Twachtman's natural reticence and, I could also believe, natural skepticism kept him from swinging wildly over to the then new theories, a gesture typical of less intelligent natures. He had the good sense to feel out for himself just where the new theories related to himself and set about producing flat simplicity of planes of color to produce a very distinguished notion of light. He dispensed with the photographic attitude toward objectivity and yet at the same time held to the pleasing rhythmical shapes in nature. He did not resort to divisionalism or to ultra-violence of relationship. The pictures that I have seen such as "February", for instance, in the Boston Museum, present for me the sensation of a man of great private spiritual and intellectual means, having the wish to express tactfully and convincingly his personal conclusions and reactions, leaning always toward the side of iridescent illusiveness rather than emotional blatancy and irrelevant extravagance. His nuances are perhaps too finely adjusted to give forth the sense of overwhelming magic either in intention or of execution. It is lyrical idea with Twachtman with seldom or never a dramatic gesture. He is as illusive as a phrase of Mallarme and it will be remembered that he is of the period more or less of the rose and the lily and the lost idea in poetry. He does recall in essence at least the quality of pastels in prose, though the art intention is a sturdier one. It is enough that Twachtman did find his relationship to impressionism, and that he did not evolve a system of repetition which marks the failure of all influence. Twachtman remains an artist of super-fine sensibility and distinction, and whatever he may have poured into the ears of students as an instructor left no visible haggard traces on his own production other than perhaps limiting that production. But we know that while the quality is valuable in respect of power it has no other precise value. We remember that Giorgione perished likewise with an uncertain product to his credit, as to numbers, but he did leave his immemorial impression. So it is with John H. Twachtman. He leaves his indelible influence among Americans as a fine artist, and he may be said to be among the few artists who, having taken up the impressionistic principle, found a way to express his personal ideas with a true degree of personal force. He is a beautifully sincere product and that is going far. Those pictures I have seen contain no taint of the market or clamoring for praise even. They were done because their author had an unobtrusive yet very aristocratic word to say, and the word was spoken with authority. John H. Twachtman must be counted as one of the genuine American artists, as well as among the most genuine artists of the world. If his pictures do not torment one with problematic intellectualism, they do hold one with their inherent refinement of taste and a degree of aristocratic approach which his true intelligence implies.