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The Musique aux Tuileries and the Bal de l'Opéra had, some years before, pointed towards the evolution of this great artist in the direction of plein-air painting.
Gallery 80 is notable for the work of painters who have followed rather closely the old academic traditions: for the smooth and polished canvases of W. M. Paxton and Philip Leslie Hale. There are also seven landscapes by Willard L. Metcalf, fresh attractive work of the "plein-air" school. Gallery 67 is rich in fine landscapes, and contains the best of the exhibition's marines.
There are subjects which may be taught in class, and subjects which commend themselves to individual teaching. There are topics which admit of plein-air handling, and topics which civilized man, as apart from his artless brother of the jungles, has veiled with reticence.
As the experiments of these artists were directed chiefly to the solution of problems of light, the term naturally was widened to include that whole division of painting which is concerned with atmospheric aspects and color harmonies rather than with subject-interest and line composition. Terms which express the same idea in general or in part, are "luminism" and "plein-air painting."
On the south wall is a large canvas by the celebrated Menard; but his little seascape on the west wall is more appealing, being one of the most attractive things in the section. On the east wall is a canvas by le Sidaner, a leader of the plein-air school, which reminds one that good French landscapes are few in this exhibit. The Italian Section is the best arranged in the galleries.
And this music glittered with the sun. The pitch of Wagner's orchestra had, after all, been predominantly sober and subdued. But in the orchestra of Strauss, the color-gamut of the plein-air painters got a musical equivalent. Those high and brilliant tints, these shimmering, biting tones, make one feel as though Strauss made music with the paint-brush of a Monet or a Van Gogh.
The Academy... a picture in very bright colours... a woman sitting by the roadside with a shawl round her shoulders and a red skirt and red cheeks and bright green country behind her... people moving about on the shiny floor, someone just behind saying, "that is plein-air, these are the plein-airistes" the woman in the picture was like the housekeeper....
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