The Mentor, No. 26,
American Landscape Painters

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTERS

American Art Annual

By SAMUEL ISHAM

The beginnings of art in America were confined almost exclusively
to portrait painting. In the earliest colonial times unskilled
limners came from the mother country and made grotesque effigies
of our statesmen and divines. As the settlements developed
and the amenities of life increased better men came, and native
painters were found, until about the end of the eighteenth century
a portrait school of surprising merit arose, founded on the contemporary
English school, and developed men like Copley, Stuart, and
Sully. The other branches of painting, however,—history, allegory,
genre, still life, landscape, and the rest,—were rarely attempted, and
usually with unsatisfactory results.

Probably no artist devoted himself entirely to landscape until
1820, when Thomas Doughty, who was already twenty-seven years old,
gave up his leather trade and took to painting American views in delicate
gray and violet tones, with small encouragement from his contemporaries.

THOMAS COLE, THE IDEALIST

Metropolitan Museum of Art

THE VALLEY OF VAN CLUSE, BY THOMAS COLE

Soon after came Thomas Cole, the real founder of the school,
who emigrated to America with his father’s family when he was nineteen.
He was a sensitive, delicate youth, who suffered much in his wanderings
while trying to support himself, at first by his trade of wood engraving,
but most of all after the chance meeting with an itinerant portrait painter
led him to take up art.
It was not until he came
to New York in 1825 that
his merits were recognized
and his difficulties ceased.
Some small canvases that
he exhibited were quickly
bought, and from this time
until his death his popularity
steadily increased.
The quality of Cole’s work
owes much to his own
character, and perhaps
also to his early English
bringing up. He was an
idealist rather than a realist.
He cared less to reproduce
the beauties of
the nature around him
than to awaken high,
moral thoughts. It was
not for the pleasure of the
eye, but to suggest profitable
musings on the
grandeur and decline of
nations, the transitoriness
of life, the rewards of
virtue after death, that he
painted the “Course of
Empire,” the “Voyage of
Life,” and the rest. He
was the founder of a romantic
school, which may be traced even down to the present day.
The succeeding artists did not indeed paint allegories; but they put the
main interest of their pictures in the strangeness or beauty of their subject,
rather than in rendering ordinary scenes with personal feeling.

CHURCH, PAINTER OF NOBLE SCENERY

Metropolitan Museum of Art

THE ÆGEAN SEA, BY F. E. CHURCH

The best known of these followers was F. E. Church, who was a
pupil of Cole—and the only pupil that he could properly be said to have
had; for Church lived and studied in his house for years. While he
showed no desire to imitate the mystic subjects of his master, Church
cared little for the common world immediately around him. He seems to
have thought that the nobler the subject the nobler the picture, and he
ransacked the whole earth for its beautiful, strange, or impressive scenes.
The luxurious vegetation of the tropics, the isles of the Ægean Sea, the Parthenon,
icebergs, volcanos,—he painted them all, set off by sunset, clouds,
thunderstorms, rainbows, or whatever else would enhance their beauty, and
he painted them well. He was the best artist of his school; much better
than Cole, whose careful studies of real scenes are often well done, but
whose workmanship degenerated rapidly when, leaving
nature, he entered into the realm of pure imagination.

The succeeding men who took Church’s viewpoint
and sought subjects for their exceptional beauty
or majesty had an additional impulse given to their
imagination by the discovery of such subjects in
their own country. Church painted no important
picture of his own land; but when exploring parties
began to enter the great West they were accompanied
by artists eager to set down marvels no less
striking than those of the tropics or of Europe.

ALBERT BIERSTADT

Metropolitan Museum of Art

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT

The foremost of these artists was Albert Bierstadt,
who gave to the public its first impressions of the vastness of the
Rockies and all their strange fauna, the buffalo, the big trees, and the
rest. The public, both educated and uneducated, enjoyed and admired
the pictures which offered it a new impression of the grandeur of
its country and flattered the somewhat uncouth but real pride of the time.

Other men besides Bierstadt
accompanied the explorers of the
West,—Whittredge, Wyant, Samuel
Colman, and others,—but though
they painted the plains and the
Rockies they soon deserted them
for other subjects. One man, however,
now a veteran of his profession,
has remained faithful to his
early ideals.

