m prints of old pictures, and finally, in 1847,
getting a chance to see the original when a friend offered to send him
to Europe. He passed fifteen months in Rome, and afterwards a year at
Paris.

A long period of assimilation followed, in which he developed a theory
of art and struggled to transfer it to canvas. It was a sound and true
theory, and is worth setting down here for its own sake. "The purpose of
the painter," Inness held, "is to reproduce in other minds the
impression which a scene had made upon him. A work of art does not
appeal to the intellect or to the moral sense. Its aim is not to
instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion. It must be a single
emotion, if the work has unity, as every such work should have, and the
true beauty of the work consists in the beauty of the sentiment or
emotion which it inspires. Its real greatness consists in the quality
and force of this emotion."

To the very last, Inness's work was changing and developing to fit this
theory. He steadily gained mastery of tone and breadth of handling, of
true harmony, and it is his crowning merit that he does to some extent
succeed in "reproducing in other minds the impression which the scene
made upon him."

Alexander H. Wyant was a pupil of Inness, journeying from the little
Ohio town where he was born to see him and to ask for advice and aid,
which Inness freely gave. Wyant's boyhood had been the American artist's
usual one--an early fondness for drawing, a little practice, and then
setting up as a painter. In 1873 he joined an expedition to Arizona and
New Mexico. The hardships which he endured resulted in a stroke of
paralysis and he was never again able to use his right hand. With an
inspiring patience, he set to work to learn to use his left hand, and
grew to be more skillful with it than he had been with his right.

But even at his best, Wyant's appeal is more limited than Inness's. He
learned to paint a typical picture, a glimpse of rolling country seen
between the trunks of tall and slender birches or maples, and was
content to paint variations of it over and over. That he sometimes did
it superbly cannot be denied, and he possessed a certain delicate
refinement, an ability to throw upon his pictures the silvery shimmer of
summer sunshine, in which no other American artist has ever surpassed
him.

The third, and in some respects the most interesting member of the group
is Homer D. Martin. Born in Albany in 1838, he t