Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and PoetsHartley, Marsden
History
Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets
Hartley, Marsden
Art; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism; Vaudeville
I have for purely personal reasons chosen the two painters who
formulate for me the conviction that there have been and are but two
consistently convincing American impressionists. These gentlemen are
John H. Twachtman and Theodore Robinson. I cannot say precisely in
what year Twachtman died but for purposes intended here this data is
of no paramount consequence, save that it is always a matter of query
as to just how long an artist must live, or have been dead, to be
discovered in what is really his own time.
John H. Twachtman as artist is difficult to know even by artists; for
his work is made difficult to see either by its scarcity as determined
for himself or by the exclusiveness of the owners of his pictures. It
requires, however, but two or three of them to convince one that
Twachtman has a something "plus" to contribute to his excursions into
impressionism. One feels that after a Duesseldorf blackness which
permeates his earlier work his conversion to impressionism was as
fortunate as it was sincere. Twachtman knew, as is evidenced
everywhere in his work, what he wished to essay and he proceeded with
poetic reticence to give it forth. With a lyricism that is as
convincing as it is authentic, you feel that there is a certain
underlying spirit of resignation. He surely knew that a love of
sunlight would save any man from pondering on the inflated importance
of world issues.
Having seen Twachtman but once my memory of his face recalls this
admixture of emotion. He cared too much for the essential beauties to
involve them with analyses extraneous to the meaning of beauty. That
the Japanese did more for him than any other Orientals of whom he
might have been thinking, is evident. For all that, his own personal
lyricism surmounts his interest in outer interpretations of light and
movement, and he leaves you with his own notion of a private and
distinguished appreciation of nature. In this sense he leads one to
Renoir's way of considering nature which was the pleasure in nature
for itself. It was all too fine an adventure to quibble about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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