THOMAS MORAN

LAKE OF THE WOODS,
BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN

Thomas Moran, who was one of
three brothers, all distinguished in
art, came with them to this country
from England in 1844, when he
was seven years old. He continues
to our day the traditions of Church;
not directly, for his training came
from an entirely different source,
but by his natural preference for
Nature in her more striking and
impressive forms. A trip to the
Yellowstone as early as 1871 furnished
him with a series of subjects
peculiarly his own; but, while he has always found matter for his brush
in the marvels of the great West, he has added to
them many of the most beautiful scenes of Great
Britain, Switzerland, Venice, and the Orient, rendering
them all with a sure facility and brilliance that
make his canvases recognizable at a glance.

In contrast to these men, who sought to give
interest and dignity to their work by choosing imaginative
or strange, far-sought subjects, may be placed
those whose interest was rather in the familiar native
landscape that lay about them, who found in it
beauty sufficient for their needs if only they could
fully express the emotions with which it inspired
them. The two schools are anything but rigidly
separated. The idealists made careful studies from
nature, and the realists attempted excursions into
allegory or scenic beauty; but the fundamental
difference of the point of view is sufficiently marked.

The two founders of our landscape schools are
typical examples of the two temperaments. Thomas
Cole, born abroad, with much of the sentimentality
of Europe of that time, was a dreamer, sensitive,
shy, living in his visions.

THE TRUTH AND FEELING
OF DURAND’S ART

ASHER B. DURAND

Asher B. Durand, on the contrary, was of
sturdy Huguenot stock, one of the many children
of a farmer who cultivated his land on Orange
Mountain, but whose ingenuity made him also a
watchmaker, silversmith, and skilled mechanic generally. His son, after
some boyish efforts at engraving, was apprenticed to that trade, and
rapidly became by far the best engraver in the country, both prosperous
and skilful. His masterpiece is
the “Declaration of Independence,”
which holds its own today
as a most creditable production.
He was still an engraver when
Cole came to New York, and was
one of the first to encourage him
and buy his pictures. At this
time Durand, though an older
man by some five years than
Cole, had not yet begun to paint.
When he did some ten years later,
in 1835, his first productions were
portrait heads admirable in their
delicate draftsmanship and sure,
fine characterization; but he soon
abandoned these for landscape,
and for the latter part of his long
life devoted himself entirely to it.

IN THE WOODS, BY ASHER B. DURAND

Durand’s landscapes, like his
portraits, showed his training as
an engraver in their accurate and
minute drawing. Contrary to
the general practice of the time,
he painted many
of his large canvases
out of doors
in face of nature.
His love for nature,
combined with his
training as an engraver,
probably
accounts for his
almost invariable
choice of full midsummer
daylight
for his pictures,
when vegetation
was at its fullest
and all its details
could be minutely
seen. Yet, for all his love of detail, he does not lose unity, and the color
is true to the soft, warm haze of summer, and the shadows keep
their local atmosphere.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A GLIMPSE OF THE SEA, BY A. H. WYANT

THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

Durand’s landscapes were popular, and there grew up about him
a school of painters treating nature much as he did. They loved the
country that they visited in their summer excursions, and like him they
painted Lake George, the White Mountains, the
Hudson, and so there grew up what has been called
the Hudson River School. Durand was old when
he began painting, and his followers were of a younger
generation. Kensett was probably the best of them.
He worked less from nature than Durand; his detail
has none of Durand’s tranquil thoroughness, and his
shadows are apt to be rendered by a facile generalization
of brown. However, he made a decided
advance over the older master in representing all
aspects of nature, all seasons and all times of day,
with a special leaning toward sunsets.

A. H. WYANT

Of the others of the school there is space to
recall only a few names at random,—Whittredge,
McEntee, Bristol, Sandford R. Gifford, Cropsey,
and the rest. They were mostly sincere, hard-working
painters, and very charming, worthy men personally. They
won for themselves a social position in the old New York of the ’60’s
and ’70’s greater and more important than any other artistic group has
enjoyed in this country. Their paintings were also admired and bought
for handsome prices, and as a whole they were prosperous. Time has
dealt rather hardly with their fame. Though all of the men whose names
have just been cited left works that may still be seen with pleasure, yet
as a rule the pictures of the school were thin, laborious, and timid. There
was no rich, strong handling of the pigment,
no decorative quality to the composition,
no massing of light and shade, and no revelation
of individual temperament and emotion.

