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nique taught suited him perfectly. technique, with its careful drawing, warm transparent shadows and solid, opaque lights, had nothing revolutionary in it, but represented the academic tradition of the country. Johnson mastered it thoroughly, and having mastered it, thought no more about it, but centred his mind upon his subject.

color and value was a masterpiece, portraying the refined intellectuality of a sitter in a direct manner without overelaboration. The planes of the brow and face were declared with the surety which comes from long training and artistic judgment. There was no juggling with the brush or forcing of the pigment, no avoidance of a form or a feature to bring into prominence the author's This is where he differed from the skill in keying up a high light. The whole "younger men" trained in Munich or Paris. was a conscientious representation of the per- They had cast in their lot with the innovators. sonality of the subject, reminding one of the They brought from Munich felicities of dashdignity and charm of certain portraits by ing brushwork and from Paris effects of openTitian and the early Italians. Our later school air lighting unattempted before. The subof painters are interpreting things in a some- jects on which they displayed these novelties what different way. Is it a better way? I were matters of indifference to them. Parseriously doubt it. The paint and the execu- adoxically, the very fact that they had not tion are playing the rôle of importance and lived so long abroad as Johnson made them occupying too much the centre of the stage. more removed from our native taste. They Mr. Johnson represented sincerity and a had not painted pictures in Europe, but studknowledge based on training and coupled ies, and they still had a student's pride in with natural gifts of a high order. His work the skill of the student, with no experience will be always valuable both intrinsically and of the completeness and seriousness of finas an example to followers of his art. ished work. They did things "amusing" to themselves and which were "amusing" largely from technical reasons which their public was not in a position to understand.

CARROLL BECKWITH.

EASTMAN JOHNSON was eighty-two years old when he died and the beginnings of his art went back to a time when painting in this country was at its lowest point. The culture of England and of Europe in general, which was reflected in our colonial life, had about died out, and in its place was growing up a crude and trivial art to satisfy a public for the most part uncultivated and busy with other things. This public, however, had at least the advantage of being homogeneous and democratic. The artists belonged to it and were understood and honored by it, and when they advanced they lifted the public with them.

He

It was for this public that Johnson catered both in his early efforts before he went abroad in 1849 and after his return in 1860. never lost touch with it as did the great body of the "younger men" who in the 80's came back from Europe with new ideas of what constituted a picture.

Johnson was by that time one of the "older men," and though well disposed toward the new movements and respected by its followers he remained true to the earlier traditions. He never lacked public comprehension and patronage as the "younger men" did. His training was different. He had begun with Düsseldorf, but soon went to Holland, where the sound and thorough tech

Eastman Johnson was the direct contrary to all this. To him his subject was as paramount as it was to the early Italian or Flemish painters. He had a story to tell, and he appealed not to a restricted circle, but to the great public; and his pictures displayed incidents of common life, mostly that country life which nearly everyone of that earlier day had known in youth. This story-telling intent was general in America at the time and produced much work that was trivial and inartistic, but Johnson's was neither. His nature was strong and deep and he chose from the life around him what was human and permanent, discarding instinctively the petty and insignificant. His world of plain folk, farmers, peddlers, housewives, or country boys is seen with sympathetic insight. More important still, it is seen from a painter's standpoint and rendered with something of that "style" which escapes the commonplace.

The work is full of artistic qualities added unconsciously in the desire to express the subject. The draughtsmanship is admirable, not only correct, but strong and full of character; the composition is well ar ranged, the lights and darks spot well, and the color, while rich and warm, according to the school traditions, is not perfunctory, but

shows real feeling. No impatience or change of mood leaves any part incomplete, yet labor does not wear out inspiration. There are felicities of handling not aggressive but as skilful and interesting as ever came out of Munich, and atmospheric effects rendered with a delicate accuracy that Paris training has not surpassed. It is the combining of artistic and popular elements that is Eastman Johnson's characteristic merit. For a generation he stood almost alone in offering to the uncultured public pictures which they could thoroughly enjoy and which at the same time increased and educated their artistic perceptions. Even now there seems to be no one who fully replaces him in that office.

SAMUEL ISHAM.

THE death of Eastman Johnson removes almost the last link which unites us with that past of our art which was, in a certain sense, analogous to the period of our literature of which Bryant, Longfellow, Prescott, Motley, Whittier, and Lowell were representatives. It was characteristic of both fields of effort that in the output of each there was a distinct national flavor. The sympathies of both writer and painter were of the soil of their native land

Romance invested the institution of slavery; and later the Civil War provided subjects, and farm life suggested topics to the healthy-minded and not too complex painter of the day which appealed to a public equally simple and receptive in its attitude toward painted themes. Hence we still recall by this painter "The Old Kentucky Home," "The Pension Agent," "The Tramp," "The Old Stage-coach," "Nantucket Whalers," and "The Cranberry Pickers," which reveal a past, or fast-vanishing, phase of our civilization.

