"The gay

"Nature always has impressed on its face the feeling of loneliness. There is nothing so expressive of solitude as the clear, sunny, summer day. The stretch of fields bathed in shows itself sunlight; the woods casting their deep shadows ending in mystery; the peaceful blue sky above, with here and there a fleecy cloud, orphaned and alone, in the deep expanse: all these things

side never

to me. I don't know

where it is.

The gayest

thing I

know is the

calm, the

silence

sweet,

appeal to the quiet and sympathetic side of our nature, and find a congenial resting-place which is so in our most reflective moods. Then come the grey days and ashen skies, the big driving masses of cloud, and the gloom of approaching night. Even winter, with all its glittering will admit whiteness, is as solemn in its grandeur as the stillness of the dark woods at midnight. These

either in the forest, or the

cultivated

land.

that it is

You

always very

dreamy,

and a sad dream, though

often very delicious."

phases of nature impress us with solitary and lonely sentiments, because they are vast and almost infinite in their majesty and power, and man's physical and spiritual being becomes J. F. Millet, insignificant in their presence. To portray this feeling was Weissenbruch's mission. The solitary foot-traveller by the edge of the canal as evening approaches, the envelopment of all things in the mantle of shadow or sunshine,

in his Life by Alfred Sensier.

the lonely tree standing out against the great background of land and sky, the boat on the mysterious and never-ending sea; these were his favourite subjects, and excited his deepest sympathy. All such scenes as these are big and simple, and the great characteristics of his works are space and simplicity. He faithfully portrayed the moods of nature, not her physical beauties or topographical character. A bit of water, land, or sky was to him as important, as beautiful, and as expressive of nature's moods as the most perfect composition. A few reeds and a glimpse of a canal made a picture; a simple meadow with a few cattle was, in his hands, a poem; a windmill and a lonely farmhouse became a passage of dreamland. He looked not for subject alone, but sought out the temperament and sympathy of his theme, and gave expression to these things with an unerring regard to technique, colour, and composition. As a painter he was real and absolutely true to nature, but his reality is that of pathos and feeling, his truth that of the heart and mind. Beyond all the artists of the last fifty years, he is the

real as well as the spiritual exponent of the beautiful, the true, and the sympathetic. His finest works are the trusted companions of our solitude, and never fail to join in the harmony of the thoughts that seek to be alone. They speak, but it is in language that perhaps few hear and fewer of us fully understand or appreciate. And as we go back to our boyhood dreams and aspirations, and the 'long, long thoughts of youth,' so we turn to our friends given to us by Weissenbruch, and cling to them when the works of men even greater than he in the eyes of the world's critics grow cold and lifeless."

"This is the way the pictures of Weissenbruch appeal to those who appreciate their beauty and tenderness of feeling. And in this sense, perhaps, no man ever attained the rank of Weissenbruch as a purely landscape painter. He quickens our sense of beauty and our highest perception of truth by his great and simple loneliness, and draws us into harmony with the fitful moods of nature's ever-varying temperament. There is no false pretence, no jarring note in his work or its