WYANT, MARTIN, AND INNESS

Approaches to these qualities were
occasionally made; but to find them the
general rule we must go to the men who
are now conceded to be the culminating
masters of the school,—Wyant, Homer
Martin, and Inness.

HOMER D. MARTIN

Of these Wyant holds closest to the
traditions of the school. He had a larger
sense of composition, a completer mastery
of technic, a freer handling, and a finer
draftsmanship. He represented with infinite
refinement the heaped up summer
clouds and the smooth, delicate tree trunk
beyond which the widespread landscape was
seen; but on the whole it was only a culmination of the qualities of the
school and awoke no opposition. With Martin and Inness it was different.
They succeeded in giving to their landscapes a deeper note of personal
emotion and feeling than any of their predecessors. Both were men of exceptional
spiritual and mental endowment. Their characters were formed
not in a conventional model imposed by their surroundings, but by much
solitary meditation. Both had begun by painting in the general style
of the Hudson River School, and both found the result unsatisfactory.

Martin’s desertion of the old traditions consisted largely in a change
of workmanship. Instead of the thin, smooth coating of pigment general
at the time, which he himself had practised in the beginning, he used
a thick impasto, laid on with a heavily loaded brush or even the palette
knife. The color, too, was not used in unbroken tones, but drawn
and blended together in streaks
and spots, which gave it quiver
and vitality. Apart from the
method of painting, the manner
changed also. Detail, so
admired by the public of the
day, was more and more simplified.
The composition resolved
itself into a few strong masses
of light and dark, the relations
between which became more and
more balanced and subtle as the
little incidents disappeared. His
pictures in this latter manner
are not very numerous, for he
could not paint when he was not
in the mood; but the best of
them make a profound impression
by their strong simplicity.

THE ART OF INNESS

SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON, BY GEORGE INNESS

GEORGE INNESS

Inness was a much more
prolific painter, and his work
shows greater variety. He early felt the
monotony of the old school, its lack of certain
qualities that he found in engravings of
European landscapes, and he used to take
the prints with him when he went sketching,
to try to discover wherein their merit consisted.
He studied nature continually, living
with it, so that at last he knew its moods
and methods by heart. Toward the end of his
life he painted much from memory. A landscape
painting, perhaps originally sketched
from nature, would change under his
brush much as the scene itself might under
changing lights or varying seasons. The sky
filled with clouds, then cleared again, the
sunlight spotted the grass or the shadows
stretched across it, while the trees turned
from the green of summer to the russet of
autumn. Naturally work of this later period, much
of it left unfinished, is very unequal in merit; but at
its best it marks his highest achievement rather than
the more carefully planned productions of his middle
life. It is more vital and more subtle; but all of
Inness’s work except his very earliest reflects the inner
nature of the man. It has none of the dignified
melancholy of Martin, which has also at times its note
of revolt. Inness is never trivial: he keeps his seriousness;
but he is never sad. Nature is to him always
beautiful, always kindly.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

ACROSS THE FIELDS, BY D. W. TRYON

American Art Annual

D. W. TRYON

With Wyant, Martin, and Inness our early landscape
school reached its culmination. Their lives all
continued after the end of the Civil War, they even
did their best work after it; but they belonged to a
school formed in other surroundings. After the war
conditions changed. The country was less isolated, intercourse was
easier, wealth had increased, and foreign paintings, calculated to show
the deficiencies of native work, became increasingly common. The budding
artists were no longer willing to pick up their art by their own
exertions, aided by occasional counsel from their elders
or such inadequate schools as the country then furnished,
but departed in ever increasing numbers to
the famous schools of Europe.

The difference was not that the earlier painters
had ignored Europe. They traveled to see the masterpieces
of art and the beauties of nature in foreign
countries; but they were on the whole contented with
their work and proud of their native school. The
younger men absorbed enthusiasm for foreign workmanship,
and adopted foreign standards.

