File:American painting and its tradition - as represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent (1920) (14753365746).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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rain and mist andspindrift and flying scud in the air; there isblue-gray sky and sea, and far out the hugewaves are lifting and rolling shoreward^withirresistible force. On the rocky coast the foam-ing crests are falling amid split and shatteredrock strata. High CHff and the Great Galeare variations of the same theme. Of course these pictures are illustrative in away of the Maine coast, but one does notthink of them as such but rather as descriptiveor creative. They are reports of the power of thesea, wonderful view-points of a great element.In that sense they are epic, tremendous charac-terizations, all-powerful statements that startleand command. You cannot get away from them.They fascinate, and yet are not attractive inthe sense that you would like to have one ofthem in your drawing-room. They are elementalrather than ornamental. As Kenyon Cox wellputs it, you might as well let the sea itself intoyour house as one of Homers sea-pictures.The picture would sweep everything before it.
Text Appearing After Image:
i ^^^NSLOw IIO^rEI^ iod put everything else out of key, make a blaekspot on the wall, and eontinually irritate youwith its harshness of method. From his youthupward Homer seems to have had a scorn forthe decorative. Charm either in his personalityor his art seems to have been a gift withheldby the fairy godmother. He had the giantsstrength and w^ith it he had to accept the limita-tions of that endowment. The gentler side ofthe sea—the flat summer plains of gloriouscolor and light—he did not care for, and evensuch features of the stormy sea as the flashing,foaming crests he could not do except in hard,immovable form. The crests in the WoodsIsland Light look like inlays of white marbleon lapis lazuli. The bubbling surge full of colorand evanescent as champagne was too charming,too lovely for him. There were returns to the illustrative duringhis later years in such pictures as *The Wreck,Kissing the Moon, and in Adirondack scenes,but by 1900 he had reached his apogee and there-after

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