Chapter D: W. Tryon

With Wyant, Martin, and Inness our early landscape school reached its culmination. Their lives all continued after the end of the Civil War, they even did their best work after it; but they belonged to a school formed in other surroundings. After the war conditions changed. The country was less isolated, intercourse was easier, wealth had increased, and foreign paintings, calculated to show the deficiencies of native work, became increasingly common. The budding artists were no longer willing to pick up their art by their own exertions, aided by occasional counsel from their elders or such inadequate schools as the country then furnished, but departed in ever increasing numbers to the famous schools of Europe.

The difference was not that the earlier painters had ignored Europe. They traveled to see the masterpieces of art and the beauties of nature in foreign countries; but they were on the whole contented with their work and proud of their native school. The younger men absorbed enthusiasm for foreign workmanship, and adopted foreign standards.

THE SENTIMENT OF TRYON