The result of all this is a modern school of landscape, the aims of which seem strangely more allied to scientific investigation than to artistic study, and a class of pictures which expound, frequently with great skill, the theories upon which they are accomplished; but which are rarely intelligible to any one not directly concerned with the study of art.
So it is with some sense of relief that we may turn our attention upon the achievements of an artist like Thomas R. Manley, whose drawings are reproduced here, not that they may be the subject of a written discourse, but that of themselves they may give pleasure to a wider public than it has hitherto been their fortune to command. They are the product of a quiet and orderly development carried on outside the clamor of the modern movement, simple masterpieces of landscape drawing as it has been practised since the days of Claude Lorrain. They present no "theory" upon which we may base a philosophical discussion, and there is nothing "new" about them at all beyond a simple technical invention of the artist's, whereby his line is rendered more soft and pliable than by the ordinary mediums of crayon or pencil.
What they do possess, however, and to a high degree, is the evidence of a mastery of the technique of design plus a finely trained intelligence and feeling. This technical mastery of design is perhaps the rarest of accomplishments at the present day, because it is the most difficult to acquire and makes too great a demand upon patience. And yet it is this which should and does satisfy most directly the unconscious esthetic sense in us all; for who cannot experience some inward pleasure in the form and movement of the hills and trees as they are expressed to us in these drawings? It is not essential to our enjoyment of these things that we should ourselves have knowledge of the technical means whereby they are conveyed; but it is these studied accomplishments which we are enjoying nevertheless; because through them our own sense of harmony is aroused. Let us note, for instance, the character of the lines used to represent the foliage in the first drawing reproduced, and see with what beautiful, rhythmic precision they produce at one and the same time the required tone and the movement of the thing represented. And again, in the trunks of the trees how fully the firm lines record the upward growth and the vicissitudes of weather suffered in their struggles to attain the majestic heights to which they rise. This method of drawing, in which light and shade is produced by lines which at the same time follow the form and movement of the objects represented, is perhaps the oldest and most conventional; but in the hands of a master like Mr. Manley it is more fully expressive and beautiful in its results than any other.
If to dwell upon points as technical as this seems a contradiction to the statement already made, to the effect that these reproductions are presented for what pleasure they may give the layman, it should be said that it is for the reason that such technicalities as are pointed out may well be within the understanding of all intelligent persons and that their elucidation may assist greatly toward a fuller appreciation of the more intellectual merits. And if we fail to consider sufficiently here those more poetic qualities and to attempt some description of the meanings and sensations conveyed to us by the pictures themselves, it will be because it seems that these are matters best left to the individual observer.
