analyses extraneous to the meaning of beauty. That
the Japanese did more for him than any other Orientals of whom he
might have been thinking, is evident. For all that, his own personal
lyricism surmounts his interest in outer interpretations of light and
movement, and he leaves you with his own notion of a private and
distinguished appreciation of nature. In this sense he leads one to
Renoir's way of considering nature which was the pleasure in nature
for itself. It was all too fine an adventure to quibble about.

Twachtman's natural reticence and, I could also believe, natural
skepticism kept him from swinging wildly over to the then new
theories, a gesture typical of less intelligent natures. He had the
good sense to feel out for himself just where the new theories related
to himself and set about producing flat simplicity of planes of color
to produce a very distinguished notion of light. He dispensed with the
photographic attitude toward objectivity and yet at the same time held
to the pleasing rhythmical shapes in nature. He did not resort to
divisionalism or to ultra-violence of relationship. The pictures that
I have seen such as "February", for instance, in the Boston Museum,
present for me the sensation of a man of great private spiritual and
intellectual means, having the wish to express tactfully and
convincingly his personal conclusions and reactions, leaning always
toward the side of iridescent illusiveness rather than emotional
blatancy and irrelevant extravagance. His nuances are perhaps too
finely adjusted to give forth the sense of overwhelming magic either
in intention or of execution. It is lyrical idea with Twachtman with
seldom or never a dramatic gesture. He is as illusive as a phrase of
Mallarme and it will be remembered that he is of the period more or
less of the rose and the lily and the lost idea in poetry. He does
recall in essence at least the quality of pastels in prose, though the
art intention is a sturdier one. It is enough that Twachtman did find
his relationship to impressionism, and that he did not evolve a system
of repetition which marks the failure of all influence.

Twachtman remains an artist of super-fine sensibility and distinction,
and whatever he may have poured into the ears of students as an
instructor left no visible haggard traces on his own production other
than perhaps limiting that production. But we know that while the
quality is valuable in respect of power it has n