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.
Night's Overture. Arthur B. Davies, 1862-
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.
MODERN EUROPEAN PAINTINGS
To trace the history of painting in the XIX century in France, is to trace the main stem of its recent developments throughout the western world. Germany has grafted something of her own national spirit upon the parent art forms of the French; England has contributed some original impulses; Holland and Spain have looked back to their own past as well as across to the contemporary painting of the French. Yet it is France, with her bewildering crowding in of new ideas and crowding out of old, which during the past century, has led the way in painting, and in the opening of the XX century continues to lead.
In the beginning of the XIX century, the longing of intellectual France for a return to the poise and civic virtues of republican Rome had found its visual expression in the classical paintings of David (1748-1825) and Ingres (1780-1867). The beginnings of Romanticism are seen in the paintings of Gros, who dared to paint his characters in clothes more modern than the toga. Gericault and Delacroix (1799-1863) completed the development in their impassioned color and movement and their searching out of romantic and exotic subject matter.