File:American painting and its tradition - as represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent (1920) (14773208961).jpg

Identifier: ameng00vand (find matches)
Title: American painting and its tradition : as represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Van Dyke, John Charles
Subjects: American Painting
Publisher: Charles Schribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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uch as we see in the Honfleur Light or theCriqueboeuf Church of Martin. He revelledin these subdued tones of broken light. Theywere not only the eternal coloring of naturebut they were the means wherewith he ex-pressed his own sentiment or feeling aboutnature. Still other and not less universal features oflandscape to Martin were enveloping atmospherewhich bound all things together and made har-mony; space which lifted above the reach of theearth and was limitless; heave and bulge in themountain ranges with continuity in their inter-blended lines and massive strength in theirrock strata; a limitless expanse to the mountainforests; a splendid broken reflection from thesurface of river, pond, and pool. These featuresappear in such different pictures as the LakeChamplain, the Lake Sandford, the Adiron-dacks, the Normandy Farm, the MusselGatherers, the Haunted House, the West-chester Hills—this last, perhaps, the simplestand the best of all. A final characteristic of nature may be noted
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. B a -2 UOIMER AUIITIN 8ff because Martin seems to have known it well. Itappears in almost all of bis pictures, and is per-haps more pronounced with him than with anyother landscape-painter. I mean natures greatserenity. The word has been so carelessly used incriticism that one has difficulty in enforcing morethan a careless meaning for it, and yet whateverof serenity there may be in fretful civihzationor its art is merely a poor imitation of the eternalrepose of nature itself. By that I imply nothingvery profound. The mad plunges of Niagara, theexplosions of Cohma and Krakatoa, the inunda-tion of tidal waves, or the shakings of earth-quakes are mere accidents from which naturestraightway recovers. The winds, the storms, thegreat sea-waves again are only momentary inci-dents. After they have passed, nature once morereturns to herself. She is ruffled merely for amoment and then only in a small localized area.Her normal condition is repose—that immobilitywhich we associate with the r

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