File:American painters of yesterday and today (1919) (14770049612).jpg

Identifier: americanpainters00sher (find matches)
Title: American painters of yesterday and today
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild
Subjects: Painting, American Painters, American
Publisher: New York, Priv. print.
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ial rather than the materialevidence of nature that interests us in his landscape,just as in human nature it is character rather thanpersonal appearance that interests us. There is an earlier phase of Tryons work in whichthere is more of the fact and less of the significanceof nature. It ends practically as soon as he hasmastered his forms and settled upon his composi-tion. After that he is busy with light and shadow,values and quality, in which he finds a more efllicientmeans for the expression of the emotional content ofhis theme. In the sense, however, that these earlierworks are a more literal transcript of familiar ratherthan unfamiliar aspects of nature, more direct intheir construction and less calculated in their elabo-ration, they correspond more closely to historic stand-ards and satisfy more generally that large portionof the public which remains conservative in its ap-praisal of artistic merit. As few of us have yet out-grown entirely conservative tendencies, it follows i6
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THE NEW YORKPUBLIC LIBUAKY ASTO . LENOX ANDTILDKN bOUSDATlONS that practically all find in them much to admire.Only our recent and enthusiastic interest in, andknowledge of, the newer and finer developments oflandscape painting enables us to appreciate the sub-tleties of his later work and to see in it a more notableachievement. Several of the early pictures are of foreign sub-jects, the results of his student days in France. Theyare naturally not so convincing as the New Englandcanvases in their characterization of locality. Ihave selected the Glastonbury Meadows of 1881and the Cernay La Ville of the same year to illustratethe early phase of his art. The former is as literal inthe exactitude with which it reproduces the topo-graphical features of the country as it is lovely in itsrendering of the pleasant quiet of a sunny summersday. The scene is singularly satisfying in its fa-miliarity and the fine simplicity of the compositionemphasizes its peculiar charm. It is a masterpieceof wh

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