No member of the Hudson River school, probably, imbibed so much of the qualities of the Dusseldorf masters as did Bierstadt. He chose for his big canvases panoramas from impressive scenes in Yellowstone Park and in the Rockies. He attempted to give the illusion of reality to these by a minutely detailed rendition of foreground, while the subject itself, with his favorite lowering clouds and romantic haze, was to produce the desired grandeur. The result made his paintings popular in America of his own time; but today his grandeur seems a little theatrical.

It is rare that an artist uses with equal success both water color and oil. With Winslow Homer one hardly knows which to admire more, his oil paintings or his water colors. His oils are, perhaps, more bare, more elemental than the water colors, but the tones are harsher and often less true. In the winter of 1885-1886, Homer visited the Bahama Islands, where a new world of color was opened to his eyes. The water colors which he made during this and subsequent voyages are among the finest things he ever did. Among these is The Conch Divers: negroes on the deck of a sloop are watching the reappearance of a diver who has just come up alongside with some shells in his hand. The Island of New Providence with its palms is seen in the distance at the right. The composition is admirable; the figures are drawn with great power.

“It is Winslow Homer's distinction that he was the first American painter to use an American idiom,” writes William Howe Downes. “Not only his subjects, but his manner of treating them; not only his motives, but his point of view; not only his material, but the style and sentiment in which he clothes it, have the stamp of Americanism indelibly impressed upon them.” This spirited statement might be qualified by the observation that it is George Inness and Fuller who express more truly the spirit of American rural life; while it is Homer who expresses the spirit of the frontiersman, the deep-sea fisherman, and all those whose lives bring them face to face with the bare facts of the unmitigated elements.

A contemporary American painter of rocks and sea who may be considered to be in a sense a successor to Winslow Homer, is Paul Dougherty. He is thoroughly American in spirit, and mainly self-taught. After a brief career in the law, he turned to painting. With a knowledge of drawing and perspective as a foundation upon which to proceed, he went to Europe where he spent several years studying without masters in Paris, London, Florence, Venice and Munich.

He returned to his native country more American than ever. Our artists, he said, walked too near the sterile soil of eclecticism, deferred too much to established codes. Like Winslow Homer, he scorned the nicer subtleties of personal moods. He rejoiced in nature's more vigorous aspects and he looked at her impersonally, objectively. This passion for puttmg things down as they are rather than using them as a means of expressing his individual moods, is, curiously enough, the key to the individual note which stamps his canvases. At the same time this literal tendency seems to some critics to be his greatest weakness.

He has devoted himself almost exclusively to chronicling the moods of the sea, to transcribing the profound surging billows, the swirling of eddies, the resistless pounding of waves against cliffs, the dash of spray upward into the light. A good example of these fresh sea-pieces is Moonlit Surf. It is a comparatively recent work, and shows the sea striking against rocks and sweeping into their crevices, while a warm moonlight, glancing over the crests of waves, gives color.

In this canvas, Sargent has shown the hushed pensiveness of mood, the perfection of sensitively modulated color of which his many-sided genius is capable, but which it has, in fact, rarely attained to such a degree as here. The subject of the painting is the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris at twilight, with the moon rising above the trees. In the distance may be seen the dome of the Pantheon. Various groups of figures lend the scene a measured animation. The picture is hardly more than a sketch, but its justness of values conveys an impression of reality which is characteristic of the artist. Particularly attractive is the mellow tone of the painting. The soft tawny grays of the foreground, the sombre green of the thickly-massed trees; the note of rose in the woman's costume, form an exquisite harmony, accentuated by occasional touches of black. It was presented by Sargent to his friend Charles Pollen McKim, the celebrated architect, who died in 1909. It is signed, “To my friend McKim, John S. Sargent.” A replica of this painting, in the John G. Johnson Collection, is dated 1879.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.

At the time of Twachtman's death, fear was expressed by a fellow artist that the canvases he had left behind might prove too fine a food for the general palate. In the intervening years, however, general taste has become better accustomed to the impressionist mode of expression; and today anyone must be in harassed and impatient mood who does not respond to the sensitive appeal of Twachtman's vague landscapes. These carry to the last degree of refinement the idea that spiritual rather than physical facts are properly the subject matter of art.

In the White Bridge we sense the very essence of soft spring-time. The yellow-green of young grass and tender foliage gives the general tone of the painting. In the foreground, on the bank of a stream, a crooked tree reaches out its sappy young branches, which form, together with the latticed railing of an intimate white bridge, a delicate pattern against some evergreens behind. In the foreground on the quiet surface of the stream the reflection of the bridge forms a tracery in pale lilac.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.

