English

There are three words, synonymous and clear,
That picture lovers everywhere revere:
The classic, the impressionist, and real —
Three words of simple force the masters feel.
The first Impressionists of classic aim
The Land of Cherry Blossoms gave to fame;
And they 're the Chiefs of realism too —
The Classic Realists of impressions true.

Impressions that impress are somewhat rare —
To catch the shiver of the open air
And paint it with a touch refin'd and true
Is only given to the chosen few.
Impressions are experience, and they teach
The painter's depth, his consciousness and reach.

The sun-god men who work in shadeless ways,
And welcome beauty born of golden days,
Should not forget that Nature yields to mood,
That, at her best, she's neither coarse nor crude.
Her superb palette has both tint and tone
No painter of impressions need disown.

What of the splendid Monet's merry men
Who focus all the sunshine in their ken,
And muster in these halls with pigment coarse,
Devoid of many things but not of force?

Convention is to seek, and, strange to say,
No culmination crowns their shining way.
They " hold the mirror up to Nature's face,"
But hold it up, at times, too close for grace.
There lurks an ideal here, and one sublime,
The labour pains will sink to rest in time.

Melchers has turned from Bible lore at last,
And seeks, with saner work, to blot the past.
His sight is normal when, rejecting guile,
He weds to truth of substance truth of style.
His kind-eyed Holland maids of canny face
Are touched of colour and convincing grace;
And sometimes with that tempered technique sing
That Henry James would call " the real right thing."

Dwight Tryon can depict an ocean scene
With touch that's tender and with sight serene.
The colours' easy and seductive flow
Still glads his canvas when the breezes blow
From off the frolic seas, and tides run deep
And waves are flecked of foam, and surges sweep
The yellow sands, and the translucent green
Of laughing water sheds the mellowed sheen
Of golden rays that kiss the shining sea,
As tumbling ocean, turbulent and free,
Beats with the jocund stir of light and life,
And all the Winds are out, and joy is rife.

In Yankee mining camps where strangers roam
In search of sudden wealth not found at home;
Where life is cheap and whiskey very " high,"
And pistols lead to mansions in the sky;
The Music Halls entice the ennuy'd crowd
With cracked pianos, tired of life but loud;
And signs abound, this sign among the rest,
" Don't shoot the player, for he does his best."

Blanche is Boldini minus Southern fire;
But one will flicker and the other tire:
Neither is great, for each has won a place
With more of reclame than abiding grace.
And yet, perhaps, they meet the Ruskin test,
And " try, with loving care, to do their best."

Technique! that " vesture visible of mind,"
That stamps its maker vulgar or refin'd.
The right technique! how much there is in that
Your flashy brushman only boggles at!

Of pose eccentric and of colour coarse,
Boldini struggles for a tour de force .
He has a clipping cleverness of tone,
And skirts, but never mounts, the master's throne.
His morbid technique gives the eye offence,
A technique tiresome to the finer sense.