THE SENTIMENT OF TRYON

D. W. Tryon is an example of this new spirit at
its best. His sentiment, if not so deep and strong as
Inness at his best, is yet more delicate and subtle.
That is due to a difference of temperament; but the
way in which the picture is developed is a matter of
training. With Inness the first thing was to express
somehow his feeling, and then the canvas was worked
over until it was got into construction; with Tryon
the draftsmanship was fundamental and indispensable,
and the sentiment was built upon that. One may
say of our recent landscapes that they show a construction
gained from the
study of the nude and a
handling adapted from the
best foreign models. This
education has greatly raised
the average of our art; but a few men of the
older time had strength and feeling to work
out a training for themselves more personal
and perhaps as permanent as that of the later
day. Time tests all things, and its verdict cannot
be foreseen; but it is doubtful if it will
place any of our modern landscape artists before
Martin or Inness. Among these modern
landscape painters are men of such talent as H.
W. Ranger, Bruce Crane, and J. Francis Murphy,
without mention of whom no article on
American landscape painters would be complete.

H. W. RANGER

BRUCE CRANE

J. FRANCIS MURPHY

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

American Painters	George W. Sheldon
Art in America	S. G. W. Benjamin
American Masters of Painting	C. H. Caffin
The Story of American Painting	C. H. Caffin
A History of American Painting	Samuel Isham
A History of American Art	K. S. Hartman
Book of the Artists	Henry T. Tuckerman
Life and Times of Asher B. Durand	John Durand
Homer Martin	Frank Jewett Mather
George Inness	Elliott Daingerfield
George Inness: A Memorial	Alfred Trumble
Homer Martin: A Reminiscence

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Subscribers desiring further information concerning this
subject can obtain it by writing to

The Mentor Association

381 Fourth Avenue, New York City

AUTUMN OAKS By GEORGE INNESS

Metropolitan Museum of Art

ONE

George Inness is said to have painted more good
pictures than anyone else ever painted. At any
rate, he painted more than he himself could remember.
A landscape supposed to be Inness’s was
brought by the man who owned it to the artist’s studio, with
a request to know if it was genuine. Inness looked at the
painting carefully for a long time. “Leave
it, leave it,” he finally said. “Perhaps I
shall recall it.”

Inness spent the greater part of a long
career in the neighborhood of New York.
He began studying at the age of fourteen.
He received very little instruction; but
for the most part found out through his
own hard work and drudgery all that a
painter must know about drawing, colors,
and the mechanical side of art. Then,
during a few years in Italy, the glorious
landscapes, the historic traditions, the art
of old masters, all combined to develop in
the artist, who was then but a young man,
that quality of imagination which was
needed to make him a genius.

Yet neither his knowledge of art nor
his imagination could have placed him
foremost among painters of American
landscape had it not been for the energy
that was above all characteristic of his
nature. Inness would often work fifteen
hours at a stretch. Friends wondered at
his endurance, and even more at the
speed with which he painted. He saw one
day two pictures by Rousseau, the famous
French artist, and remarked to a friend,
“I could paint two of those a day.” Next
day, to prove his point, Inness painted
two canvases in the French style, and
later sold them both to one man.

An incident that happened at Montclair,
New Jersey, shows how little he valued
his own finished work. When out
walking one day he was overtaken by a
thunderstorm, and was so impressed with
its fury and grandeur that he rushed home
to paint it while the memory was still
fresh. Arrived at the house, and unable
to find a canvas large enough for his idea,
he took down a ten-foot picture of Mount
Washington which he had painted years
before. In two hours the mountain scene
was replaced by a striking representation
of the storm just over. That picture,
with the outline of Mount Washington
still traceable by ridges of paint, now
hangs in the museum at St. Louis.

Men of great energy often wear themselves
out early in life; yet George Inness
kept on painting to a good ripe age.
At sixty-nine he died in Scotland, where
he had gone for his health.

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VIEW ON THE SEINE By HOMER MARTIN

Metropolitan Museum of Art

TWO

Of all our great artists the most unsuccessful financially
was Homer Dodge Martin. His work was not popular;
he never won any prizes; and indeed he was
long forced to depend for a living on the assistance
of his wife. Like many other early American artists, he was
self-taught. His father, a carpenter in Albany, New York,
was not easily persuaded to let the boy
follow up a natural talent for painting.
Martin first tried carpentering, shopkeeping,
and architecture. In each case
his desire to draw pictures was too strong
for him,—boards, paper, blank walls,
were decorated with landscapes,—until
his employers found it necessary to discharge
the young artist. At last a sculptor
of the time pleaded for him, and
Homer was permitted to paint.

