methods by heart. Toward the end of his life he painted much from memory. A landscape painting, perhaps originally sketched from nature, would change under his brush much as the scene itself might under changing lights or varying seasons. The sky filled with clouds, then cleared again, the sunlight spotted the grass or the shadows stretched across it, while the trees turned from the green of summer to the russet of autumn. Naturally work of this later period, much of it left unfinished, is very unequal in merit; but at its best it marks his highest achievement rather than the more carefully planned productions of his middle life. It is more vital and more subtle; but all of Inness’s work except his very earliest reflects the inner nature of the man. It has none of the dignified melancholy of Martin, which has also at times its note of revolt. Inness is never trivial: he keeps his seriousness; but he is never sad. Nature is to him always beautiful, always kindly.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

ACROSS THE FIELDS, BY D. W. TRYON

American Art Annual

D. W. TRYON

With Wyant, Martin, and Inness our early landscape school reached its culmination. Their lives all continued after the end of the Civil War, they even did their best work after it; but they belonged to a school formed in other surroundings. After the war conditions changed. The country was less isolated, intercourse was easier, wealth had increased, and foreign paintings, calculated to show the deficiencies of native work, became increasingly common. The budding artists were no longer willing to pick up their art by their own exertions, aided by occasional counsel from their elders or such inadequate schools as the country then furnished, but departed in ever increasing numbers to the famous schools of Europe.

The difference was not that the earlier painters had ignored Europe. They traveled to see the masterpieces of art and the beauties of nature in foreign countries; but they were on the whole contented with their work and proud of their native school. The younger men absorbed enthusiasm for foreign workmanship, and adopted foreign standards.

THE SENTIMENT OF TRYON

D. W. Tryon is an example of this new spirit at its best. His sentiment, if not so deep and strong as Inness at his best, is yet more delicate and subtle. That is due to a difference of temperament; but the way in which the picture is developed is a matter of training. With Inness the first thing was to express somehow his feeling, and then the canvas was worked over until it was got into construction; with Tryon the draftsmanship was fundamental and indispensable, and the sentiment was built upon that. One may say of our recent landscapes that they show a construction gained from the study of the nude and a handling adapted from the best foreign models. This education has greatly raised the average of our art; but a few men of the older time had strength and feeling to work out a training for themselves more personal and perhaps as permanent as that of the later day. Time tests all things, and its verdict cannot be foreseen; but it is doubtful if it will place any of our modern landscape artists before Martin or Inness. Among these modern landscape painters are men of such talent as H. W. Ranger, Bruce Crane, and J. Francis Murphy, without mention of whom no article on American landscape painters would be complete.

H. W. RANGER