ohn Marin,
and Charles Demuth. With Cezanne it was merely a new instrument to
employ for the realization of finer plastic relations. The medium of
water-color has been ably employed by the English and the Dutch
painters, but it seems as if the artists of both these countries
succeeded in removing all the brilliance and charm as well as the
freshness which is peculiar to it; few outside of Cezanne have, I
think, done more with water-color than the above named American
artists, none who have kept more closely and consistently within the
confines and peculiarities of this medium.

In the consideration of the American water-color artists it will be
found that Sargent and Homer tend always toward the graphic aspect of
a pictorial idea, yet it is Homer who relieves his pictures of this
obsession by a brilliant appreciation of the medium for its own sake.
Homer steps out of the dry conventionalism of the English style of
painting, which Sargent does not do. Much of that metallic harshness
which is found in the oil pictures of Homer is relieved in the
water-colors and there is added to this their extreme virtuosity, and
a great distinction to be discovered in their sense of light and life,
the sense of the object illumined with a wealth of vibrancy that is
peculiar to its environment, particularly noticeable in the Florida
series.

Dodge Macknight has seen with a keen eye the importance of this
virility of technique to be found in Homer, and has added to this a
passion for impressionistic veracity which heightens his own work to a
point distinctly above that of Sargent, and one might almost say above
Winslow Homer. Macknight really did authenticate for himself the
efficacy of impression with almost incredible feats of visual bravery.
There is no array of pigment sufficient to satisfy him as for what
heat and cold do to his sensibility, as experienced by the opposite
poles of a New England winter and a tropical Mexican landscape. He is
always in search of the highest height in contrasts, all this joined
by what his sense of fierceness of light could bring to the fantastic
dune stretches of Cape Cod in fiery autumn. His work in water-color
has the convincing charm of almost fanaticism for itself; and we find
this medium progressing still further with the fearlessness of John
Marin in the absolute at-home-ness which he displays on all occasions
in his audacious water-color pictures.

Marin brings you to the feeling that digres