The painters about whom these chapters are written helped to make up the period in American painting dating, generally, from about 1878 to, say, 1915. That period has practically closed in the sense that a newer generation with different aims and aspirations has come forward, and the men who broke ground years ago in the Society of American Artists have turned their furrow and had their day. Indeed, those I have chosen to write about herein, with the exception of Sargent, have passed on and passed out. Not only their period but their work has ended. We are now beginning to see them in something like historic perspective. Perhaps, then, the time is opportune for speaking of them as a group and of their influence upon American art. Not all of the one-time “new movement” originated and died with these nine men. Dozens of painters became identified with American art just after the Centennial, and many of those who came back from Munich and Paris in the late seventies and the early eighties are still living and producing. But while the nine were by no means the whole count they were certainly representative of the movement, and their works speak for almost every phase of it. The value of the movement to American art can be rightly enough judged from them. During their lives these nine did not lack for praise--some of it wise and some of it otherwise. They were much exploited in print. I myself joined in the chorus. I had more or less acquaintance with all of them, lived through the period with them, and from 1880 on wrote much about them. My opportunities for seeing and hearing were abundant, and perhaps such value as this book may possess comes from my having been a looker-on in Vienna during those years. To personal impressions I am now adding certain conclusions as to what the men on my list, taken as a body, have established. They wrought during a period of great material development--wrought in a common spirit, making an epoch in art history and leaving a tradition. The pathfinders in any period deserve well of their countrymen. And their trail is worth following, for eventually it may become a broad national highway. J. C. V. D. Rutgers College, 1919. CONTENTS PAGE I. THE ART TRADITION IN AMERICA 1 II. GEORGE INNESS 19 III. ALEXANDER H. WYANT 43 IV. HOMER MARTIN 65 V. WINSLOW HOMER 89 VI. JOHN LA FARGE 115 VII. JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER 147 VIII. WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE 185 IX. JOHN W. ALEXANDER 217 X. JOHN S. SARGENT 243 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE GEORGE INNESS, “Evening at Medfield” 32