uality of them is essentially Eastern
in flavor. They seldom ventured beyond more than a home-spun richness of
color, though in Ryder's case Monticelli had assisted very definitely
in his notion of the volume of tone. We find here then despite the
impress of artists like William Morris Hunt, Washington Allston, and the
later Inness with the still later Winslow Homer, that gripping and
relentless realist who took hold of the newer school of
painter-illustrators, that the artists treated of here may be considered
as the most important phase of American painting in the larger sense of
the term. If I were to assist in the arrangement of an all American
exhibition to show the trend toward individualism I should begin with
Martin, Fuller and Ryder. I should then proceed to Winslow Homer, John
H. Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Hayes Miller, Arthur B. Davies,
Rockwell Kent, then to those who come under the eighteen-ninety tendency
in painting, namely the Whistler-Goya-Velasquez influence.

From this it will be found that an entirely new development had taken
place among a fairly large group of younger men who came, and very
earnestly, under the Cezannesque influence. It may be said that the
choice of these men is a wise one for it is conspicuous among artists
of today that since Cezanne art will never, cannot ever be the same,
just as with Delacroix and Courbet a French art could never have
remained the same. Impressionism will be found to have had a far
greater value as a suggestive influence than as a creative one. It
brought light in as a scientific aspect into modern painting and that
is its valuable contribution. So it is that with Cezanne the world is
conscious of a new power that will never be effectually shaken off,
since the principles that are involved in the intention of Cezanne are
of too vital importance to be treated with lightness of judgment. Such
valuable ideas as Cezanne contributes must be accepted almost as
dogma, albeit valuable dogma. Influence is a conscious and necessary
factor in the development of all serious minded artists, as we have
seen in the instances of all important ones.

So it is I feel that the real art of America, and it can, I think,
justly be said that there is such, will be headed by the imaginative
artists I have named in point of their value as indigenous creators,
having worked out their artistic destinies on home soil with all the
virility of creators in the finer sense of the term.