Martin insisted on doing everything in
his own way, and he did not get far at
first. His admirers can find hardly more
than an occasional hint in these crude
early works of the great skill that this
artist afterward acquired. Nevertheless,
the wealthier people of Albany, who
were proud of their artist, bought a number
of Martin’s canvases.

It was not until he moved to New York
in 1862 that this queer genius had a really
hard struggle to live. His habits were
irregular, he dressed badly, and generally
made a poor impression. The great Whistler
said, introducing him, “Gentlemen,
this is Homer Martin. He doesn’t look
as if he were; but he is!” Revolutionary
ideas and a keen, cutting humor made him
as many enemies as friends.

Strangely enough, he chose quiet, calm
landscapes to paint. He was attracted
to the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White
Mountains, and in Europe preferred tranquil
scenes along the upper Thames and
in Normandy.

Homer Martin seldom painted direct
from nature; but would sketch in his
notebook and jot down color memoranda.
Less surprising, therefore, than it would
seem at first is the painting of two famous
pictures in 1895, when he was all but
blind. “The Adirondacks” and the “View
on the Seine” rank with his best work.
Two years later he died.

Martin was not appreciated during his
lifetime. The few pictures that he did
manage to sell were purchased by his
friends. Today few of his important pictures
can be bought at any price.

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AN OLD CLEARING By A. H. WYANT

Metropolitan Museum of Art

THREE

Many a great artist has begun life in some distasteful
branch of trade. Wyant worked for a harness
maker. He was born and brought up at Port
Washington, Ohio, and though he is said to have
sketched flowers and leaves on the kitchen floor during his
childhood, and later to have used his spare time in sign painting,
he had no real opportunity either of
showing his own talent or of seeing pictures
by other artists until he was nearly
twenty.

A visit to Cincinnati, where he saw the
work of George Inness, may be considered
the beginning of Wyant’s artistic career.
From that time on, his one ambition in
life was to be a great painter. He set out
for New York City as soon as he could get
money enough together, found Inness, and
received from the master painter both
help and encouragement. Inness saw
great possibilities in this Ohio boy.

On his return Wyant made studies of
the Ohio Valley, where no artist of any
account had ever painted. He threw into
his work all the energy and enthusiasm of
which his poetic genius was capable.

The year 1865 brought the opportunity
to which Wyant had long looked. He was
able to go abroad, and study there for
awhile in Karlsruhe and London. But the
result was somewhat disappointing; for
he failed to get the inspiration he expected
from contact with European painters.

Another disappointment was in store
for him when he undertook, like Moran,
to explore the West. Indeed, it was more
than a disappointment. He was treated
so brutally by the leader of the expedition
that on returning he suffered a stroke of
paralysis. Although he never entirely recovered,
Wyant would not give up the old
determination to be a great artist. His
right hand useless, the invincible painter
learned to use his left, and with it did
more perfect work than he had ever done
with the other.

It is a fact which cannot be too much
regretted that Wyant reached the end of
his life before his genius could be perfected.
He himself knew that it would be
so. “Had I but five years more in which
to paint,” he said, “I think I could do the
thing I long to.” In the mystic coloring
of his Adirondack scenes we catch glimpses
of the thing he longed to do.

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IN NATURE’S PLAYGROUND By THOMAS MORAN

FOUR

Though a true American, taking great pride in his
chosen country and her art, Moran is English by
birth. When he was but seven years old the boy’s
parents settled in Philadelphia, where he received
his education. That he should soon show remarkable talent
was not at all surprising, as the family he belongs to
has produced nine distinguished artists.

Thomas Moran was apprenticed to a
wood engraver, whose art he mastered before
starting to work in color. Engraving
has in fact occupied a considerable part of
his life ever since, and his etchings are
among the best that have been done in
America. He has also great skill in water
color; though he is best known for his oil
paintings.

Success came easily and quickly. Moran
went with a government exploring expedition
to the West, where he wished to sketch
the unknown Rockies. A poetic imagination,
coupled with an eye trained to note
and remember the smallest details, could
not fail to being home valuable material.
The artist’s enthusiasm was aroused by
that bigness in the scenes before him which
now brings tourists from all parts of the
world. The magnificent coloring of rock
and mountainside, forest and canyon and
swift river, was faithfully observed, to be
rendered in the most famous of Moran’s
paintings.

