Mr. Alexander Harrison is one of those numerous American artists who have settled in France, a natural result of French training and French sympathies. Inspired by Manet, influenced by Besnard, he has painted some of the most successful Impressionist work of the last fifteen years. One cannot agree always with Dr. Muther in his learned and not altogether satisfactory tomes, but his appreciation of Mr. Harrison is so delicate and just that it is worth reproducing. “_In Arcady_,” he writes, “was one of the finest studies of light which have been painted since Manet. The manner in which the sunlight fell upon the high grass and slender trees, its rays gliding over branch and shrub, touching the green blades like shining gold, and glancing over the nude bodies of fair women—here over a hand, here over a shoulder, and here again over the bosom—was painted with such virtuosity, felt with such poetry, and so free from all the heaviness of earth, that one hardly had the sense of looking at a picture at all.” The luminous painting of Besnard had here reached its final expression, and the summit of classic finish was surmounted. His third picture was called _The Wave_. To seize such phenomena of Nature in their completeness—things so fickle and so hard to arrest in their mutability—had been the chief study of French painters since Manet. When Harrison exhibited his _Wave_, sea-pieces by Duez, Roll, and Victor Binet were also in existence; but Harrison’s _Wave_ was the best of them all. [Illustration: IN ARCADY · ALEXANDER HARRISON ] [Illustration: THE WAVE · ALEXANDER HARRISON ] Harrison’s vast studio in Paris breathes of the sea. The painter is an ardent yachtsman, and traces of his recreation are numerous. Here are to be found dozens of canvases, rolled up, piled in bundles, hung haphazard against the walls, each one telling some different story of the waters. These studies, probably worked upon in the neighbourhoods of Pould’hu or Begmiel, are often actually salted and sanded by contact with the elements which dash against the wild but lovely Breton shores. No modern man paints seascapes like Harrison. He produces effects which are evidently the results of patient vigil and watching, as well as a vigorous power of brushwork. They are transcripts of the ocean, which can only be seen as the sun rises out of the east over the waters, pale lilac tints, softly fading into citron, or gaining added strength in vermilion or deep orange reflected from the passing clouds, whilst sweeping ripples (one can almost hear their rhythmic cadence) are gently lost across the expanse of ethereal, glistening sand. [Illustration: SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE · CHILDE HASSAM ]