own special problem was one different from theirs, and he had to find his own way of solving it. Even in one of his earliest landscapes painted about 1881, after his return from Paris, from studies made abroad, there is a decisively individual note. It is a scene of ploughing, owned by Mr. Montross--a stretch of dark rich soil, with man and horses pushing the furrow toward a clear, cool horizon. There is a larger feeling than Daubigny would have portrayed; a sterner one, if you will, certainly one more bracing in its suggestion of vigorous earth and breezy sky, and more distinctly inspired than Harpignies could have made it, with the sentiment of the soil and sky in their relation to the life of man. Still, the motive of the picture is so far a borrowed one that, although it has the feeling of a New England scene, it has not its local characteristics of atmosphere or of soil colour, lacking the more sensitive quality of the one, and the tenderer hues of the other. While, then, this picture is without the subtle qualities that mark the later ones, it has a clear, strong note of vigorous earnestness, strongly felt and strongly realized. Indeed, it seems entirely characteristic of the strength of purpose and sturdy qualities which are the foundation of Tryon’s equipment, both as a man and a painter. He seems to have grown up with the smell of the soil in his nostrils as Millet did, though without the latter’s saddened associations; to have been nourished with the brisk New England air, and to have gathered muscle over its ploughed and grassy uplands. The keen stimulus of nature went through and through him early and has stayed with him, so that his art partakes of its strength. In his pictures, one finds, I think, a stronger foundation than only that of good drawing and construction; an earnest, wholesome delight in the strength of nature as being something in which he himself shares; which, indeed, has so grown into his mind and life that its expression in his work is but a matter of course. It is a part of his most serious convictions, so that his rendering of it is convincing. Put into words, the distinction may seem a little fine drawn; but I feel sure that our experience of pictures gives it substance. How often, for example, in the work of the French classicists we may see illustrations of human vigour, on which good drawing and construction have been expended, and yet their suggestion of vigour is only an affectation; a quality aimed at by the painter, but not vitalized by strong, earnest convictions of his own. What a protestation of strength there is in Salvator Rosa’s landscapes, and how little real convincingness! And, coming to the landscapes of our own time, it would be easy to quote examples of strong drawing and construction from which, [Illustration: From the collection of Charles L. Freer, Esq. SPRING BLOSSOMS. BY DWIGHT W. TRYON.] [Illustration: From the collection of Charles L. Freer, Esq.