emain to us as the matured fruits of his life, we may
gain some hint of his experiences. It is not to be questioned that he
drew from the New-England soil that he tilled, and the air that he
breathed, an inspiration which never failed him. The flavor of the quiet
valley fills all his canvases. We see in them the spaciousness of its
meadows, the inviting slope of its low hills, the calm grandeur of its
encircling mountains, the mysterious gloom and wholesome brightness of
its changing skies, the atmosphere of history and romance which is its
breath and life. Song and story have found many incidents for treatment
in this locality. Not far from the farm where Fuller's daily work was
done, the tragedy of Bloody Brook was enacted; the fields which he
tilled have their legend of Indian ambuscade and massacre; the soil is
sown, as with dragon's teeth, with the arrow-heads and battle-axes of
many bitter conflicts; even to the ancient house where, in recent years,
the painter's summer easel was set up, a former owner was brought home
with the red man's bullet in his breast. The menace of midnight attack
seems even now to the wanderer in the darkness to burden the air of
these mournful meadows, and tradition shows that here were felt the
ripples of that tide of superstitious frenzy which flowed from Salem
through all the early colonies. No place could have furnished more
potent suggestions to the art-idealist than this, and although it did
not lead him to paint its tragic history (for no man had less liking for
violence and passion than he), it impressed him deeply with its
concurrent records of endurance and devotion. Nor did it invite him, as
it might have done in the case of a weaker man, into mere description,
but having aroused his thought, it submitted itself wholly to the
treatment of his strong and original genius. He approached his task with
a broad and comprehensive vision, and a loving and inquiring soul. He
was not satisfied with the revelation of his eyes alone, but sought
earnestly for the secret of nature's life, and of its influence upon
the sensitive mind of man. He perceived the truth that nature without
man is naught, even as there is no color without light, and strove
earnestly to show in his art the relations that they sustain to each
other. He saw, also, that the material in each is nothing without the
spirit which they share in common, and thus he painted not places, but
the influence of places, even as he pa