File:Winslow Homer — Blown Away.jpg

Identifier: cu31924015231370 (find matches)
Title: Landscape and figure painters of America
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild
Subjects: Landscape painting Figure painting
Publisher: New York, Priv. Print.
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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with in any consideration of land-scape art which pretends to be in any way conclu-sive. And the ability to produce such work is afterall not so common as to seem simply ordinary. Idoubt if it ever will be, for it implies a painstakingand serious study of landscape painting and a reallyadmirable knowledge of the various forms of natureand of natures coloring. An artist with such anequipment is pretty well capable of doing workthat is far enough above the average to arrest at-tention. His trees will be distinguishable—chest-nuts, elms, birches, maples; his shrubs and grassesno less, and his pictures of Italy will never look likeAmerican landscapes in which Italian shepherdsguard their sheep. Some of the European canvases of even so greata landscape artist as Inness are more Americanthan foreign so far as the landscape itself is con-cerned—with perhaps no more than a peasant driv-ing his flock, or some women washing clothes in astream to tell that they are pictures of Italy or of 62
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France. On the other hand, Wyants Irish sub-jects, with nothing but the look of the land to dis-tinguish them by, are unmistakable. This fidelityto the facts of nature in the painting of landscape isof sufficient importance for the absence of it to af-ford an opening for criticism of a very materialsort regarding some of the accepted masterpieces ofcontemporary artists. It is a too essential part ofgreat landscape art for any painter ever to slight itand produce a truly great picture. The knowledge of natures forms and the faithfulrendering of them is almost as necessary to the land-scape artist as is the knowledge of anatomy to thepainter of the nude. Too frequently he tries towork without ever having seriously studied the an-atomy of nature. The various tree forms are recog-nizable in the canvases of comparatively few con-temporary painters. And apparently they knowthe rock formations but little better. It is only themore evident topographical characteristics of alandscape that they

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