foundation which stood him in good stead all his life, and he was watchful that nothing should prevent his having in the spring and autumn his weeks of outdoor work, to keep himself fresh, as he said, in knowledge of nature and to get new themes.

The tendency, professional or other, to criticize a man, to call him conceited, to condemn his work because it does not follow some line that we ourselves are enamoured of, is wide-spread. It exists always, and we shall not dismiss it or dethrone it by inveighing against it. Let those whose happiness is found in bitterness continue along the way; meanwhile we shall look upon great trees, still pools, far, misty fields, and high, overarching skies that Ranger has left us, and be glad that he also has passed along the way, touching here and there things we might not have seen, and giving them to us.

How trite it is to say, "like a Corot"; "a Corot composition"! Suppose it is. Do we never gain the intelligence to see that likeness to Corot means really like

ness to nature at the times and seasons that Corot has impressed upon us? The color, touch, and drawing of a fine Ranger are not in the least like Corot. The placement of his trees and pools? Yes; but the trees themselves, the rough undergrowth, the fields, and the skies are never Corot, but Ranger: yet the romantic vision, the choice, is ever Barbizon, even when most American. In this we see the old law working out, that good is built upon the labors of the past.

There were many qualities combined in Henry W. Ranger. He was, to use a colloquialism, a good mixer. Here was no

dreamer or misanthrope, no wanderer in far places where human companionship might not intrude and the soul could be free to commune with its God. This was not Ranger. He loved to be with men; a game of cards was a necessity, and he planned his days so that he might have his game of bridge. He had, too, a very deep love of music. This, also, was necessary for him, and in his big studio he

had built in a great pipe-organ whose tones were forever rolling through the building. Around him there he gathered his musical friends, and this solace was no mean half of his life.

It is no difficult task to couple that musical influence with the painter side of his nature, its influence in the rhythm of his composition, the subtlety of tint and tone which he loved, the choice of sky forms and types of sky which one will find recurring in his work.

We may reverse the matter if we will, and, looking at his pictures, decide with almost complete certainty that Ranger was a lover of symphonic rather than of operatic ensemble.

The decision would be made because he seldom essays the intense or dramatic. The blare of the storm or the intensity of sunlight and shadow did not so fully interest him as the filmy, moist sunlight of spring or the hazy laziness of the autumn. Many times, and often successfully, he

looked into the "eye" of the sun at the hour of sunset; but one will not find the orb clear and fierce, as with Inness, but melting, burning if you will, through misty vapors which allowed diffusion, radiance, and iridescent color. It was thus that Turner viewed the sunset and furnished Ruskin opportunity for rhapsody.

Ranger's themes for most vigorous attack and contrast were his woodland scenes. The drawing of gnarled old oaks, stretching their wind-blown and stormshaped limbs across the years, furnished him design and contrast with the misty distances of forest depths, the calm of quiet labor below their giant forms, the piling of wood, and such homely themes. In these often he strengthened his palette and his touch. The red of an old mill was made to intensify and give contrast; the gray and gold of age-old boles, heavily touched in, were ever his utmost reach for power, and if you ask for the connection of these with his musical vein, you must find it in

the sound of brass or the beat of drum. But as we go down the long journey of the years, he will, I think, be remembered best by the grace of certain trees, the mellow beauty of flocculent skies, under which the fields and still pools lie in gentle sunlight.

Yet we will not forget the river and the harbor things which were inevitable in his art, since he lived near and loved the

water.

The later years of his life, during the summers, were lived at Noank, on Long Island Sound, and Fisher's Island was his sketching-ground. The characteristics of these haunts are found in many of his pictures. He looked down upon the broad water spaces, the little boats, and the great ones anchored there, and watched the moon flood all the harbor with its light, or the dazzling sun sink away to rest at the end of a long path of light.

