The experiments in reviving old
technical methods have been undertaken for the sake of purity and
luminosity of color and have largely succeeded. The pictures of Mr.
Tarbell are far more colored than those of the European painter whose
work is, in some ways, most analogous to his, M. Joseph Bail. Mr.
Hassam's color is always sparkling and brilliant, Mr. Dewing's delicate
and charming, Mr. Weir's subtle and harmonious and sometimes very full.
Even Mr. Brush's linear arrangements are clothed in sombre but often
richly harmonious tones, and the decorative use of powerful color is the
main reliance of such painters as Hugo Ballin. But the note of color
runs through the school and one hardly needs to name individual men.
Whether our landscapists glaze and scumble with the tonalists, or use
some modification of the impressionist hatching, it is for the sake of
color; and even our most forthright and dashing wielders of the big
brush often achieve a surprising power of resonant coloring.
Power, fulness, and beauty of coloring are hardly modern qualities. Much
as impressionism has been praised for restoring color to a colorless
art, its result has been, too often, to substitute whitishness for
blackishness. Color has characterized no modern painting since that of
Delacroix and Millet as it characterizes much of the best American
painting.
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