r, George Fuller, and the
later Winslow Homer who certainly did receive more recognition than any
of them prior to his death.

Martin, Ryder, and Fuller could not have enjoyed much in the way of
appreciation outside of a few artists of their time, and even now
they may be said to be the artists for artists. It is reasonable to
hope that they were not successful, since that which was a la mode in
the expression of their time was essentially of the dry Academy. One
would hardly think of Homer Martin's "Border of the Seine" landscape
in the Metropolitan Museum, hardly more then than now, and it leaves
many a painter flat in appreciation of its great dignity, austerity,
reserve, and for the distinguished quality of its stylism. What Martin
may have gotten, during his stay in Europe, which is called
impressionism is, it must be said, a more aristocratic type of
impressionism than issued from the Monet followers. Martin must then
have been knowing something of the more dignified intellectualism of
Pissarro and of Sisley, those men who have been the last to reach the
degrees of appreciation due them in the proper exactitude.

We cannot think of Martin as ever having carried off academic medals
during his period. We cannot think of Martin as President of the
Academy, which position was occupied by a far inferior artist who was
likewise carried away by impressionism, namely Alden Weir. The actual
attachment in characteristic of introspective temper in Alden Weir is
not so removed from Martin, Fuller and Ryder as might be imagined; he
is more like Martin perhaps though far less profound in his sense of
mystery; Fuller being more the romanticist and Ryder in my estimation
the greatest romanticist, and artist as well, of all of these men. But
Alden Weir failed to carry off any honor as to distinctive qualities
and invention. A genial aristocrat if you will, but having for me no
marked power outside of a Barbizonian interest in nature with a kind
of mystical detachedness.

But in the consideration of painters like Martin, Fuller and Ryder we
are thinking chiefly of their relation to their time as well as their
relation to what is to come in America. America has had as much
painting considering its youth as could be expected of it and the best
of it has been essentially native and indigenous. But in and out of
the various influences and traditional tendencies, these several
artists with fine imaginations, typical American imaginat