This fact, of itself, would not make them memorable; but Johnson had a fine sense of color and a wholesome appreciation of the intimate and homely subjects of the Dutch school. Beautiful grays were to be found in his interior scenes, a rich impasto, and a kind of looseness in the touch which removed them far from much of the practice that was going on at the time of his return from abroad.

These pictures are veritable contributions as records of vanishing phases of the national life. But as he had begun by making portraits, so he returned to them; and his reputation was that of a portrait-painter. To consider these is to go into a subject that is more or less technical. It would not be wise, however, to measure Johnson's art by the practice of to-day; but for the time he worked and the environment in which he worked, his accomplishment was remarkable. He had indeed many attributes that well fitted him for his work. A genial, robust, and wholesome personality-one that by no idiosyncrasy or affectation would be likely to repel a sitter-and this sometimes counts for much.

When a painter puts before us personalities so strongly marked as some of Johnson's most telling presentations, one is rather indisposed to find fault because of the lack of those qualities of the virtuoso which much of the work of to-day displays, not always so successfully united with the human side. It is perfectly true, however, that the painter we are considering made use of conventions in painting which the worker of the present seeks to avoid. In spite of this there was in his work a breadth of aspect, a merging into the background of certain uninteresting passages of form, a care in the selection of accessories, that testified to the presence of a controlling judgment in the conception of the canvas, which stamped it as the production of one possessed of the essentials of portrait art. Our painter's method was, after all, a rather full-blooded one-his touch was, as opposed to that of his contemporaries, free and loose-a reminder, perhaps, of that vigorous manipulator of pigment, Couture; while Johnson's color seemed to come from his very veins, so rich and ruddy was its glow.

If he had been possessed of a surer and more certain sense of planes, if he had builded, with his strong color, the constructive forms of the human head with the competency say, of Raeburn, we should have had still greater pleasure in the canvases he has left. Still, vigor and character were the distinguishing marks of Johnson's work above, perhaps, that of any of his contemporaries, and he outlived many of them in his working years. FRANK FOWLER.

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THE BLIGHT IN THE HILLS

I

MIGH noon of a crisp October day, sunshine flooding the earth with the warmth and light of old wine and, going single-file up through the jagged gap that the dripping of water has worn down through the Cumberland Mountains from crest to valleylevel, a gray horse and two big mules, a man and two young girls. On the gray horse, I led the tortuous way. After me came my small sister-and after her and like her, mule-back, rode the Blight-dressed as she would be for a gallop in Central Park or to ride a hunter in a horse show.

I was taking them, according to promise, where the feet of other women than mountaineers had never trod-beyond the crest of the Big Black-to the waters of the Cumberland-the lair of moonshiner and feudsman, where is yet pocketed a civilization that, elsewhere, is long ago gone. This had been a pet dream of the Blight's for a long time, and now the dream was coming true. The Blight was in the hills.

Nobody ever went to her mother's house without asking to see her even when she was a little thing with black hair, merry face and black eyes. Both men and women, with children of their own, have told me that she was, perhaps, the most fascinating child that ever lived. There be some who claim that she has never changed-and I

VOL. XL.-29

am among them. She began early, regardless of age, sex or previous condition of servitude-she continues recklessly as she began and none makes complaint. Thus was it in her own world-thus it was when she came to mine. On the way down from the North, the conductor's voice changed from a command to a request when he asked for her ticket. The jacketed lord of the dining car saw her from afar and advanced to show her to a seat—that she might ride forward, sit next to a shaded window and be free from the glare of the sun on the other side. Two porters made a rush for her bag when she got off the car and the proprietor of the little hotel in the little town where we had to wait several hours for the train into the mountains, gave her the bridal chamber for an afternoon nap. From this little town to "The Gap" is the worst sixty-mile ride, perhaps, in the world. She sat in a dirty day-coach; the smoke rolled in at the windows and doors; the cars shook and swayed and lumbered around curves and down and up gorges; there were about her rough men, crying children, slatternly women, tobacco juice, peanuts, popcorn and apple cores, but dainty, serene and as merry as ever, she sat through that ride with a radiant smile, her keen black eyes noting everything unlovely within and the glory of hill, tree and chasm without. Next morning at home, where we rise early, no one was allowed to waken her and she had breakfast in bed-for the Blight's gentle tyranny was established on sight and varied not at the Gap.

When she went down the street that day everybody stared surreptitiously and with Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved.

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