere or of soil colour, lacking the more sensitive quality of the
one, and the tenderer hues of the other. While, then, this picture is
without the subtle qualities that mark the later ones, it has a clear,
strong note of vigorous earnestness, strongly felt and strongly
realized. Indeed, it seems entirely characteristic of the strength of
purpose and sturdy qualities which are the foundation of Tryon’s
equipment, both as a man and a painter. He seems to have grown up with
the smell of the soil in his nostrils as Millet did, though without the
latter’s saddened associations; to have been nourished with the brisk
New England air, and to have gathered muscle over its ploughed and
grassy uplands. The keen stimulus of nature went through and through him
early and has stayed with him, so that his art partakes of its strength.
In his pictures, one finds, I think, a stronger foundation than only
that of good drawing and construction; an earnest, wholesome delight in
the strength of nature as being something in which he himself shares;
which, indeed, has so grown into his mind and life that its expression
in his work is but a matter of course. It is a part of his most serious
convictions, so that his rendering of it is convincing.
Put into words, the distinction may seem a little fine drawn; but I feel
sure that our experience of pictures gives it substance. How often, for
example, in the work of the French classicists we may see illustrations
of human vigour, on which good drawing and construction have been
expended, and yet their suggestion of vigour is only an affectation; a
quality aimed at by the painter, but not vitalized by strong, earnest
convictions of his own. What a protestation of strength there is in
Salvator Rosa’s landscapes, and how little real convincingness! And,
coming to the landscapes of our own time, it would be easy to quote
examples of strong drawing and construction from which,
[Illustration:
From the collection of Charles L. Freer, Esq.
SPRING BLOSSOMS.
BY DWIGHT W. TRYON.]
[Illustration:
From the collection of Charles L. Freer, Esq.
EARLY SPRING, NEW ENGLAND.
BY DWIGHT W. TRYON.]
however, the spirit of strength is lacking. They are the work of men who
mean strongly, but are not themselves strong men. So surely does
personal character, or lack of it, show in a painter’s work, not the
mere robustiousness of personal force, but the settled, earnest,
habitual convictions that are the elements of character. And quite as
evident to our experience in pictures is the distinction between the
real and the false in refinement. Mere subtlety of brush work, while it
may create for a while an illusion of refinement, will not satisfy us in
the long run.
Many of Tryon’s landscapes reach a pitch of delicate suggestion in the
rendering of soft air, caressing atmosphere, and shrouded light that is
unsurpassed by any painter in this country; for the impression is much
deeper than that of an entrancing skill in the management of the
pigments. The spirit of the landscape stole into his heart when a boy,
and has abided with him in his manhood; he is so much a child of New
England, sweetened by its tenderer influences as well as nurtured on its
hardihood, that, sharing its strength and refinement, he gives
expression to himself when he reproduces these qualities in his
pictures. Hence, in both directions, their complete convincingness. A
fact, too, which helps to justify this appreciation is that his
pictures show an interest in so many moods of the landscape, and the
degree of force or of subtlety with which he renders each is regulated
by the demand of the occasion. You cannot divide the past twenty years
of his productiveness into special periods of style; any attempt to do
so will bring you up against the insurmountable objection of finding
that two canvases of very different feeling and manner of painting are
dated the same year. Development, necessarily, there has been in style;
increased acquisition of facility and the power to render more
penetratingly the mood of nature he is studying. But evolution of motive
you will scarcely find. That from the first has been realistic; in the
sense that the landscape, as it appears to him to be, affords primarily
sufficient incentive to his study.
In the presence of nature he makes studies, intent for the time being
solely on recording what he sees; later, in his New York studio, the
poetic suggestion of these studies will come to him, and he composes a
picture. But the process is from realism to poetry, and not
contrariwise, as one suspects to be the case in the poetical landscapes
of some painters. Tryon’s way is not unlike a man’s regard for a good
mother. In the days of his habitual intercourse with her, it is her
dignity and sweetness that grow into his life, the changes of
expression in her face and voice that win upon his devotion, her
beautiful reasonableness that is accepted as quite a natural thing. It
is only when the son’s life is drawn apart from the habit of her
presence that the sentiment of a mother’s love is realized. So Tryon’s
withdrawals to city life allow the poetry of nature to steal in upon his
imagination; when he resumes his face-to-face communing with it, the
life habit of absorbed regard comes back to him. The result of this is
that the sentiment of his pictures grows out of the actual, and
represents the soul of a fact. One finds one’s self admiring the
extraordinary truth of the visual impression, and then often surprised
that material so homely should yield such abundance of poetic
suggestion; forgetting, for the moment, that poetry is not an element of
nature, but a quality of the painter’s mind, representing the degree of
sincerity and elevation of purpose with which he has approached his
subject. Tryon’s poetry comes of the associations garnered through a
life of affectionate intimacy with the country of his birth. It is as
true and spontaneous as filial love.
