ies to the vivid realization of the effect of the scene
rendered as one might perceive it in the first flash of vision if one
came upon it unexpectedly. This picture is better than Sorolla--it is
better than almost any one. It is perhaps the most astonishing
realization of the modern ideal, the most accomplished transcript of the
actual appearance of nature, that has yet been produced. It is because
of its great merit, because of its extraordinary success in what it
attempts, that it leads one to the serious consideration of the nature
of the attempt and of the gain and loss involved in the choice that
modern art has made.

The picture is exactly square--the choice of this form is, of itself,
typically modern in its unexpectedness--and represents a bit of rough
wood interior under intense sunlight. The light is studied for its
brilliancy rather than for its warmth, and if the picture has a fault,
granted the point of view of the painter, it is in a certain coldness of
color; but such conditions of glaring and almost colorless light do
exist in nature. One sees a few straight trunks of some kind of pine or
larch, a network of branches and needles, a tumble of moss-spotted and
lichened rocks, a confusion of floating lights and shadows, and that is
all. The conviction of truth is instantaneous--it is an actual bit of
nature, just as the painter found it. One is there on that ragged
hillside, half dazzled by the moving spots of light, as if set down
there suddenly, with no time to adjust one's vision. Gradually one's
eyes clear and one is aware, first of a haggard human head with tangled
beard and unkempt hair, then of an emaciated body. There is a man in the
wood! And then--did they betray themselves by some slight
movement?--there are a couple of slender antelopes who were but now
invisible and who melt into their surroundings again at the slightest
inattention. It is like a pictorial demonstration of protective coloring
in men and animals.

[Illustration: Plate 21.--Sargent. "The Hermit."
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

Now, almost any one can see how superbly all this is rendered. Any one
can marvel at and admire the free and instantaneous handling, the web of
slashing and apparently meaningless brush strokes which, at a given
distance, take their places by a kind of magic and _are_ the things they
represent. But it takes a painter to know how justly it is observed. In
these days no painter, whatever may be his