In a country vast as ours, there must needs be diversity in different parts, so there cannot be any one character of landscape distinctively American; but, in their faithful rendering of the local character, all may be distinguishable from those of other countries. And this expression on the countenance of nature is not unlike that on the face of a man or woman; the painter may suggest it perfunctorily, or he may render it with a completeness of sympathy and understanding, products of alert sensibility and interested acquaintanceship. It is the evidence of these qualities that gives enduring charm to Tryon’s landscapes. No one who knows his work will need to be told that he is a New Englander. His landscapes show an intimacy of knowledge of that locality, and an affectionate sympathy with its particular phases of expression, that could only result from the painter having grown up in that part, the boy’s associations gradually maturing into the man’s convictions. His home was in Hartford, Conn., where he was born in 1849. He entered upon life as a stationer’s assistant, and pursued the occupation until he had accumulated sufficient means to visit Paris, all the while spending his leisure time in studying from nature and in discovering for himself how to represent his ideas in paint. There is evidence in this of sanity as well as earnestness, of a fine poise of character, qualities later to appear in his landscapes. Above all, there is the perfectly natural process of a painter’s evolution; I mean, the antecedent love of nature, the clear apprehension of the kind of nature that he aimed to paint, the love of it and the knowledge preceding the final acquisition of technique; meanwhile, the gradual upbuilding of personal character by the discipline of postponing his ideals. So, when he reached Paris, it was not as a raw, enthusiastic student whose subsequent career spun suspended upon a mere cobweb of his fancy. He had married, and took his wife with him, establishing a little home and having clear plans in view, being, in fact, a man. He painted under Harpignies and Daubigny, an excellent combination of influences, mutually complementary: the one so sound and methodical, if a little prosaic; the other so captivating in the perennial boyishness of his mind, so lovable a student of the simple loveliness of rural scenes. What a happy antidote was Daubigny to the excessive earnestness of a typical New England character; how persuasively suggestive must his landscapes have been to one whose heart was implanted in the austerer charms of his New England home. The influence of his two masters served on the one hand to send the roots of his growth farther down and to stiffen the trunk, and on the other to encourage a more abundant leafage and the added fragrance of blossom. From both, also, he must have gained a store of technical principles; but of direct influence in his manner of painting there is no trace. His