His technical skill has secured the respect and admiration of his
fellow-painters. They assign him that final title of approval, “a
painter’s painter;” meaning that only those who know by practical
experience the difficulties and trials of technique can properly
appreciate his ability and resourcefulness, and certainly not implying,
as is sometimes the case when this expression is used, that the
admirable qualities in the picture are primarily and solely technical
ones.
Attempting in non-painter language to summarize the spirit of his
method, one may, perhaps, reduce it to the equivalent elements in his
own character--poise and sympathetic penetration. The balanced effect of
his landscapes is very notable: a harmony of colour in which there is no
jar, a similar equipoise in the details introduced, a delicate
adjustment of strength and tenderness and of sentiment to facts; an
_ensemble_ of uninterrupted unity. In the matter of sympathetic
penetration--a rather clumsy expression for which I can find no happy
alternative--his method is even more remarkable. I allude to the
affectionate studiousness with which he analyzes the significant
constituents of the landscape, and to the degree in which his eye
penetrates the secret of the envelope of atmosphere, of that particular
quality of atmosphere characteristic of New England.
I would cite the “Early Spring, New England,” not as an example of one
of his most beautiful landscapes, but as a triumph of technical
resource, to which was awarded the gold medal in 1898 at the Carnegie
exhibition in Pittsburg. The foreground is a pasture with a brook
winding through it, and several leafless trees which spread their
delicate network of branches against a clear, open sky that reddens
slightly near the horizon. Beyond is cultivated land, partly covered
with the brilliant green of young vegetation, and partly red, upturned
soil, with a team ploughing. Farther back are gently rising hills.
The front of the picture is painted with remarkably delicate detail, and
in the distant parts there is a similar suggestion conveyed of the
worthiness of the scene to be minutely studied. There is not a square
inch in the composition that is without individual interest, and yet
this elaborate mosaic unifies into a single impression of spaciousness;
for the relative significance of each plane in the picture has been so
shrewdly realized. The eye is invited to travel back to the remotest
part of the ground and up into the expanse of sky. This is the primary
invitation of the picture as would be that of the actual scene; and then
follows, if you have eyes for it, the beckoning in this and that
direction to the separate interest of the various parts. This accurate
rendering of the effect of intervening atmosphere upon the receding
forms and colours brings the atmosphere itself into the picture; a
softly stealing animation, not yet nimble, but gently quickening into
life. It is, indeed, a picture of quite extraordinary subtlety; and so
much the more a triumph of accomplishment because it is a very large
one, and the mere problem of filling such an extent of canvas with the
evidences of minute observation, so that it should still hold well
together, was a most formidable one. There was no possibility of evasion
or of falling back upon convenient generalizations: the problem, once
grasped, had to be solved to its ultimate conclusion.
Yet the very magnitude of canvas and of problem impairs somewhat the
intimacy of feeling in the picture, and for all its abounding skill we
shall not reckon it among Tryon’s choicest work. In that he gives us,
when he wills, the sense of spaciousness within a much smaller frame,
and, compassing it around so discreetly, makes its subtle appeal by so
much the more insinuating. These comparatively smaller pictures are too
numerous and different in character to allow of detailed allusion, yet
one may single out a few such gems as “The Rising Moon” and “Sunrise,”
owned by Mr. Charles L. Freer; “After Showers--June,” owned by Colonel
Frank J. Hecker; “The Meadow--Evening,” owned by Mr. A. T. Sanders;
“Springtime,” owned by Mr. George
[Illustration:
From the collection of J. J. Albright, Esq.
EVENING--AUTUMN.
BY DWIGHT W. TRYON.]
A. Hearn; and a “Winter Evening” and “Early Spring,” the property of Mr.
N. E. Montross.
These are masterpieces,--and the list is incomplete,--pictures that you
may study from the strictest standpoint of technical excellence, and
that exert an influence upon the imagination which one may believe will
be felt by those who come after us as fully as by ourselves.
In considering American landscapes, there is more than a little tendency
to dwell upon the names of the painters who are dead, regardless of the
fact that the traditions which they established are being maintained.
Among those who are maintaining them, Tryon is conspicuous, and in a way
that is, perhaps, more distinctive than theirs. He represents much more
closely the kind of contribution that the American temperament may be
expected to make to the progress of painting. For unless painting can
continue to reflect the evolution of human progress, it is, after all,
only a “dead language.” But it is landscapes such as Tryon’s that prove
its vitality. They represent the combination of qualities that
differentiate American civilization in its worthiest form from that of
other countries and of past times. They combine a largeness of outlook
with alert sensibility to impressions; being, at once, big in character
and minutely subtle.
XII
HORATIO WALKER
Upon his first appearance last year as a contributor to the exhibition
of the British Institute of Water Colours, Horatio Walker’s picture,
“The Potato Pickers,” was prominently hung, and he himself was elected a
member. Considering the fine record of the Institute and its high rank
among water colour societies, such instant recognition of a newcomer was
very notable.
