Such is the suggestion of “The Last Survivor.” It shows a desolate shore where, after an exceptionally severe winter, a band of poor hunters had perished. Reverently the survivors had interred their dying comrades—until the last man died! A solitary white fox surrounded by a few bleaching bones is the central feature of the haunting picture.
“IN THE MIDNIGHT SUNSHINE”
For the most part, the pictures are small canvases, depicting glaciers, icebergs, snowdrifts, coast scenes, and the tundra in its ever-varying color-aspects, winter and midsummer, spring and autumn, with its Samoyeds, their tents, boats, sledges, reindeer, dogs, and foxes. Every imaginable atmospheric effect is given, from the wonderful glow of the midnight sun, to raw, hanging fog that can be well-nigh felt. Of the splendid richness of these effects and, quite as much, their baffling gradations, the painter never tires of telling. “One beauty of this strange nature,” he says, “is the extraordinarily soft variety of tones, that can only be compared to the reflections of precious stones. And God preserve the artist from trying to follow conventional ideas as to tones and effects that may have happened to strike him as universal in the past! Offended nature will elude him. It is only by divesting oneself of prejudice that one can render these wonderful harmonies.”
THE TAVERN
BY
WILLA SIBERT CATHER