We have now reached the middle of the last century, when the influence of the Barbizon school asserted itself and caused increasing interest in landscape painting, a field which up to that time had been mixed up with historical motives, as in a typical composite canvas by Cole (Thomas), who generally ranks as the most important of the Hudson River School of landscape painters.  There is really not enough artistic moment to this American group to dignify it by the name of a school.  For historical reasons, however, this classification is very convenient.  Cole’s four sketches for the “Voyage of Life” show strong imagination, giving the impression, however, that he was more interested in mythology than in the art of painting.

The first intimation of a really original step in American outdoor painting, as based on the discoveries of the school of 1825, the Barbizon school, one receives in this gallery in a number of small canvases by some of the men we have chosen to classify as the painters of the Great West.  Into this group are put Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, and Albert Bierstadt.  They are so very closely identified with the West that they are of particular interest to us.  Their artistic careers were as spectacular as their subjects.  Stirred by the marvelous tales of the great scenic wonders of the West, they heroically threw themselves into a task that no artist could possibly master.  They approached their gigantic subjects with correspondingly large canvases, without ever giving the essential element, of their huge motives, namely, a certain feeling of scale, of monumentality, as compared to the pigmy size of the human figure.  Really great pictures of the Yellowstone, the Grand Cañon, and the lofty mountain-tops still remain to be painted.  The daring and courage of these men has benefited our art very much in a technical sense.  The study of panoramic distances and the necessity for closely observing out-of-doors new subjects which could not be studied in the work of other painters, led to a facility in the handling of paint which really constitutes the chief merit of these artists.  In this gallery (59) two small outdoor sketches by Thomas Hill give a good suggestion of this Californian’s great dexterity in handling paint.  His career has been so closely identified with the Yosemite Valley, where he lived and died, that these two sketches will serve as a reminder of the very faithfully studied larger pictures he for many years produced.  Peter Moran, a brother of Thomas, has a cattle picture in this gallery which needs the backing up of the reputation of the whole Moran family to be accepted.

Gallery 58.