Now the “Life Line” is very forceful story-telling with the brush, but let it not be overlooked that it is story-telling--illustration. The illustrator, with an eye for the critical moment and the appealing interest, is just as apparent here as in “Snap the Whip” or “Prisoners from the Front.” Winslow Homer, the pictorial reporter, is still present. All along he has been answering the question: “What does it mean?” He is still interested in that, but he is now beginning to think about the artist’s question: “How does it look?” He is just a little concerned about his form and his color, his composition, and his general pictorial effect. They are not what they should be. The wet, clinging garments of the girl reveal a large and very hard figure. It is rigid in its outlines and stony in its texture, as though reinforced for purposes of mechanical reproduction. The man is little more than so much tackle and line, so ropelike is his treatment, and the enormous hollow of the sea is merely a perilous background. As for color, the picture is gray and would lose none of its fetching quality if done in black-and-white. There is no love for color as color nor for painting as painting here. The handling was evidently as little pleasure to the painter as it is to us. It is as flat, as monotonous, and as negative as the plaster on a kitchen wall. There is no suspicion of subtlety, facility, or suavity in it. But when all that is said, there is a large something left behind unaccounted for--a grip and knowledge and point of view--that we respect and admire. [Illustration: “Undertow,” by Winslow Homer. In the Edward D. Adams Collection.]