n Frederick
Edwin Church. Church was born in 1826, and lived with Cole in his house
in the Catskills until the latter's death. He then established himself
in New York, and proceeded to visit the four corners of the earth in
search for grandiose scenes. For he made the mistake of thinking that
the greatness of a landscape lay in its subject rather than in its
execution; so he painted views of the Andes, and Niagara, and Cotopaxi,
and Chimborazo, and the Parthenon, throwing in rainbows and sunsets and
mists for good measure. These pictures were welcomed with the wildest
enthusiasm--just as Clarke Mills's statue of General Jackson had been,
fifteen years before. Strange to say, they were not absurd, as that
amazing figure is, but were really fine examples of clever handling and
of a true, if untrained, feeling.

Two men attempted to duplicate Church's success, but with very
indifferent result. They were Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The
former sought the Rocky Mountains for his subjects; the latter, the
Yosemite and the Yellowstone; but neither of them succeeded in
transferring to canvas more than a pale and unconvincing presentment of
the wonders of those regions.

Durand also had a disciple, more famous than Cole's, in Frederick
Kensett, the best known of the so-called Hudson River school. He was a
close follower of Durand in believing that nature should be literally
rendered, but he missed the truth of the older man by working in his
studio from drawings and sketches, instead of in the open air direct
from his subject. So he got into the habit of painting all shadows a
transparent brown, and of making his rocks and trees brilliant by
touching in high-lights where he thought they ought to be instead of
where they actually should have been. He surpassed Durand, however, in
his range of subject, for all hours and seasons had their charm for him,
while Durand was really at home only in the full light of a summer day.

On this foundation a loftier structure was soon built and the builders
were George Inness, Alexander Wyant and Homer D. Martin. Inness was the
oldest of the three, having been born in 1825, and was contemporary
with some of the most arbitrary and hide-bound of the nature copyists.
But he felt the weakness of the method and himself attained a much
fuller and completer art. He seems to have dabbled with paint and
brushes from his youth, but had little regular instruction, studying,
for the most part, fro