The United States government chose
two of his pictures, “The Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone” and “The Grand
Chasm of the Colorado,” to adorn the
walls of the national Capitol. The artist
received for them $10,000 apiece.

Moran must be considered one of our
self-taught painters; for, except during
his first visits to Europe, he received very
little instruction. He is an American
painter of American landscapes. Yet he
has also made several excellent paintings
of the sea. He likes best to paint the sea
with mountains near at hand in the picture.

He has made several prolonged stays in
Europe; but is most fond of his home at
East Hampton, Long Island.

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TWILIGHT—AUTUMN By D. W. TRYON

Copyright by N. E. Montross

FIVE

The world stands ready to admire a painter whose
trees bend beneath the gale, their tops all but whipping
the torn, gray, low-driving clouds, and whose
lightning and rain and frightened animals aid the
dramatic impression of violent storm. Yet the world often
forgets the sort of skill that can show a light wind barely
swaying the straight, stark woods of
March, or can bring home to everyone the
chill and the melancholy of oncoming
frost in an autumn evening. When trees
toss we know that the wind is up. Running
cattle suggest thunder. But in “Twilight—Autumn”
there is nothing to tell us
why we seem to hear the far-off moaning
of the November wind. Tryon makes one
feel the spirit of scene and season.

At the age of twenty-five Dwight William
Tryon first set up his studio. Before this
he had been a clerk in a bookstore at Hartford,
Connecticut. At seven he began
studying at the École des Beaux Arts under
Daubigny and De la Chevreuse. Two
of his pictures were exhibited at the Paris
Salon. Since then he has won prizes
everywhere—a gold medal of the first
class at Munich in 1891; thirteen medals
at the Chicago exhibition, 1893; and many
more. He is a member of the National
Academy.

Some of the best of Tryon’s earlier work
is included in a series of landscapes and
marines which he painted for the hall of a
collector in Detroit. One of his series,
“Dawn—Early Spring,” is remarkable for
its simplicity. The foreground is a low,
marshy field, back of which an almost uniform
line of trees runs the whole width of
the horizon. Yet this painting, with all
its simplicity, is so full of imagination that
a beholder feels the dawn and the bleakness
of March sinking irresistibly into his
mind. It is Tryon’s method to conceal
his art, and make us feel the emotion in a
picture without knowing why we feel it.

All his paintings have the same subtle
simplicity. Among the best known are
his “Winter” and “A Scene at New Bedford.”

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HEART OF THE ANDES By F. E. CHURCH

Metropolitan Museum of Art

SIX

Many people like to find something unusual or striking
in a picture. To these the paintings of Frederick
Edwin Church make a special appeal. The range
of Church’s art is wide, and covers subjects chosen
from many parts of the world. Before cameras were invented
nobody could tell, unless he went there himself, just what a
tropical forest looked like. Therefore,
when Church wanted to paint something
mysterious and wonderful he traveled to
South America, among the mountains and
through jungles of which few people in
northern countries had any idea. It was
not strange that critics should praise the
landscapes he painted on his return,—scenes
by moonlight across a luxuriant
growth of palms and creepers, or high
mountain peaks with animals of the tropics
lurking about the foreground. So enthusiastically
were his canvases received,
both at home and abroad, that the young
artist soon revisited those regions, and
made further studies, which met with equal
success. The greatest of his South American
works is “The Heart of the Andes.”

Feeling at length that he had learned
enough of one country, and desiring a wider
field for his genius, Church turned northward.
“Niagara Falls from the Canadian
Shore” is a picture known to everyone. A
journey to Labrador gave him new opportunities,
quite the opposite of what he had
experienced in the tropics. We have the
result in “Icebergs,” one of his best canvases.
For him nothing was too difficult.
Soon afterward Church left America,
made southern Europe his study, and went
on from there into Palestine. “The Parthenon,”
a picture showing that magnificent
temple in the middle distance, with
no other object prominent enough to lessen
the majesty of its ancient ruined architecture,
is the most famous record of this
European period in the artist’s life.

Church painted on very large canvases,
and was painstaking to the smallest detail.
A pioneer in the landscape art of America,
he had all the directness and bigness of the
pioneer. “The Heart of the Andes” and
the “Niagara” give him a permanent place
in the history of American painting.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 26, SERIAL No. 26