But it is just the way in which an artist of Walker’s calibre is likely
to make his impression--at once and authoritatively; for he is a painter
of unusual personal force, and of a persuasiveness quite as remarkable,
qualities not always found in combination, but, when united,
irresistible. And these artistic qualities are the counterparts of
similar elements in his character as a man. His is a forceful
personality of moral as well as mental force. How much this means! There
is a kind of forceful person who slaps you on the back in the street,
and you probably consider him a nuisance; and there is a kind of painter
who would violently arrest your attention by the bravery of his brush
strokes or some surprising crash of colour scheme or chiaroscuro.
In such forcefulness there is a certain effrontery that one resents at
once; or which, if it arouse a little momentary curiosity or even
interest, will in the long run be followed by intolerable weariness. For
it is almost entirely a mere display of manual gymnastics, an
exploitation of self. There may be a little mind behind it, but it will
be the quality of mind that is simply of the active kind, enamoured of
its own activity. It is not regulated by the moral sense, responsible to
self-control, contributory to some serious and absorbing purpose,
involving a realization of the intense meaningfulness of nature and
life. This is the foundation quality of what is big in life and art: a
noble seriousness that penetrates the facts, and lifts them upon the
elevation of its own spirit to the dignity of what is grandest and most
abiding in the universal scheme.
Painters who possess this faculty are apt to concentrate their sympathy
and force upon some particular phase of life, and Walker has found the
pivot point for his in the island of Orleans, in the St. Lawrence, some
twenty miles northeast of Quebec. Here the descendants of the early
French settlers still retain the simple faith and habits and fine
ingenuousness of the peasants of northern France; a sturdy race, close
to the soil, and drawing dignity as well as nourishment therefrom,
perpetuating their origin even in their belongings: the domestic
utensils, the farm implements, in the racial characteristics of their
clever little horses and oxen, and in the very fashioning of their
harness. Nor was the singling out of this Acadia merely the happy
discovery of a painter in search of the picturesque. It was a harking
back to the associations of his boyhood; for, though Walker’s later
youth was spent in Rochester, N.Y., he is a Canadian by birth, the son
of an English army officer.
It is a beautiful thing for an artist when he can thus graft his
maturity on to the roots of his early impressions.
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
How often the will passes, we know not whither, like the wind; and the
thoughts, swallowed up in the materialism of far other thoughts, come
back to us in later life only as random visions of what might have been!
Indeed, it is beautiful for the artist when he can recover that boy’s
will, and link the early thoughts on to the maturer thoughts of manhood.
This way lie sincerity, depth and fulness of conviction, and ripest
fruitfulness. It has been difficult for American artists to maintain
this continuity of evolution, since they have had to travel far for
instruction, and the way of return to the associations of the past has
not seemed clear. Still, many have found it, and perhaps a volume of
criticism might be based upon this one fact; and it might be shown that
those whom we most admire as powerful painters, for the reality of what
they have to say and their impressive way of saying it, are the ones
who, in their art, have got back closest, either to the actual scenes or
to the mental associations of their youth.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1902, by N.E. Montrose, New York.
A STY.
By Horatio Walker.]
But besides the quality of force in Walker and his art, there is the
other one of persuasiveness. You may remember his “Oxen Drinking,”--the
two broad-fronted, patient heads side by side at the water trough, their
driver, in blue shirt, standing by them, and the rich brown backs of the
massive beasts showing against the dark-gray horizon. For the sky,
reaching far up above the group, has been whipped into turbulence by the
wind; it is slaty-hued, threatening storm. How grandiose this elemental
fermentation! How significant the bulk and solidity of the beasts! There
is force all through the picture, the force of disturbance and the force
of immobility; for the beasts are grounded like boulders; the man,
motionless. It is a force that compels attention and communicates its
own strength to one’s self; and then succeeds an infinite suggestion of
restfulness. The heavens may labour, but for man and oxen the appointed
task is done, and they enter into their rest. And note that this
suggestion is not arrived at by a process of the intellect, but by pure
sensation.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1902, by N.E. Montrose, New York.
PLOUGHING IN ACADIA.
By Horatio Walker.]
It is the colour scheme that conveys it; that note of blue, so clear and
flute-like, against the sullen grayness of the sky; the sobering,
complementary note of tawny brown, even the chromatic variations of the
gray sky that vibrate like music. For all its menace, the sky is
beautiful, and in union with the other notes of the scheme produces a
throbbing tenderness of harmony that is irresistibly appealing. It is
through his colour schemes that Walker tempers his force with
persuasiveness. For he is one of that small band to whom colour is as
essential a part of their expression as notes are to the singer. You may
see pictures in which the colour is little more than tints to
differentiate the objects; others in which it is merely an accurate
rendering of the phenomena studied; then others, again, wherein the
colour is as inseparable from the conception as fragrance from the rose.
It is essential, interpenetrating the structure of the picture, complete
and indivisible as the components of a passage in music; structurally,
æsthetically, and intellectually essential. While one will find this
true feeling for colour in all his work, it is only in the later ones,
as one would expect, that it reaches its fullest subtlety of expression.