There was something in the mystery of moonrise that eluded him. In moonlight the color gamut has to do with the cooler tones of the palette, and the luminosity of

yellow is denied us; yet it must be secured to produce that lovely, pervading glow that is the significant characteristic of moonrise. Ranger never quite mastered it. Workmanlike as his night things are, there is a heaviness in the tonality, a lack of subtlety which is a great weakness. In Blakelock that limpid, subtle glow was just what he achieved, and his mastery stands confessed. This weakness in Ranger is the stranger, since moonlight is the most musical of all moments. sonata of Beethoven comes at once to mind, and with it there is an essence, a very fragrance of the light, that is imperishable. This is what we must have in moonlight pictures.

The

In all strong men there is a consciousness of power; the exercise of this almost inevitably brings the charge of conceit. How small a thing is such a charge! Always, I think, it proceeds from one who would be a monopolist of the entire supply, and therefore disputes the right of another to even a small fragment.

Ranger had to bear such criticism. His

was not always a mellow tongue; but I have not felt that his quantity of selffaith was greater than his critics'. Consider this one remark, "I think I have turned the corner at last." What corner? That unattainable corner round which that much-desired knowledge was forever flitting, escaping, and the earnest worker following, hoping at last to catch up with her as the desired prize.

I think I have never met Ranger after a summer's work that he has not said this to me, and it shows his own belief that there was always more to know, more to be attained, "round the corner."

It will be, then, as it should be now, the work that matters; not the worst, but the best, and so only shall he be judged.

We are not prophets, and we can not say what the dim distance has in store for Ranger's landscapes; but when looking at the rugged truth of "Becky Cole's Hill" or the smiling beauty of "Willows," we may feel quite sure that they have a quality of

sincerity, a vigor of execution, and a veracity of a sort that forbid putting them aside. Each in its way is typical of Ranger and what he was as artist.

In the "Willows" the drawing of the trees, the half-shadowed pool below, the lovely sky, combine to make a work of very high order. We shall not soon forget it, and these two works assure his lasting fame.

I have in mind another canvas of his, painted, as he was fond of doing, on a 29 by 36 stretcher, which almost perfectly expresses the fullness of his art. The richness of the autumn is on the land; there is the old time-worn mill on the left,-a New England mill, mounted high on its foundation of masonry,- -a glimpse of water, and the rich oak forest coming quite up to the door; but little sky is shown, yet that is delightfully atmospheric and just in its relation to the whole. The light is, as usual, a soft sunlight.

In this picture we have fine drawing of

tree forms, and they are noble old trees of the forest; the ground below is finely articulated, and moves from foreground to distance with consummate precision. The mill, in its warm, reddish tone, is perfectly harmonized, and the contrasts of cool and warm are correct without exaggeration. Technically, then, the picture is all that it should be; but that is not enough to make it a work of art, however loudly it may be proclaimed that this is the all in all of art.

Ranger knew better, and the significance of his theme is finely presented. We have the very atmosphere of the theme. New England folk have gone to and fro about that mill for generations, and it has fulfilled its province, supplying meal from generation to generation. Autumn has succeeded to autumn, and the rugged limbs of the old oaks have shed their leaves throughout the years. The picture is a poem of rural life and justifies the fame of the painter.

At times Ranger showed great mastery of sky forms. One feels tempted to digress here and speak of the slight atten

tion paid nowadays to this splendor of landscape. The advanced "modern" seems to deny the necessity for any other than blank, vacant paint masquerading as sky; not so Ranger. He was an observer, and his forms and weather notations are often very splendid.

I would not say that Ranger was at any time a master technician. The term means too much; few men have attained to it.

He never achieved beauty of surface, which is a desirable thing and is so frequently a characteristic of his loved Barbizon School. That he tried for this quality is clear, but just why he fell short is difficult to say. His touch was at times heavy with paint, and multitudinous, though controlled; but the use of waves of color was not part of his manner.

His processes, then, were his own, and easily recognizable, and not at all like those of Corot, whom he is accused of imitating. Perhaps he felt this himself, for his conversation was often of technical processes.

Though he has produced a great deal, one would not say of him that he was a