in forgetting that their poor, inartistic Philistine country did provide, inter alia, the great writer who has influenced French imaginative writers more deeply than any other foreign writer since Byron—­Edgar Allan Poe; did produce one of the world’s supreme poets—­Whitman; did produce the greatest pure humorist of modern times; did produce the miraculous Henry James; did produce Stanford White and the incomparable McKim; and did produce the only two Anglo-Saxon personalities who in graphic art have been able to impose themselves on modern Europe—­Whistler and John Sargent.

* * * * *

In the matter of graphic art, I have known so many American painters in Paris that I was particularly anxious to see what American painting was like at home.  My first adventures were not satisfactory.  I trudged through enormous exhibitions, and they filled me with just the same feeling of desolation and misery that I experienced at the Royal Academy, London, or the Societe des Artistes Francais, Paris.  In miles of slippery exercise I saw almost nothing that could interest an intelligent amateur who had passed a notable portion of his life in studios.  The first modern American painting that arrested me was one by Grover, of Chicago.  I remember it with gratitude.  Often, especially in New York, I was called upon by stay-at-home dilettanti to admire the work of some shy favorite, and with the best will in the world I could not, on account of his too obvious sentimentality.  In Boston I was authoritatively informed that the finest painting in the whole world was at that moment being done by a group of Boston artists in Boston.  But as I had no opportunity to see their work, I cannot offer an opinion on the proud claim.  My gloom was becoming permanent, when one wet day I invaded, not easily, the Macdowell Club, and, while listening to a chorus rehearsal of Liszt’s “St. Elizabeth” made the acquaintance of really interesting pictures by artists such as Irving R. Wiles, Jonas Lie, Henri, Mrs. Johansen, and Brimley, of whom previously I had known nothing.  From that moment I progressed.  I met the work of James Preston, and of other men who can truly paint.

All these, however, with all their piquant merits, were Parisianized.  They could have put up a good show in Paris and emerged from French criticism with dignity.  Whereas there is one American painter who has achieved a reputation on the tongues of men in Europe without (it is said) having been influenced by Europe, or even having exhibited there.  I mean Winslow Homer.  I had often heard of Winslow Homer from connoisseurs who had earned my respect, and assuredly one of my reasons for coming to America was to see Winslow Homer’s pictures.  My first introduction to his oil-paintings was a shock.  I did not like them, and I kept on not liking them.  I found them theatrical and violent in conception, rather conventional in design, and repellent in color.