"The Wood-Gatherers"
INNESS has been called an experimentalist because he sought a more extensive and accurate vocabulary of the palette for the expression of his conception of nature. He deprecated the narrow range which confined our artists, and a feeling of revolt stirred him against the trammels of conventional artistic expression. He was in sympathy with the expansion ⟨going⟩ on in painting, music, and poetry during the ⟨nineteenth⟩ century, and did much to aid the onward movement here. Aiming to reproduce on canvas the elusive charm of nature, rather than to attempt its literary representation, he shattered the conventions of the old Hudson River School, and only now are we getting far enough away from him to appreciate his efforts toward a wider and more diverse expression.
An artist delighting in his technique is always making experiments, and by increasing the modes of expression gives vitality to the art of his day. Inness believed in himself. It was exhilarating to hear him, when in one of his communicative moods, state his estimate of his own powers. He felt no doubt of himself, and his sureness awakened confidence in his ability. We know now that this assurance was well founded.
A picture like "The Wood-Gatherers," produced at the end of Inness's career, was not possible a half-century ago, nor would it have been accepted had it been possible. To-day we look upon it as wholly rational and a work of great beauty. In Mr. Wolf's engraving we feel the day as the kind that artists love—cool and still, with gray skies through which the sun breaks intermittently—and catch the poetic suggestion which prompted the artist's soul. W. Stanton Howard.