A fine and characteristic example of the work of John W. Alexander, is A Ray of Sunlight. The appeal of the work is felt immediately. It represents a young woman playing a violincello. One can imaging emotional strains of Chopin. There is extraordinary breadth in the treatment of the musician's gown, yet the coarse absorbent canvas gives a soft and interesting surface to the broad planes. The most lasting attraction of the picture is due to the artist's treatment of light. A soft, glowing, effulgence flows in from the right, and envelops the graceful figure, a direct ray falling across the forearm and reflecting in the polished surface of the instrument.

Gardner Symons, an important member of the modern group of American landscape painters, is fond of representing winter scenes with snow covering the ground and softening its contours. In River in Winter he has produced a cheerful scene, treated with much beauty of color. Late afternoon sunlight slants across the snow, casting rosy lights and violet shadows. Between sparsely wooded banks, a river flows toward the spectator. In the distance are low opalescent hills beneath a transparent greenish sky.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.

It may be interesting to compare River in Winter by Symons with the painting in the same collection and bearing the same title by Edward W. Redfield. Redfield is a well known American painter noted for his winter landscapes. Our example of Redfield's work is highly characteristic. Compared with Symons' painting, we find it less warm in color, characterized by a more brittle and restless handling of surfaces, and a less sedate and simple feeling for composition, but quite as convincing as a portrayal of nature.

Frederick Carl Frieseke is one of the most delightful among the younger American painters who revel in the sunlight of Impressionism. He studied at the Chicago Art Institute, at the Art Students' League, and, in Paris, under Constant, Laurens and Whistler; but Claude Monet has been the important influence. Frieseke's interest is in the color effect of the things in his chosen field of vision, in the effect things make at a single glance upon an eye trained to see the transient color of shadows and of objects in sunlight. For the detailed study of form, he cares little; yet his drawing is adequate, and his spots of bright color are always worked together into a pleasing and balanced pattern, as we see it in the Garden in June.

Lately, a more diffused light and less dazzling color has appealed to Frieseke, and he has given us a series of lovely impressions of ladies at their various domestic pursuits. The painting entitled The Toilet in the Institute's collection is an example of the later studies.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.

The consummate workmanship of Emil Carlsen in covering a canvas with pigments gives the illusion of appealing to more senses than the sense of vision. The delicious handling of color and the creamy texture of his paint seem to tickle the palate and to please the finger tips. The Open Sea is the sea at its most alluring. A fair breeze gives the water vivacity without making it threaten. It seems friendly, with its subtle endless shifting of blues and pale greens; one's face welcomes the dash of spray from the crest of such a wave.

Emil Carlsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1853, and came to America in 1872. He studied architecture in his native city, but subsequently devoted himself to painting, in which he soon achieved unusual success. He has received many awards and is represented in the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery in Washington, and other important collections.

A Woodland Interior in the Institute's collection is another work by Carlsen, revealing similar charms to those found in The Open Sea.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.

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.

In Midsummer by R. Sloan Bredin one finds not only an unusually pleasing piece of diagonal composition, not only a lyrical mood undisturbed by disharmony, but also a way of seeing things which, if we could make it a part of ourselves, would much enhance our own visual enjoyment of nature. The beautiful play of color through the foliage of the big tree at the left of the canal, the subtle effects produced by the faint haze of a July noonday, the fresh tones of the nearer foliage drooping across the larger tree beyond, should prove a lesson as well as a joy.

One of the most personal and interesting painters in America today is Arthur B. Davies. His painting ignores the commonplaces and unessentials of life. “Never once does he wander from his dream, his vision,” writes Samuel Isham. “His enchanted garden is not visited at rare intervals; it is not one of many resorts, it is his home, his retreat from which he never departs. It is a wonderful land of which he gives us glimpses—of flowery meadows and bosky groves peopled by youth and childhood.” His visions are naive, tender, whimsical, often vaguely allegorical, sometimes a little unintelligible, but never trite nor sentimental. In his recent work he seems to tend more and more toward the unintelligible, as his love of the allegorical and the purely spiritual grows.

To Night's Overture much of these remarks may seem not to apply. Here is nothing of the naive, the whimsical, the allegorical. And yet this landscape is characteristic of Davies' art. It is a highly spiritualized and individual treatment of landscape, wonderfully decorative in color and arrangement, and highly endowed with feeling.—The Martin B. Koon Memorial Collection.