American art and American art collections; essays on artistic subjects . cially, what was thegeneral state of art at the time; we must consider what menhad gone just before him, and what were working by his thus can we understand his art in its entirety; only thus can we gauge the importance ofit to his contemporaries, only thus decide what has been his by right of exceptional endowment,and what by right of mere inheritance shared in common with all the artistic portion of hisgeneration. When an artist has come in a period of pronounced transition, such a comparative methodof critici
American art and American art collections; essays on artistic subjects . cially, what was thegeneral state of art at the time; we must consider what menhad gone just before him, and what were working by his thus can we understand his art in its entirety; only thus can we gauge the importance ofit to his contemporaries, only thus decide what has been his by right of exceptional endowment,and what by right of mere inheritance shared in common with all the artistic portion of hisgeneration. When an artist has come in a period of pronounced transition, such a comparative methodof criticism is especially demanded. To a period of transition Mr. Chase belongs, havingindeed greatly helped to inaugurate it. It will therefore be well for us, when considering hisart, to assist direct criticism by a constant under-current of memory, which shall bring intocomparison the kind and quality of the work to which we had been most accustomed before heand his associates came among us. Some years ago one would not have been very ready to prophesy that American art was. Drawn by Robert Blum. 210 AMERICAN ART about to produce a new development of a strong and vital sort. Though a critic might havesaid that it was not an art of very deep endowment or very rich performance, yet he wouldhardly have called it undeveloped or preparative. It had been at work for many years, withthe impression that it was fully grown, and had perhaps nearly attained the utmost that wasto be drawn from the modes of thought and practice it preferred. The paintings which wewere accustomed to see year after year on the National Academy walls bore a strong familylikeness to each other. There was a very wide distance, of course, between the best and theworst of them; yet there was a similarity among almost all of them, not only in sentiment andartistic aim, but also in the ways adopted to incarnate the sentiment and realize the were very few American artists who seemed to care in the least to experi
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