But while Walker is akin to the Dutch artist in the embracing tenderness of his vision, he excels him in breadth and force. Israels continually invites you to look in; Walker, to look in also, but to look around as well. In this respect he reminds one of Troyon, whose magnificent landscapes and grand cattle are big with nature’s fecundity and strength. There is not a little of these two men in Walker; of Israels’ tenderness and Troyon’s breadth. Even in so stirring a subject as the large “Ploughing in Acadia,” painted about 1887, there is this infusion of tenderness. The three horses straining abreast are full of vigour; they tug with a sustained effort in which the continuity of the movement is finely expressed; the high gear above their saddles, covered with sheepskin, tosses in the air over their shaggy arched necks; the old man at the plough tail is stocky and hale; lusty green weeds have their roots in the strong earth, and the sky is full of bracing weather. Through and through it is a sturdy picture; but note, also, the affectionateness with which the head of the nearest horse is rendered. He is of the Normandy breed, the most willing of servants, the most intelligent of animal companions. His eye is bright, the nostril inflated; he is rejoicing in his strength; and later on, when labour is over, he will nose into his master’s jacket and both will feel like friends to one another. This is the wholesome, natural view of the peasant’s labour, when it is really close to the soil and uncorrupted by a cheap press; man and the animals going about their appointed task until the day is done, and finding companionship with one another and with nature; and it is not without a quiet happiness of its own. This ploughing scene reminds me of a later one, painted a few years ago, of two oxen coming up the furrow with their massive, leisurely movement, while behind them the light is mounting up in floods of crimson, that overflow upon the broad backs of the beasts and lap the cool, glistening earth. It represents the first moments in nature’s daily awakening to life and in man’s daily routine of labour. Both in the sky and on the earth there is the steady gathering of force; not a burst of energy, but that massing of energy that will not readily expend itself. I have heard it remarked that the oxen look tired already, and the men likewise; but perhaps it is rather a passivity of feeling that is conveyed, that slow, unquestioning resignation, that is at once so pathetic and heroic in the true peasant.